Foreign Affairs

Food Security: All Investment Is Not Created Equal

Susan Ozawa — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 08:34:58 -0700

The G8 countries committed $20 billion in aid to address global hunger and promote more productive farming in the world's poorest countries this July in L’Aquila, Italy. Major commitments came from the United States and Japan. The challenge remains of making sure the investments are structured properly and the environment that caused the hunger crisis is reformed to ensure food security for all.

Tokyo has already begun targeting its investment in ways that might exacerbate food security problems in developing countries and demonstrates the need to maintain pressure on donor countries and the international financial institutions (IFIs) to adjust their assumptions and protocol so that the crisis is addressed in the short, medium and long-term.

Tokyo believes that expanding food production, through public-private partnership with its local trading houses and other companies, will help mitigate future risks. Among Japan’s five mammoth trading houses, Mitsui & Co, Itochu and Marubeni are expanding into food commodities such as soyabean, palm oil, wheat and corn. . . . Beyond their homeland, where demand for grains and oilseeds is relatively stable, industry observers say the Japanese trading houses seek to tap the voracious appetite for soyabean and grains in China and elsewhere in Asia, particularly in Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines, or in Middle-East countries such as Saudi Arabia.

What is being pitched as a new agricultural revolution under these forms of investment will look very much like the colonial model of exploitation with the exception that the output will meet commodity demand in high growth countries versus demand in the colonizing nation. Regardless, the same distribution of benefits will apply without proper mechanisms to coordinate international production, as well as mechanisms to ensure investment is directed at local producers, and to ensure prices are low enough so that developing countries will have food security and access to their own goods. By simply funding industrial agricultural conglomerates, the company, in typical neocolonial fashion, will utilize the resources of developing countries, extract the raw materials and export them to sell in foreign markets at a profit.

The current framework discussed by the G8 nations and embodied in the new IFI push for investment assumes increased investment in agricultural production will generate greater supply, which will naturally decrease prices and address the problem. Although increased production will tend reduce prices generally, this does not mean that this strategy will address the global food crisis for several reasons. This line of thinking presumes the large run-up in commodity prices resulted from a uniform increase in demand against less responsive supply. Leaving aside the ways in which speculative players affect commodity prices, there is a structural supply problem because of the increasing cost of energy.

However, the issue of increasing costs is associated with a technological mode of capital intensive industrial production and transportation, which is not a food security problem as much as an investment problem in certain kinds of agricultural production and a global food supply chain coordination problem. On the demand side, there aren’t fast growing populations of hungry people in the least developed nations driving up the prices of food; there are changes in the diet preferences of high growth nations representing a dynamic middle class who are driving demand for more energy and resource intensive food sources.

Although demand exceeds supply, the demand for staple crops is driven by demand for livestock feed and for biofuel crops in addition to basic staple consumption by households. Thus, the problems of food security for the poor are being caused by structural distribution problems driving up prices on basic staples and leaving local populations, even in arable, land abundant nations, without access to their own agricultural products.

International price fluctuations wreaking havoc on production in developing countries has been particularly damaging over the past 30 years of neoliberal development policy, however, due to the privatization of their development and agricultural banks and the liberalization of their agricultural and commodity markets. The export and foreign exchange oriented development strategy promoting growth before food security presumes the distribution of gains from increased growth will benefit the population equally. However, the impact of privatization and globalization on the rural poor historically doesn’t demonstrate this happens naturally. Income inequality has grown across the developing world during this period of neoliberal polices alongside the rapid transformation small-scale agricultural producers into struggling slum dwelling communities. See more here. A solution to the global food crisis must then also address these neoliberal policy failures to address the root causes of the problem.

The original document drafted by the agricultural ministers to the G8 and the subsequent joint statement with G8 ministers recognized the significance of investment in smallholder farmers and women farmers but still maintained open and efficient trade markets were part of the solution. While this statement might have sought to address the large distortionary impact of US agricultural subsidies on the developing world’s agricultural markets, it should have stated explicitly that wealthy nations, particularly land and resource abundant wealthy nations, should work to scale-back their subsidies to large-scale successful industrial producers and the ministers should have gone further by endorsing developing countries’ use of protections to develop their agricultural sectors through whatever means necessary including revitalizing publicly subsidized agricultural banks.

