Since September 2020, protests including road and rail blockades and tractor marches against new laws introduced by the Indian government in pursuit of agricultural reform have continued for more than half a year. These new laws, introduced by the Narendra Modi administration with the claim that they would lead to higher incomes for citizens, aim to liberalize agricultural trade and bring private capital into the agricultural sector. However, many agricultural workers strongly oppose them, citing concerns that liberalization will strengthen the price-setting power of private companies such as trading houses and wholesalers that buy harvests, and that the minimum prices currently set will no longer be guaranteed.
It is no exaggeration to say that this series of events in India reflects the current structure of global agriculture. Beyond this, agriculture around the world faces many serious challenges in the economic, social, and environmental spheres. What is the actual state of agriculture today? And is there a gap between this reality and people’s image of it? This article explores the current state of global agriculture and how it is reported.
An agricultural worker in India plowing land with cattle (Photo: Well-Bred Kannan / Flickr[CC BY-NC-ND 2.0])
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The current state of agriculture
What does global agriculture actually look like? First, let’s consider global agricultural output. According to data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 2020, production of the world’s major crops in 2018 was about 9.1 billion tons. Looking by crop groups, from 2000 to 2018 cereals such as wheat, rice, and maize (corn) consistently accounted for the largest share, roughly 30% of total production. Sugar crops followed at a little over 20%, and then vegetables, oil crops, fruits, and tubers at around 10%. In addition, global meat consumption in 2018 was about 342 million tons. In this way, a variety of crops and livestock products are produced worldwide, including cereals that serve as staple foods for many people. Moreover, from 2000 to 2018, production of major crops increased by about 50%, and meat consumption also rose by roughly 47%.
Harvesting wheat with a combine harvester (Photo: Aleksandar Dickov / Shutterstock.com)
Next, let’s look at the number of people engaged in agriculture. According to data compiled by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the global population of agricultural workers in 2019 was approximately 900 million people. The number of people working in agriculture has been declining overall in recent years; in 2000 it was about 1 billion. Thus, even as global food demand and production increase, the number of people farming is decreasing. One reason is that mechanization in commercial agriculture has reduced the number of employees. However, this does not necessarily mean that small-scale agriculture is being replaced by large estates and plantations; in the breakdown of farms worldwide, small, family-run farms still make up a large share. It is estimated that roughly 75% of the world’s farmland is family-run, and the vast majority of those—95%—are small family farms operating on plots smaller than 5 hectares. Many of these farmers join cooperatives and work together to sustain their operations. The agricultural sector is not made up only of producers; there are also large agribusinesses. Rather than selling farm products themselves, they generate large profits by producing and selling seeds, pesticides, and other inputs to farmers.
Applying pesticide by hand (Romas_Photo / Shutterstock.com)
Among international organizations related to agriculture is the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The FAO pursues the sustainability of agriculture by working closely with the private sector, civil society organizations, governments, and key sectors, and by taking a holistic approach across social, economic, and environmental dimensions. Specific activities include hosting international forums and providing statistical information. Other related organizations include the World Food Programme (WFP), which provides emergency food assistance during disasters and studies region-specific vulnerabilities caused by climate change, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which focuses on agricultural development in low-income member states and provides grants to countries that cannot sustain debt repayments.
The situation of people engaged in agriculture and socio-economic issues
We have looked at the current state of global agriculture. Based on production conditions and trends among those involved in agriculture, let us examine in more detail what problems are occurring today. One issue faced by people working in agriculture is low income. Many cannot earn a minimum income from agriculture to support their livelihoods and live in poverty. It is also said that agricultural workers are present in two-thirds of households in extreme poverty. If they produce edible crops, they can secure some food in a kind of self-sufficiency, but many agricultural workers produce cash crops such as cotton, tobacco, and cacao rather than food crops. If selling their crops does not bring in sufficient income, it becomes extremely difficult not only to purchase food but also to cover daily necessities, education costs, and medical expenses.
