Agribusiness

What is Agribusiness?

The name "agribusiness" comes from the words "agriculture" + "business" (with the focus on business!)

Agribusiness is:

Large-scale industrial style farming, often carried out by multinational corporations; together with
the industries that are related to large-scale farming,
for example: the corporations that produce pesticides and fertilizers: the agro-chemicals industry.

True or false?

• Agribusiness is BIG business

• We need pesticides to fight hunger

• Bigger is better!

• If you ban pesticides, you've solved the problem

 

One view of agribusiness:

"Agribusiness is ... an approach to food production which sees the soil only as a source of profit and the earth as a resource to plunder ... It sees agriculture only as a business and farmers as business people rather than guardians of the land."

Nikki van der Gaag, editor of the NI issue on Pesticides, May 2000

AGRICULTURE: growing crops for food or fiber

PLUNDER to steal

PESTICIDE a chemical that kills pests. [PESTS are insects or animals that destroy crops or food supplies - the suffix '-cide' means 'to kill.