5. Corporate agriculture and the right to health

Food quality and nutrition 

Driving these health concerns is the shift towards homogenisation and corporate monopoly control over the agrifood system, which produces poor quality, nutrition and vitamin-free staple crops in unhealthy ways and processes them into less healthy food.  

This dynamic has two sides, which have devastating impacts on nutrition and on the development of new pathogens. The first is the Green Revolution-prompted shift from nutritionally dense varieties of wheat and other crops to the overproduction of nutritionally-light, fast-growing cereal varieties, to the detriment of other traditional cereals such as sorghum and barley. One example is the use of corn, which is being mass-produced into almost genetically identical varieties and processed into high-fructose syrup, for use in the highly processed fast-food industry. The consumption of food stuffs such as high-fructose syrup causes obesity and diabetes in the millions, and since many people do not have access to enough food, the result is mass hunger.  

In Tunisia, obesity is rising as the nutritional value of affordable food decreases, with families surviving off mixed vegetable oil, onions, and white flour baguettes made with less nutritional wheat varieties. In Mauritius, obesity is rising amongst adolescents and middle-aged, post-menopausal women. Poorer communities in Global South countries are forced into eating energy-dense food, rich with trans-fats and cheap vegetable oils, which is all that is affordable.  

The overproduction of certain crops, which are dumped into the international markets through the ultra-processed food industry, is the result of rising corporate monopoly penetration of Global South markets. Mexico, a major producer of processed food with sales of US$124 billion in 2012, is dominated by Global North corporations such as PepsiCo, Unilever, Danone, and Nestlé, all of which have infiltrated local distribution networks, including convenience store chains. The results have been catastrophic for human health.  

The numbers of Mexican women aged 20-49 and classified as overweight increased from 25% to 35.5% between 1988-2021, with those categorised as obese surging from 9.5% to 37.5%; while 29% of Mexican 5–11-year-olds were categorised as overweight.  

In 2015, 10 million people in Mexico suffered from diabetes, which is closely linked to obesity. This is a staggering 7% of the population, and 21% of those aged 65-74. In 2012, Mexico ranked sixth in the world for diabetes deaths.85
  

Food production, pathogens, and epidemics  

Poor production processes (such as intensive farming with high levels of antibiotic residues) in the global agrifood system cultivate pathogens and bacteria, such as Salmonella and Campylobacter, which are harmful to human health.  

Other diseases have emerged from production measures linked to agribusiness. Malaria in India has been linked to the construction of dams for irrigation of capital-intensive export crops. Forest frontiers are increasingly spotted with megafarms where, as the biologist Rob Wallace writes:  

Other diseases have emerged in megafarms on the outskirts of cities, which supply food to urban centres. Food-borne bacteria or avian influenzas mingle and become deadlier on the bodies of millions of poultry and livestock animals, before infecting human populations.  

Nearly all documented cases of avian influenza transmission to humans (between 1959 and today), occurred in commercial bird farms, warehousing up to hundreds of thousands of birds. These intensive-farming operations, densely packed with birds, are conditions in which influenza thrives, even producing unique strains. Some scientists’ theories have stated there is compelling evidence that Covid-19 emerged from a mutation affecting live bats sold at a market in Huanan, China, with the disease transmitting to people working there, before spreading to become a pandemic.87
 

Toxic agrochemicals and the public health emergency in the Global South  

Another major danger to human health is the rising use of toxic agrochemicals, or agrotoxins, in agriculture.88
According to a recent study, 9 million deaths are linked to environmental pollution annually, with pesticides a major contributing factor.89
Pesticides can damage the human reproductive system, and cause birth defects, cancer, and neurotoxicity.  

Agrotoxins affect biodiversity, destroying insect and bird populations.90
This ‘epidemic’ of environmental poisoning is the result of rising corporate monopoly control over agricultural production, which has seen identical ‘technological packages’ used across the Global South. One of the most renowned technological packages is Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready, a packed solution of genetically modified seeds (usually soya), associated with the herbicide glyphosate. These seeds are hybrid and cannot be replicated, and only toxic glyphosate works with this variety of herbicide-resistant seeds. Farmers are then forced to rebuy this package every year, with smaller-scale farmers frequently falling heavily into debt.  

Paraquat, a deadly herbicide which is illegal to use in Europe, is currently produced in the UK and exported to many countries in the Global South.91
Because of weaker environmental protections, often linked to a legacy of colonial rule, southern Indigenous people and peasants are more vulnerable than those in the Global North to the dangerous effects of toxic pesticide use. Peasants’ health becomes viewed as what the economists would define an ‘externality’ of the production process, rather than as a human rights violation.