A well coordinated strategy would use the WTO, not to police nations to reduce barriers to trade uniformly, but to coordinate international agricultural policy to ensure food security for all, particularly ensuring short-term efforts to address food security by dumping excess commodities on low income country markets do not crowd out domestic production of agricultural crops in the medium to long-term. Likewise, along the lines of the Kyoto Agreement, nations that are large consumers of staple-intensive livestock, should commit to lowering their consumption to less resource intensive foods. Treating wealthy nations that are agriculturally constrained differently from resource abundant nations that are poor when allocating IFI investment is also particularly important. The International Financial Corporation’s latest commitment to boost agricultural production by 30% would seem to be targeting production in developing and high risk nations, however, the companies benefiting from the investments will be donor country corporations and budding domestic partners, not traditional farmers. Funding small local producers is the right thing to do socially and politically but also makes economic sense. Walden Bello states:

[S]mall farmers have confounded those who have preached their demise by showing that labour-intensive small farms can be far more productive than big farms. To cite just one well known study, a World Bank report on agriculture in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador showed that small farms were three to 14 times more productive per acre than the large farms.

Kanayo F. Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) explains the value in investing in smallholder farmers over larger-scale producers in the developing world even at less astounding levels of productivity:

Eighty percent of the farmers in Africa are smallholder farmers. The majority of them are women. They produce 80 percent of the food that is consumed by Africans. Obviously, if these are the people that produce the food that we eat we must invest in smallholder agriculture. . . . We have proof that investment in smallholder agriculture is two to four times more profitable than investment in any other sector or sub-sector. It's very simple mathematics.

The investment generated to address the food crisis must be tied to measures to ensure the domestic population gains from the increased production and use of their land, energy and resources. Thus, investment should be targeted toward local producers for local consumption in low and middle income countries and these countries should be allowed to maintain tariffs on their commodities if they choose to export to wealthy and other middle-income countries. Likewise, price controls should be permitted for countries with hunger problems.

If the G-8 and IFIs were sincere about addressing the food crisis, they would be permitting more flexibility of developing countries' policy responses to address this crisis using all tools at their disposal; channeling investment on favorable terms to local producers; working with the WTO on global food production and distribution coordination; encouraging their populations eat further down the food chain; and reigning in speculation in their commodity and futures markets. Now's the time to ensure the US doesn't follow in Japan's wake.

Most Military Officers Reject Bush's Strategy on Iraq

Isaiah J. Poole — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:30:48 -0800

A sizable segment of military officers agree that five years of wrong priorities and wrong decisions in the war in Iraq has left America less safe. In a Foreign Policy magazine survey of more than 3,400 military officers, ranked major and above, 60 percent said that the U.S. military is weaker today than it was five years ago. More than half blame the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than three-quarters said that the Bush administration set "unreasonable" goals for the war. While the survey did not asked whether they approved going into Iraq in the first place, they were asked what the military needed in the future to win the war on terror. Seventy-three percent said the U.S. must improve its intelligence capacity.

"Active-duty officers and those who have retired within the past year give a much higher priority to nonmilitary tools, including more robust diplomacy, developing a force of deployable civilian experts, and increasing foreign-aid programs," the magazine said.

Anti-War Lessons From New Hampshire

OurFuture.org Staff — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 08:34:20 -0800

Campaign Promises and Iraq

OurFuture.org Staff — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 09:09:47 -0800

Progressive Good Tidings

OurFuture.org Staff — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 11:46:12 -0800

Mark Engler, an analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus, is the author of How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy. He can be reached via the web site Democracy Uprising . Sean Nortz provided research assistance.

Understanding what is wrong in our society; speaking out against injustice; denouncing abuses by the powerful. All of these are crucial tasks. Many of us devote a large part of the year to them, and they are certainly necessary if we are to create a better world.

At the same time, it is highly doubtful that these acts are sufficient. Creating positive social change takes more. It takes the knowledge that people can organize to win justice and an awareness that, even in inhospitable times, some things can go right. The holiday season provides an important moment to reflect on a few of those advances that offered hope in 2007—many of which came about just in the past few weeks.

In early December the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the NSA, released a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. The document may have single-handedly undermined the White House's push to start yet another war in the Middle East. The report declared that Iran dropped its clandestine nuclear weapons program in 2003 and has not renewed it since. The NIE has greatly strengthened the hand of those in Washington—including many high-ranking military officials—who believe that a preemptive attack on Iran would be both unnecessary and disastrous. The NIE also solidified public opinion against military escalation and spawned a wide range of commentary denouncing the most recent round of Bush-Cheney war-mongering. The Washington Post, for one, editorialized that the report "strengthens the view, which we have previously endorsed, that this administration should not have to resort to military action to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities."