Small-scale farmland in northern Pakistan (khlongwangchao / Shutterstock.com)
Another problem faced by smallholder and contract farmers (※1) is that they tend to be in a weak position in price determination. Behind this lies the fact that smallholders and contract farmers occupy the weakest position within the structure of the supply chain (※2). In many countries, local trading houses and intermediaries that buy crops, as well as trading companies entering from high-income countries, have advantages over smallholders and contract farmers in organizational scale, financial power, and information about global markets, and they exert great influence over price setting. In principle, governments should play a role in protecting livelihoods by guaranteeing minimum prices and providing subsidies to farmers. However, liberalization of agricultural trade and deregulation are increasing worldwide, and as in the Indian case mentioned at the start, there are many instances where governments adopt policies that favor domestic and foreign trading companies over their own farmers in transactions.
Furthermore, the persistence of poverty, particularly among agricultural producers, is giving rise to human exploitation issues, including child labor. Not only in commercial agriculture such as plantations, but also in family farming, workers other than family members may be hired; there, long working hours for low wages, human trafficking, and violence occur. In some cases, undocumented migrants who cannot receive sufficient legal protection are exploited. For example, in southern Italy, more than half of fruit farm workers—430,000 people—work without formal contracts, of whom roughly 80% are foreign workers, and it is pointed out that 100,000 may be exploited. In family farming, low income can make it impossible to hire employees, leading some to put their own children to work on the farm. When children are compelled to work, their basic rights, such as the right to education, are deprived.
Agricultural workers and children working in tea fields in Thailand (KAMONRAT / Shutterstock.com)
In addition, continued low incomes sometimes lead farmers to collaborate with criminal organizations to cultivate raw materials for drugs. For example, in Colombia and elsewhere there is production of coca, the raw material for cocaine, and in Afghanistan and elsewhere, poppies, the raw material for opium and heroin. Even when the crop itself is legal, problems can arise involving criminal groups; in Mexico, the relationship between avocado production and organized crime is serious.
In this way, the low and unstable income from agricultural production, and the relationship between current agricultural systems and society, are causing a variety of problems.
Agriculture and the global environmental crisis
On top of the above, problems arising in the course of farming also include various global environmental issues. One is climate change. Data indicate that 17% of greenhouse gases come from agriculture. Behind this are deforestation and land development to open up agricultural land, as well as the effects of methane gas emitted from dairy and livestock production and rice paddies. Water scarcity caused by agriculture is also a serious issue. Agriculture is said to be the sector that uses the most water among human activities, and considering the expansion of agricultural production accompanying future population growth, there are concerns that water resources will become increasingly depleted.
Furthermore, environmental challenges in farming include pest problems and crop diseases. A pest problem that has intensified in recent years, also tied to climate change, is mass outbreaks of locusts. In 2020, the desert locust broke out in huge numbers in East Africa, spreading from around the Red Sea to Southwest Asia and bringing crises to many regions. The spread of crop diseases is also severe. One contributing factor is the loss of crop diversity. For example, bananas are mass-produced over large areas worldwide using genetically identical varieties. When the same type of crop is produced everywhere, once a disease takes hold, it can spread rapidly and yields can decline dramatically.
Illustrative image of young shoots emerging from the soil (amenic181 / Shutterstock.com)
In addition to the problems above, the homogenization of production methods and the use of chemical fertilizers are accelerating soil degradation. Continuous monoculture—growing the same crop on the same land every year—can reduce soil nutrients and organic matter, potentially exhausting the land, as pointed out. The use of synthetic fertilizers also risks disrupting the balance within the soil, and the nitrogen released from them can ripple out to contribute to climate change and even water pollution, it is said.
We must recognize that while farming is an indispensable activity that fundamentally supports human life, depending on how it is practiced, it can also lead to environmental destruction.
Is the media conveying this reality?
So far, we have addressed various problems related to agriculture around the world. The many issues and crises faced by agricultural workers and farm producers are also issues for us, the consumers of agricultural products. Is the media able to convey this grave reality? For this investigation, we extracted articles in the Yomiuri Shimbun from 2016 to 2020 that focused on agriculture outside Japan (※3). As a result, a total of 155 articles (※4) were identified. On a monthly average, that amounts to only two to three articles, which is relatively few.
From here, we analyze the countries and regions covered and the content of the 155 articles to grasp reporting trends. First, let’s look at the amount of coverage by country.
