Food Crisis Forces New Look at Farming

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

Food Crisis Forces New Look at Farming
Poor Nations, and Their Donors, Now Rethink Emphasis on Free Trade
By JOEL MILLMAN and ROGER THUROW
June 10, 2008; Page A1

(snip)

For decades, poor nations were discouraged from investing too much in agriculture, which was seen as a problem rather than a solution to fighting poverty. Many free-market economists came to believe that the reason billions of people are poor is because they are shackled to subsistence farming. The economists' solution: find something else for them in manufacturing, tourism or services so that they can make money to buy food instead of growing it. Poor countries were discouraged from growing much of their own staples, such as rice and wheat, that are usually grown more cheaply in rich countries. Instead, they were told to focus on export crops that might fetch a higher price.

Now, with grain stocks depleted, China and India gobbling food as never before and food prices soaring, many poor countries are turning their back on the old ideas and installing government programs designed to support local farmers. These include cash subsidies to poor consumers, increased efforts to improve local seed varieties, and government-sponsored handouts of fertilizer and seeds. The food crisis has also contributed to a major rethink among the advice givers. Institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are once again treating investment in poor farmers as a promising development strategy. Last week in Rome, World Bank President Robert Zoellick told an emergency United Nations summit on the food crisis that boosting developing country agriculture productivity and reducing hunger were top priorities for the bank.


(snip)

For many nations, food security has become a matter of national security. Last month, Costa Rica published an ambitious National Food Plan designed to aid subsistence farmers. It calls for ramping up rice, corn and bean harvests to make Costa Rica nearly self-sufficient in staples by 2010. In May, Mexican President Felipe Calderón announced sweeping reforms to aid small farmers, starting with a decision to abolish import taxes on nitrogen fertilizer and chemicals needed to manufacture fertilizers. He also pledged emergency funds to bring modern irrigation to 53,000 additional acres of farmland, about three times the area Mexico previously had budgeted for this year.

(snip)

Since the early 1980s, the World Bank and IMF preached that higher yields from rich countries' farmers would keep food cheap, eliminating the need for poor countries to spend their meager dollars on boosting agricultural productivity. This held true for years. Most poor countries could usually import staples more cheaply than grow their own, and could focus resources elsewhere. That advice failed to take into account the possibility that food grown by wealthy farmers might not stay cheap forever. Even though agricultural productivity is still climbing, rising demand for food in Asia, greater use of grains for cattle, and the diversion of crops for biofuels have all helped increase prices quickly. Now that countries want to revive their agriculture sectors, it's not going to be easy, given the neglect of the past few decades.

Consider what has happened in Africa. In the 1980s, governments were prodded by the World Bank to get spending under control. Many set about whacking agriculture programs. Irrigation projects dried up. Schools that trained scientists and agronomists fell into disrepair. At an agriculture school in Mozambique, students who are supposed to study mechanized farming rely on broken-down tractors and combines that sit like museum pieces on the school's lawn. In Ghana, some agents for the government's agricultural extension service, who are supposed to spread the latest scientific advice to farmers, often must hitch rides or walk to make their rounds. As governments in Africa got out of the business of seed, fertilizer and grain marketing, an unprepared private sector failed to fill the gap. In Ethiopia, for instance, the government liberalized grain markets in 1990, lifting restrictions on private trade after 15 years of virtual state monopoly. But private entrepreneurs, with too little access to financing, couldn't provide enough fertilizer and seed to farmers. Nor did they have the means to store and move vast volumes of grain.

(snip)

Only recently has the World Bank acknowledged the damage caused by its advice. In a report released in October, the Bank's Independent Evaluation Group cited the decline in agriculture spending and a scattershot approach to funding, concluding that the Washington institution had neglected African farmers. It noted the Bank devoted just 9% of its total lending in sub-Saharan Africa from 1991 to 2006 to agriculture, even though the vast majority of the poor depended on agriculture for their livelihoods.

(snip)


URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121305872754859449.html (subscription)


(

[Rex]

1. Well the World Bank is owned by neocons.

And the fact that evil shits control money for poor people, scary and sad.