Of course, efforts to stop a new war must continue. The NIE notwithstanding, U.S. relations with Iran remain tense, and the neoconservatives have recently been trying to regroup and articulate reasons why an attack would still be warranted. But their opponents can proceed from a much better position than before. So distraught are the far-right militarists that some have resorted to conspiracy theory: Neocon godfather and Giuliani advisor Norman Podhoretz recently voiced "dark suspicions" that the intelligence community was "leaking information calculated to undermine" President Bush.

Beyond Iran, 2007 witnessed a number of other critical shifts in policy debate. Whereas just a few years ago many public officials denied that global warming was even taking place, climate change is now almost universally regarded as one of humanity's gravest challenges. The Nobel Committee trained a spotlight on this idea by awarding the Peace Prize to Al Gore and the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Upon formally receiving the award on December 10, Gore passionately decried global warming as a "threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential." Just a week later, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali, he went further by explicitly charging that "my own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress" on climate policy—an unusually blunt acknowledgement which the conference attendees applauded energetically.

In their most serious drive in at least a decade to address this crisis and end U.S. dependency on foreign oil, Democrats have pushed a promising energy bill in Congress. The bill, which passed through the House on December 6, included what The New York Times calls "the first meaningful increase in fuel efficiency standards in three decades," mandating that auto makers move from a standard of 25 miles per gallon to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. Due to a shameful filibuster by Senate Republicans and a threatened veto from the White House, two provisions from the original bill were removed from later versions: one would have required that at least 15 percent of the country's electricity come from renewable alternative energy sources by 2020, while the other would have paid for this initiative by eliminating tax subsidies for oil companies. Despite these changes, the legislation marks a significant defeat for the big oil corporations and for the auto lobby. The rising public demand for action on clean energy suggests that this may be the first of many.

In another overdue but nevertheless important move, Congress passed a bill in May mandating a graduated increase in the federal minimum wage, raising it from $5.15 to $7.25—the first increase in 10 years. There were also some victories for working people on the grassroots level this year. In April, building on their 2005 victory against Taco Bell, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers won a campaign calling for McDonalds to demand that tomato growers it buys from increase wages for their farm workers. This increase will almost double wages for the workers, raising their pay from 40 cents to 72 cents per bucket of tomatoes picked. The agreement will also create a new code of conduct for labor relations and safeguard workers' rights in future disputes. With their series of wins the Coalition of Immokalee Workers—made up of immigrant laborers who are traditionally among the most exploited in America—have provided some brilliant examples of the power of collective action.

There has also been a notable shift this year in the debate over the death penalty. On the national level, the movement to restrict capital punishment has been reinforced by actions at the Supreme Court. The Court has implemented a de facto moratorium since late September, ordering the halt of five scheduled executions while it deliberates on a case that will determine whether lethal injection constitutes a form of cruel and unusual punishment. Subsequently, on December 13, the New Jersey State legislature passed a bill outlawing capital punishment in the state, which Governor Jon Corzine signed into law the following week. New Jersey thus became the first state to abolish the death penalty since Iowa and West Virginia did so in 1965. David Fathi of Human Rights Watch argued that the move is "a very significant event for a state that has had the death penalty on its books for decades. It's one more indication that the death penalty is on its way out in the United States."

Advances in the global South also bode well. The rebellion in Latin America against the economics of corporate globalization continued in 2007, with governments in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela leading the march toward more progressive policies. In what ended up being a very positive development, Venezuela's president Hugo Chávez lost a public referendum on December 3 in a narrow 51-to-49 percent vote. Among other things, the constitutional amendments at issue would have abolished presidential term limits and centralized state power. Chávez graciously admitted defeat. Contrary to the hysterical voices in the mainstream press asserting that Venezuela had become a dictatorship, the referendum showed that the country's democracy is robust and its public debate vigorous. From a progressive perspective, the referendum's failure will encourage Chávez to broaden the leadership of his "Bolivarian revolution" and potentially pave the way for a new generation of activists to succeed him.

For Latin America as a whole, one of the most significant gains of the year was the creation of the Bank of the South. On December 6 representatives from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela met in Buenos Aires to inaugurate the new bank, which will compete directly with Washington-controlled institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In the past, these institutions were leaders in enforcing a fundamentalist brand of "free trade" neoliberalism—an economic model that has had terrible results in the region. Not only will the Bank of the South represent a critical step in the battle for regional self-determination, it will be free to support approaches to development that can effectively combat inequality and address the needs of the poor.

For those who have grown disheartened living under the reign of George W. Bush, such victories abroad are genuine markers of hope. We can cheer them just as heartily as we celebrate the signs of progress within the United States—and resolve to work for even greater gains in the new year.

