Re: The Political Economy of Famine

Re Jeffrey Beatty, Gunder Frank et al - comments on global 
agricultural markets etc

The main issues we need to consider are:
- food security
- sustainable development
- equity
- economic efficiency

The obvious point is that if subsidies in Europe and North America 
mean that they can dominate international markets, the subsidies are 
too high.  Possibly subsidies can be justified to the extent that 
production is equal to national food consumption.

A general maxim could be for both developed and developing countries:

Food exports = food imports

This provides for a level of food security.  Where countries are net 
importers of food they should be assisted with ODF etc to increase 
national food production.

The above maxim would contribute to sustainable development by 
reducing exports and imports as countries become more self-reliant, 
thus reducing fuel and other resource consumption, pollution etc.  

It would also contribute to sustainable agriculture by undermining 
the oligopolisitc trends of agribusiness and GM seeds.  This 
argument relies on the assumption that GM technology is unnecessary 
to provide adequate food production for a world population of up to 
14 billion (current peak projections are ~10-11 billion), which appears 
a reasonable assumption at this stage.

Reducing subsidies in developed countries such that there is a balance 
of trade in food products will contribute to greater global equity.

Farmers in developed countries are the most productive in the world 
even though they are subsidised !  Reducing subsidies will not reduce 
economic efficiency.  Likewise, ODF directed at aiding other countries 
to become more productive and self-reliant need also not reduce economic 
efficiency, and is likely to enhance it.  Competitive international 
markets, 
though somewhat reduced and restructured, would remain, as well as 
national markets to guarantee competition and economic efficiency.

It is probably reasonable to expect some level of subsidies in some areas 
of agricultural production in developed countries to reamin in order to 
protect rural cultures and traditions.

Geoff Holland
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Institute for Global Futures Research (IGFR).
P.O. Box 263E, Earlville, QLD 4870, Australia.
E-mail: <igfr@igfr.org>.
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At 03:37 AM 04/18/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>It has long been establishd that North and South ag producers and
>consumer DO comp[ete in the SAME world market, which is one reason why
(snip)