In no other time during humanity’s recorded history is the savagery of market relations so paradoxically defined as in this age of plenty. We are able to transform deserts into oases, carve a path through hitherto impenetrable mountain ranges, successfully land an explorative mission to Mars. Human beings are manufactured in laboratories, the parched and arid lands of just a decade ago are being transformed into a crop yielding paradise, irrigation methods have replaced archaic methods of production and farming machinery has been revolutionised. More than any other time in our existence, humanity has the ability and the means to produce more than enough food for every breathing individual on this planet … and yet, the world faces a food crisis as never before. What’s going on?
Far from this crisis being a mere reflection of financial events of the last few years, it is very much, to a large degree, the makings of the long term policies of imperialism. What we see today is the result of the major powers blocking any attempts for a planned improvement of infrastructure and farming techniques, resulting in a restriction in many parts of the world of farm production. A significant aspect of this is the limitation placed on farm production in the so-called First World to prevent sudden falls in world prices. Under this policy farmers are encouraged not to plant crops on large acres of arable land and apply for a subsidy for farm land kept out of cultivation. A payment structure to farmers was adopted on a country-by-country basis after the 1992 reform of Europe’s common agricultural policy.
Production collapsed all over the world. European government officials and their American counterparts would have us believe that the introduction of this subsidy structure was aimed at remedying soil erosion and effects of overplanting of ecologically vulnerable land. Truth is, that land use was put in line with the new policy objectives which were “acreage reduction” and the maintenance of “target prices and price-support loans”.
The crisis is particularly harsh for developing countries. Infrastructure and agriculture are devastated by exports from wealthy countries and the IMF programmes. These programmes from the IMF dictate state policy in exchange for state loans to offset the state’s debt. The entire orientation of the IMF steered regulated subsistence farming in developing countries toward becoming export destinations for crops of wealthy nations. And so more export revenue are being siphoned off to service debts to so-called First World banks. Local farmers in developing countries are now in an impossible position to compete with highly subsidised exports. It is because of these measures that many countries in Africa are unable to sustain production of crops for their local populations. The conditions in Latin American and Asian countries are not dissimilar.
Many believe that population growth is partly to be blamed for the food crisis facing the world today. I do not share this view. Increased food demand caused by population growth does not create, in general, a problem. Population growth in this decade, roughly 1,2% per year, has been less than growth in the 1960′s, which averaged 2% per year. Crop yield is significantly lower as a result of lowering of agricultural investment, but more so as a result of lower research investment in the sector. With no planning, there cannot be a chartered change in production, thus the calamitous slow growth in food supply. The social implications have come home a while ago. In Brazil people have been “producing” dirt cakes (setting up a stall near muddy areas, baking dirt cakes and selling it to others), for the last decade and a half. Thousands of people both the UK and millions in America are malnourished and live under the poverty line. Dairy farmers across Europe, particularly France and Germany, have resorted to direct action, throwing out millions of litres of milk, due to the severe living conditions they and their families live under.
There is an irredeemable irrationality in the current food crisis. The scale of the challenges posed to food supply internationally and the inflationary crisis unleashed upon the world’s poor despite plentiful food available, marks in no uncertain terms the madness of capitalism’s profit priorities above the needs of people. Humanity’s elementary need for affordable food is now callously used by the world’s financial elite as a source of profits through speculation, smuggling or organising nationally based price cartels. The wildfire strikes and demonstrations across the world in response to the explosion of food prices are an early sign of the intractability of the crisis. Intractable and explosive.
Why blame the Europeans and Americans when Africa has large areas of fertile land totally under utilised or are you saying that we are too useless to grow our own food?
Zim used to export food – what happened to that situation?
Why does Maputo have to import all their eggs and milk from SA? – are there no commercial dairy or poultry farms in Mozambique?
Surely we can feed ourselves without any outside help?
I live in an area that has huge international supermarkets within easy walking distance of vibrant street markets. Every year there are festivals in which local foodstuffs play an essential part. Every year in recent times these large international concerns have flooded the market with these foodstuffs at these key times.
International capital has an evil face. If we look around ourselves in our middle class world we will see it smiling comfortably back at us.
Subsidising local farmers, such as what the rich white West does at the expense of poor black Africa, is NOT the free market in operation.
In a free market there would be NO subsidies.
African producers, enjoying far lower labour costs, would have a clear competitive advantage over the white West.