Articles covered a total of 26 countries and regions, but the country with the most coverage was the United States at 40% (55 articles). The next most covered was China at about 19% (26.5 articles). In other words, reporting on the United States and China alone accounts for more than half of all coverage related to global agriculture. In addition to individual countries, articles about the European Union (EU) as a community also accounted for a certain proportion at 11% (15.5 articles). Other countries and regions appeared only once over five years, meaning that reporting on agriculture in those places can convey only limited information. Thus, not only is the overall volume of reporting on agriculture low, but it is also skewed toward countries that are economically wealthy and strongly connected to Japan, such as the United States, China, and EU member states.
What about the content of the articles? The most common theme among the extracted articles was international trade between countries. Articles that concerned the United States, China, and the EU—the entities that accounted for the majority of coverage—and also dealt with trade made up 53% (82 articles) of the 155 articles, a very large share overall. Moreover, articles on trade were often framed in terms of their relevance to Japan. About 44% of all articles—68 pieces—were related to Japan. For example, there was coverage of the Trump administration’s demand that Japan open its markets to automobiles and agricultural products. There was also reporting on how China balked at a trade agreement and halted purchases of U.S. agricultural products. In addition, coverage was active around 2017 concerning discussions over the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Japan and the EU. Further, without limiting to any particular country or region, there was reporting on G20 efforts for stable food supply and on global vigilance regarding export restrictions on agricultural products during the COVID-19 pandemic. From this analysis, we learned that when global agriculture is reported, countries with close economic ties to Japan tend to be covered, and the content is written primarily from a trade-focused perspective. However, this approach can by no means comprehensively convey the many problems surrounding agriculture, such as poverty, inequality, and environmental destruction.
On the other hand, there were also articles that covered the hardships faced by smallholders, who constitute the majority of agricultural workers worldwide. These included pieces on the poverty of cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana and the start of systems to support agricultural workers’ livelihoods, such as the introduction of a purchase premium (December 26, 2019; February 28, 2020). However, there were only two such articles in five years. As for articles addressing the human rights and labor environment of agricultural workers, there was one reporting on the problem of widespread illegal employment in rural areas of South Korea and Southeast Asia (July 3, 2019), but here too, the frequency of reporting over five years was extremely low. Regarding environmental burdens caused by agriculture, there were a total of three articles: on baobab trees dying due to rural development in southern Africa (September 20, 2019); on the mass outbreak of locusts in East Africa and Southwest Asia (April 24, 2020); and a World Food Day piece addressing climate change (October 15, 2016). For this theme as well, reporting was scant relative to the vast scale and severity of the problems.
A woman standing in a field (Ozphotoguy / Shutterstock.com)
As we have seen, there are many extremely serious problems facing global agriculture that demand urgent solutions. However, this investigation revealed that media reporting on the current state of global agriculture is fragmented. In other words, many people enjoy the benefits of the crops being produced without even knowing that these problems exist. It must never be the case that, as countries pursue their own economic interests, the existence of agricultural workers who are marginalized and exploited is ignored. At the same time, finding solutions to the environmental burdens caused by agriculture while addressing the growing demand for food is an urgent task. A major role of the media is to inform people about these problems and spur action toward solutions worldwide. We need to rethink current coverage that relies solely on the perspectives of high-income countries and one’s own country, and to convey the problems faced by global agriculture to many people with a broader perspective.
※1 Contract farming refers to a method in which, mainly, trading companies enter into specific agreements with agricultural workers and purchase the harvest in exchange for growing specified crops.
※2 The end-to-end flow by which goods and products reach consumers—procurement, manufacturing, inventory management, distribution, sales, and consumption.
※3 For the article search, we used the Yomiuri Shimbun’s online database “Yomidas Rekishikan.” We targeted only international reporting, regardless of morning or evening editions, and picked up only articles whose headlines included the keyword “農” (“agriculture”). With these search conditions, some articles could not be extracted, and there may be other articles primarily about agricultural issues.
※4 To count each article precisely, if a single article covered two themes or countries, each was counted as 0.5 articles.
Writer: Akane Kusaba
Graphics: Yumi Ariyoshi
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