Occupies half of the Chinese chicken market. White feather chicken breeding has long relied on foreign sources
for a
long time.
Realizing "freedom to eat
chickens
" is really not that simple
Recently, a piece of news about China's successful independent breeding of white-feather broiler breeders swept the screen.
On December 3, the official website of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs released the latest news that the first batch of three new white-feather broiler breeds including the "Guangming No. 2" white-feather broiler supporting line passed the approval of the National Animal and Poultry Genetic Resources Committee.
This means that my country's dependence on imports of white feather broilers has been completely broken!
Many people didn't realize until this time that the breeding of white feather chickens, which occupies half of the Chinese chicken market, has long relied on foreign sources, and the Chinese people's "freedom to eat chickens" is not simple.
The story of the White Feather Chicken once again reveals the long-standing global "food monopoly" phenomenon. It also shows that in a highly globalized market, grasping the initiative in food production and circulation is essential for ensuring stable supply, industrial development, and seed industry safety. And ecological safety is very important.
Monopoly of Provenance of White Feather Chicken
Breeder pricing power is controlled
Globalization has brought changes in all aspects of the world, and food is no exception.
Because of the species exchange, technological progress, and transportation revolution brought about by globalization, people no longer only eat fresh vegetables grown in their own backyards. With the process of agricultural industrialization, both staple food and snacks have gradually become a standardized commodity.
This change has had many effects.
Some of the impacts are positive, such as the increase in agricultural production efficiency, otherwise it will not be able to feed the existing population on the planet; some of the impacts are negative, such as the "food monopoly" involving white chicken breeders.
Since 2004, China's white feather broilers have been 100% dependent on imports, which is not only a bottleneck for industrial development, but also a shortcoming that affects the safety of the national seed industry.
Many local chicken breeds in China are slowly fading out of the market and even become extinct because of their growth rate and lower meat yield.
The “leaving” of local chickens is the result of market behavior, but white feather chickens cultivated by modern technology cannot reproduce on their own and must rely on “foreign aid” for breeding.
Although it is unlikely that the American company will cut off the supply of breeder chickens and the Chinese will not be able to eat broiler chickens, but the pricing power of breeder chickens is undoubtedly in the hands of others.
What if the supply is controlled not only for breeding chickens, but for some important food, feed raw materials, or staple food that they depend on every day?
This is not sensational.
From the perspective of global agricultural development, the monopoly of large multinational corporations in the global food system has a direct impact on the food security and industrial security of all countries, and it can sometimes even become a geopolitical weapon.
"ABCD" has great power
Controls most of the global grain trade
When it comes to the global food production system, one cannot fail to mention the four major international grain merchants-"ABCD", namely ADM, Bunge, Cargill in the United States and Louis Dreyfus in France.
The industry generally believes that these four companies monopolize most of the global grain trading volume and have pivotal pricing power.
In the global food transaction, "ABCD" concentrates a large amount of capital, and has monopoly power over the raw materials and futures of the global food upstream, the production and processing and brands in the midstream, and the downstream market channels and supply.
In recent decades, traditional multinational grain merchants have cooperated with companies involved in genetically modified business such as Monsanto to further consolidate their power in emerging fields such as genetically modified breeding.
Do not underestimate the role of these food merchants in the global political economy.
When analyzing "structural power", the late Susan Strange, a famous British political economy scholar, pointed out that structural power has replaced traditional power, and its components include security, production, finance, and knowledge.
Among them, the expansion of structural power in production triggered by globalization is driving the transition of inter-state politics to transnational social politics. In this process, multinational companies that control the entire supply chain have become the masters of the global production structure.
The history of "ABCD" fully embodies the theory of structural power.
Judging from earlier examples, in the 1970s, when the United States overthrew the Chilean Allende regime, food was an extremely important tool.
As early as before Allende came to power, the United States provided food to Chile in accordance with the PL480 Act, stipulating that recipient countries must buy food from American grain companies after receiving preferential loans.
In this process, the American grain companies ADM, Bunge and Cargill in the "ABCD" dumped excessive amounts of American surplus grain in Chile, causing Chile's domestic grain merchants to go bankrupt in low-price dumping.
When the United States decided to suppress the "disobedient" Chilean regime, it manipulated the Chilean grain market through these multinational corporations, causing food prices to skyrocket and becoming one of the important means to crush the Allende regime.
The same practice is not uncommon in modern and contemporary history.
For example, some analysts pointed out that Argentina had to pay a large amount of patent fees to the United States because of the introduction and large-scale planting of genetically modified soybeans in the United States. In the international market, it relied heavily on soybean exports to purchase other staple foods.
In fact, multinational organizations including "ABCD" and large genetically modified breeding companies have also tried to compete for control of some of China's staple foods in the international grain futures market in recent years.
The Chinese government attaches great importance to food security and has taken various measures to fight back.
Face up to the existing global food system
Structural power controlled by the West and its multinational corporations
More and more international organizations believe that people are controlled by a globalized food production system and cannot access more natural and healthy food ingredients and more traditional and culturally meaningful diets, which will bring serious health risks.
These institutions propose to respect "food sovereignty", that is, those who produce, transport, and consume food can control the global mechanisms and policies for food production and distribution.
The concept of "food sovereignty" was first proposed by the non-profit organization "International Farmers Movement" in 1996.
Although “food sovereignty” is largely a “stress” response of farmers and small and medium-sized farmers after being hit by the neoliberal economic system, it fundamentally reveals the basic contradictions of the global food system based on neoliberalism. That is, the contradiction between the multinational company model and the smaller community-based agricultural model.
However, it is difficult for the idea of "food sovereignty" to have a substantial impact at present.
First of all, this concept is rather vague. From the initial focus on the interests of small and medium-sized farmers, to focus on women's rights, to focus on various issues such as climate and pollution, leading to unclear generalization.
Secondly, under the existing international trading system, "food sovereignty" is unable to challenge the neoliberal theory supported by multinational companies, and is unable to challenge the trend of agricultural industrialization and scale.
Globalization has greatly promoted the development of agriculture, and its efficiency is much higher than that of the smallholder economy.
This is an undeniable fact.
Finally, "food sovereignty" has not been widely recognized by governments.
"Food sovereignty" contains anti-globalization ideas, which are contrary to the free trade and globalization policies pursued by many countries. As a result, it can only stay at the conceptual level and is more difficult to implement in public policies.
Nevertheless, "food sovereignty" still warns governments and people of various countries to face up to the structural power controlled by the West and its multinational corporations in the existing global food system, enjoy the dividends brought by globalization, and be wary of the old international structure. Threats, adhere to the concept of fairness and justice to promote the reform of the international governance system, and build a truly inclusive and win-win supply chain system and an open and shared world economy.
According to Xinhua News Agency