[Peace Patriot]

2. NOW they tell us! O-o-o-oh, Christ Almighty We Made a Mistake! Gee, we're sorry!

Take our loans AGAIN, and THIS time we'll do it right, all you poor starving people, heh-heh.

Fuck the World Bank! Fuck them! Fuck them! Fuck them! And fuck them again! And the Wall Street Journal with them!

Anyway, that's what South America has said--Fuck you!

The South American left has virtually evicted the World Bank/IMF from South America, with Chavez projects such as the Bank of the South, and with regional trade groups and a continent-wide foundation for a South American "Common Market" (ultimately to include Central America), finalized two weeks ago. The goals of these new leftist leaders--who have been swept into power all over the continent--are social justice and regional self-determination. And the first thing they did--the key to it all--was to start using their oil profits to help each other out of onerous, ruinous World Bank/IMF debt--the horrid weapon that was used against them to destroy social programs, and send the profit from that looting to the richest people on earth, and to force open their economies to the slave labor and exploitation of "free trade." They largely succeeded in getting out from under World Bank/IMF debt, and the rest is history.

The "first world" loan sharks want back in. That's what this is about. And it's one of the reasons that I think our Corporate Rulers are going to let Obama win. He's just full of U.S. "Manifest Destiny" rhetoric, but will put a nicer face on it, for a while--wants to flood the region with new consulates and "Peace Corps volunteers," and more "war on drugs" militarization (support for fascist elements, to get things back under control--several countries have evicted the murderous, corrupt U.S. "war on drugs" as well the World Bank/IMF--namely, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia--with more rebellions to come--Paraguay, for instance, which just elected a leftist president who wants the U.S. military out of his country.) Obama will try to use the carrot of food aid to get the "war on drugs" ("war on the poor") back on track. But, guess what? The South Americans are onto that, too. Brazil just proposed a South American common defense, without the U.S. No need to wonder why the World Bank/IMF is all nervous and apologetic these days--and why they need a brown face with a nice personality to front for them. They have not only lost over 90% of their profit machine in South America, they are losing their enforcement wing, the U.S. military.

I'm not saying Obama WILL do this (front for U.S./"first world" loan sharks, war profiteers and corporate oil and biofuel raids). But almost everything he has said points to it--and the situation itself (how much damage the Bushites have done to U.S. corporate prospects, and our standing in the world) surely indicates the need for a period of niceness, while the loan sharks and the war profiteers re-group.

South America is the leading rebellious "third world" region--but there are others, of course, in Asia and Africa. South America's great strength is that it has simultaneously worked hard on its democratic institutions (such as transparent vote counting, clean elections and increased citizen participation), and has elected one hell of great batch of leftist leaders--in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and, further north, Nicaragua and Guatemala (and next, El Salvador, and soon after that, Peru and possibly Mexico). So, when these leaders rebel against U.S. domination, and head out on their own new, self-determined path, they have millions and millions of newly empowered people behind them. Voters. Citizens. Organized social movements. Unions. All elements of society (except, of course, for the fascist elites) working together to elect and support these new leaders.

Obama said, in his speech to the Miami mafia, that "demagogues like Hugo Chavez" have "filled the vacuum of leadership" left gaping by the Bushites. That is such a delusional mis-reading of the situation that it causes me to seriously question who Obama is--who he really represents--and, at the very least, to be alarmed at his foreign policy advisers and at the disinformation they are feeding him. The truth is simply this: DEMOCRACY has succeeded in South America, at long last--and THAT is NOT in the interest of U.S. corporations and war profiteers. I repeat, DEMOCRACY is NOT in the interest of those who are now directly ruling our country (with their "trade secret" voting machines, among other things). And so, whose side is Barack Obama on--the democrats or the anti-democrats? I guess we're going to find out.

[SoCalDem]

3. Crazy , isn't it?

FIRST....Feed yourselves
SECOND....House yourselves
THIRD....Educate your children

Especially in poor countries, those three things lead to everything else that's good for their society.

Cramming country people into crowded,polluted cities does NOT make their lives better..