It’s the LACK of the free-market mechanism which is the problem here. But, flawed and imperfect as it it, one needs to compare it to the utter shambles of both the ideologically-driven socialist alternatives — the Soviet “kholkoz” or “sovkhoz”.
At least the free-market taps into a basic human instinct — the drive to look after ourselves first. All real progress comes from enlightened self-interest.
It’s a good thing. We should have more of it.
Owen, we are well beyond blaming anyone person or state. It is nigh impossible for farmers in Africa to compete against exports of wealthy nations, for the latter are well subsidised. Having underutilised areas of land and the willingness to raise crops are not enough. Zimbabwe, unfortunately, was choked by Bob’s indiscriminate and planless agrarian reform programme. No need to go into this rather straight forward history of the decline and ultimate decimation of food exports.
Kenya was one of Africa’s major food exporters. In 1996 the IMF mandated a reform programme through that infamous National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB). This programme messed up Kenya’s economy and trasformed the country into a net importer of food. The same trail can be seen in Malawi and Somalia, to varying degrees.
Can we go it alone? No. National economies are inextricably linked to the entire globalisation outfit. What we can do is to break the power of these institutions (IMF’s, etc) in our individual countries and reorganise the country’s priorities along the lines of needs. Suppose that’s not quite what you want to hear, is it?
Bravo, Stephen. As clear and and logical exposition as i have ever read.
For once, I can agree with you!
I too stand against the unconscionable outcomes of ‘Global Economic Imperialism’
We probably differ radically as to what should be done about it.
Subsidies and trade tariffs are the creation of nation states; they have statutory force and are funded by taxation. They are not created by corporate interests, although such may ‘lobby’ for their enactment.
They are then presumably carrying the blessing of the democratic electorate, I mean, it’s their money!
The bottom line is this:
If governments start intervening in economic activity, they start creating monopolies.
They start creating groups who benefit from advantages enforced by statute, even when these groups lie within the state machinery itself as in private/public partnerships.
The ownership of these monopolies does not matter, and whether such a monopoly is protected from competition by ‘licensing’, by price fixing or by subsidization, the results are pretty much the same.
These ‘interventions’ are invariably punted as serving the public interest, and on an international scale, addressing global economic problems to the benefit of all.
The results speak for themselves
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The trick is not to redesign them but to get rid of them, once and for all.
Governments should stick to governance and stay out of trying to engineer ‘fair’ business arrangements.
They just aren’t terribly good at it.
A really good piece. I seriously think you should give your colleague Lawrence for him to have a read. You hit the nail right on the head. It is not population growth rather it is the greed of the rich that has resulted in the current food crisis
Owen, Mozambique imports eggs and the rest because they may not forbid it. In fact, industrial production from abroad gets there cheaper than national effort. Either mozambicans learn to be competitive, or change business. And that goes for eggs, chicken, beef, tomatoes, fish, etc. So, it’s a question of learning how to do it better.
MidaFo, I totally subscribe your point of view.
The present food crisis happened more or less like this:
1 – illnesses were making natural selection over population increase;
2 – Medical evolution allowed exponential increase of population;
3a – In Asia (like in Europe/America before) migration from rural areas into seaside industries helped to press urbanisation over fertile plains at rivers’ mouths;
3b – In case of Africa, independence took away the knowledge-based white farmers, leaving (in most cases) africans with their traditional subsistence production;
4 – The clever-ones started playing hard with money, oil and int’l markets speculation. The States do nothing (such as State control over production/market), mainly because they’re also envolved in it;
5 – A bright-minded decided it was a good idea to produce biofuels from highly-productive land;
… and of course, as everybody knows (except George Junior), fossil fuel consumption induces (or at least accelerates) climate changes, which have a direct impact over agriculture.
One of the ways to mitigate this problem is to use sustainable forms of energy, other than coal. But, as in the selfish case of South African State, it finds it very very difficult to allow private entrepeneur to get in the market and produce clean energy (solar, wind, etc.), even knowing that blackout problems would be solved much faster and cheaper (although Eskom would loose market share)…
Nay, having read the responses it is clear that most are affraid of some basic hard work and want to blame others for a lack of food production. We have pleanty of manual labour and land. All we need is less excuses and grand notions of who is wrong.
Some hard work with less mechanisation would make us competitive enough to feed ourselves.
Sheesh?!