Human Rights Daze

OurFuture.org Staff — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 09:02:29 -0800

Norman Solomon is a columnist and author. His latest book is "Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State."

The chances are slim that you saw much news coverage of Human Rights Day when it blew past the media radar -- as usual -- on Dec. 10.

Human rights may be touted as a treasured principle in the United States, but the assessed value in medialand is apt to fluctuate widely on the basis of double standards and narrow definitions. Every political system, no matter how repressive or democratic, is able to amp up public outrage over real or imagined violations of human rights. News media can easily fixate on stories of faraway injustice and cruelty. But the lofty stances end up as posturing to the extent that a single standard is not applied.

When U.S.-allied governments torture political prisoners, the likelihood of U.S. media scrutiny is much lower than the probability of media righteousness against governments reviled by official Washington.

But what are "human rights" anyway? In the USA, we mostly think of them as freedom to speak, assemble, worship and express opinions. Of course those are crucial rights. Yet they hardly span the broad scope that's spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

That document -- adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on Dec. 10, 1948 -- affirms "human rights" in the ways that U.S. media outlets commonly illuminate the meaning of the term. But the Declaration of Human Rights also defines the rights of all human beings to include "freedom from fear and want" -- and not only as generalities.

For instance, the first clause of Article 23 states: "Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment."

And: "Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work"; the right "to form and to join trade unions"; and, overall, "an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection."

Perhaps the farthest afield from the customary U.S. media parameters is Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which insists: "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."

Measured with such yardsticks for human rights, the United States falls far short of many countries. If American news media did a better job of reporting on human rights in all their dimensions, we'd be less self-satisfied as a nation -- and more outraged about the widespread violations of human rights that persist in our midst every day.

The human consequences of those violations are incalculable, but they're largely removed from the center stage of dramas that fill news pages and newscasts. This downplaying of economic human rights is not mere happenstance. The violations are systemic -- within a system that thrives on extreme inequities, creating enormous profits for corporations and enriching some individuals along the way. Within the boundaries of dominant news media and mainline political discourse, the "issue" of human rights is in a narrow box. It severely limits the humanity of our social order.

Bitter Divisions Exposed at Climate Talks

OurFuture.org Staff — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 08:16:08 -0800

European Union may boycott climate talks proposed by the Bush administration, over disagreements on global policy.

Oil-rich Nations Tapping More of Their Own Supply

OurFuture.org Staff — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 09:24:08 -0800

Oil-producing nations are growing so fast that they need to keep more of their crude at home, and may need to import oil within a decade.

Iran Shananigans

Rick Perlstein — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 12:24:31 -0800

Let me pull a few threads together.

As everyone knows, last week a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran came out establishing that the consensus of the intelligence community was that the regime there had suspended its nuclear program in 2003.

And, as everyone also knows, this rather puts a damper on previous White House rhetoric in October warning of "World War III" unless this (nonexistence) program is put to a stop. (Interestingly enough, if you enter any random phrase from that October 17 press conference—say, "Congressional Award Ceremony for the Dalai Lama"—into the search box at whitehouse.gov, you arrive right where you're supposed to, but if you type "World War III" in the same box you get what amounts to an error messge.) It puts a damper, too, on the brushfire of hysteria the administration's Iran rhetoric has set off on the grassroots and Evangelical right, which Jon Stokes wrote about on The Big Con .

So that's strand number one. Here's strand number two: the revealingly embarrassing admission by former White House communications director Dan Bartlett that right-wing web sites are "a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them."

That helps throw strand number three, an email I received from the right-wing ~~IV tube~~ web site NewsMax, breaking this news:

Expert: U.S. Attack on Iran Would Have Terrible Consequences

Here's the NewsMax article. It's dated November 28, and says what sane people have been saying about the "threat" for months: "Iran has an underfunded defense budget, ill-equipped ground and air forces, and a limited number of unreliable Shihab III missiles that, while technically able to reach Israel, do not pose much of a threat," and that "[a] U.S. air attack using cruise missiles and manned aircraft aimed at knocking out Iran's large, entrenched nuclear program would succeed only in exacerbating conflict in the Middle East and put U.S. troops in Iraq at risk."

Why this sudden outbreak of sanity at this key bastion of the online right? Would I be dismissed as kooky if I suggested this bit of strategic sour grapes ("well, we never really thought attacking Iran was such a good idea in the first place") might have something to do with the White House's political ass-covering for the upcoming NIE?

Path to Victory

OurFuture.org Staff — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 07:55:37 -0800