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Of Globalization, Food production and Export in Developing countries.

Panoramix and Amor have suggested that I contribute in finding the answers which are related to Hunger, Food Production, Globalization, Export and Competition in a globalized world. It is with enthusiasm that I have researched the relevant answers and with satisfaction that I am presenting what I have found as information until my last research on the subject.

Pano, Amor, Export agriculture is not the enemy according to the experts of the Institute of Food and Development Policy. Export-oriented agriculture in countries where many go hungry is largely a reflection of the problem itself. An export focus in countries where many go hungry reflects the impoverishment of much of the local population and the interests of the elite. Even if all agricultural exports stopped, there still would be hungry people those who are excluded from genuine control over their country?s food-producing resources.

An export focus is nonetheless an active force. The very success of export agriculture can further undermine the position of most of the rural population. When commodity prices go up, tenants and self provisioning framers are threatened with loss of their land as the big landholders expand their holdings in order to profit from the higher commodity prices. Moreover, a jump in the world price of a major export commodity can trigger overall inflation which results in less real income for the plantation worker or peasant producer. For instance, when in 1974 the world price for sugar increased several fold, the real wage of a cane cutter in the Dominican Republic actually fell to less then it was ten years earlier; a nominal increase in a cane cutter?s wage did not compensate for the inflation set off by the sugar boom.

Moreover governments giving priority to agricultural exports are governments that relentlessly suppress movements for land redistribution and other democratic social reforms. Minimum wage laws for agricultural laborers are not enacted, for example, because they might make the country export ?uncompetitive? . Such governments exempt land producing for export from land reform and thereby further undercut local food production as growers shift to export crops to avoid having to sell their land. Thus, in the Philippines, in 1974-1975, 232, 000 more acres were planted in sugar( and therefore exempted from land reform) than just three years earlier.

Finally export-oriented agricultural operations invariably import capital intensive technologies, such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides, to maximize yields as well as to meet the foreign market?s ?beauty standards? and processing specifications. Basing an agricultural system on imported technologies helps ensure that whatever is produced will be exported to pay the import bill a vicious circle of dependency.

In sum, where productive assets are controlled by a few, export agriculture further exacerbates the deteriorating position of the majority.

Export agriculture:

·-makes it possible for the local economic elite to be unconcerned about the poverty at home that greatly limits the buying power of most of the local people. Through producing for export the elite can profit anyway by finding buyers in the United States and other high paying markets.

-provides the incentive to local and foreign elites to tighten their control over productive resources from which export profits are made and to resist firmly any attempts at redistribution of control over productive assets.

-necessitates miserable working conditions and wages.

Developing countries can compete in export markets only by exploiting labor, especially women and children. Owners and export-oriented governments will stop at nothing to crush workers efforts to organize themselves.

-throws the local population into competition with foreign consumers for the products of their own land, thus raising local prices and reducing the real income of the majority.

Contrasting two Caribbean countries- Cuba and the Dominican Republic-reveals, however, that export agriculture itself is not the real enemy. In both countries alarge proportion of agricultural land produces sugar and other exports. Both countries rely on agricultural exports for foreign exchange and both import significant amounts of grain. Yet today in the Dominican Republic, at least 75 per cent of the people are undernourished while in Cuba there is virtually no malnutrition.

First, the foreign exchange earned from sugar imports is controlled very differently in the two countries. In Cuba all the foreign exchange belongs to the public and is put to work implementing the country?s development plans. Thus it is used to import productive goods that generate meaningful jobs such as building schools and homes and manufacturing basic home appliances and machinery.

In the Dominican republic a large part of the foreign exchange from sugar exports is treated as profit of private corporations such as Gulf and Western. Much of it is returned to the United States or wasted on projects such as G&W?s tourist enclave that do not relate to the long- term development of the country. Such projects even represent an ongoing foreign exchange drain, for example, importing processed foods from that tourists ?need?.

While the experts have concluded that export agriculture itself is not the enemy, they have come to see clearly that , minimally, basic food needs should be met locally. Basic food self reliance- and by this they mean adequate local supplies to prevent famine if food imports abruptly jumped in price or were cut off- is the sine qua non of a people?s security. Moreover no country can bargain successfully in international trade so long as it is desperate to sell its products in order to import food to stave off famine.

A suivre.

My dear friends I spent two years travelling in Brasil and half a year in Venezuela studying the socio-political phenomena in those two countries in order to learn about the problems of my own country Haiti . Today I can guarantee you that I understand this very specific phenomenon here presented to you . I have seen and verified the unwanted practices of a certain group in the Americas as well as the examples, the mechanisms and the legislation which could serve best my country. I have no personal solutions nor could I lend any personal expertise to solve our problems but I am confident that our national Conscience, our collective Competence, our individual Experiences, our Honesty, our Self discipline, our Sincerity our Compassion for the less able and our Patriotism will get Haiti where she deserves to be for the collective Emancipation of her sons and daughters and for National prosperity to enter in the home of each and every Haitian citizen without exclusion. Abraham di sè-tassé.

This research has been conducted through the channels of The Institute for Food and Development Policy. U.S.A.

I have allowed myself to unlearn and to see the realities by going around the world. I am now convinced. Pano, Amor, I hope that my contribution has served your purposes and I thank both of you for the opportunity. I am here to learn, to unlearn and to share therefore I promise to share with the forum some more related segments on the subject very soon.

Thank you again.

Collective Emancipation Now!

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