Rich Countries Are Betting on 3rd World Famine

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In the late 1970s, Cissokho joined together with all the farmers of the villages in the area around Bamba Thialène to found the country’s first farmers’ union. Since then, seed cooperatives have sprung up, first in the nearby region, then throughout Senegal, and finally in neighboring countries. The Réseau des Organisations Paysannes et des Producteurs d’Afrique de l’Ouest (ROPPA; Network of Farmers’ and Agricultural Producers’ Organizations of West Africa) was soon founded. ROPPA is today the most powerful farmers’ organization not only in West Africa but on the entire continent. Cissokho is its director.

In 2008, the farmers’ unions and cooperatives in countries in South, East, and Central Africa asked Cissokho to organize the Plateforme Panafricaine des Producteurs d’Afrique (Pan-African Producers’ Platform), a continent-wide union of farmers (raising both crops and livestock) and fishers that is today African producers’ principal representative organization to the European Union in Brussels, African national governments, and the main intergovernmental organizations concerned with agriculture: the World Bank, the IMF, IFAD, and UNCTAD.

From time to time, I run into Cissokho in New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport. He also often comes to Geneva. He works in Geneva with Jean Feyder, who since 2005 has been the courageous Permanent Representative of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourgto the United Nations, international organizations, and the World Trade Organization in Geneva. In 2007, Feyder was named president of the Committee on Trade and Development of the WTO, which attempts to defend the interests of the fifty poorest countries against the industrialized countries that control 81 percent of world trade. Since 2009, Feyder has also served as president of UNCTAD’s executive council. In both these positions, he has made a certain modest farmer from Bamba Thialène his principal adviser. In the face of the most powerful forces in world agriculture, Cissokho assumed this role with determination, effectiveness—and humor. The battle against the inertia of African governments and intergovernmental organizations, and against the mercenary oligarchies of global finance, is a Sisyphean struggle. Between 1980 and 2004, the proportion of government development aid devoted to investment in agriculture, both multilateral and bilateral, fell from 18 to 4 percent.

But, to paraphrase British historian Eric Hobsbawm, nothing sharpens the mind like defeat. Every time I meet him, Cissokho’s mind is even sharper than before. Fighting his way through interminable meetings in Geneva, Brussels, and New York with agrifood industry giants and the Western governments that serve their interests, Cissokho is nonetheless hardly an optimist. I have seen him recently exhausted, pensive, sad, worried. The title of the single book he has published sums up his current state of mind very well: God Is Not a Farmer.

Published with permission from The New Press.