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Effective social planning can only result from the decentralization of authority that allows region to work out appropriate solutions. Effective planning is not simply establishing quotas, targets and tasks; it is the organization of a sensitive and flexible structure of communication between government bodies and communities.

Such planning substitutes conscious intervention and cooperation for the Free Market. Social planning does not preclude the market altogether, the difference is that in a society whose conscious goal is to meet the needs of all the people, social planning can "utilize the market instead of being governed by it" observes United Nations development economist J.B.W. Kuitenbrouwer.

There is a third lesson that would be overlooked if we simply "write off" all non capitalist development. That lesson is this: Agriculture can no longer be viewed as a mine from which to extract wealth to serve other sectors. It seems that this lesson has not been learned in the United States. In the U;S the deterioration of the livelihoods and culture of rural people as of rural resources goes hand in hand with massive agricultural production for export.

By contrast the Chinese grasped that a healthy rural economy is the basis of any society. The Chinese planners, for example, from the 1950's onward, favored agriculture. They reduced the costs of farmer's supplies. Farmer's taxes were kept small. And they did not go up as production went up. Thus farm producers increasingly benefitted from their labor. They could use the profits from their production to increase consumption and reinvest in tools, education, and medical care.

The final and most important lesson is that the lessons mentioned above represent a process and not simply goals that are achieved once and for all. And within the process are profound tensions, the tensions between the individual's wishes and the community needs;the tension between democratic, participatory decision-making and the need for leadership based on specialized skills, knowledge and experience; the tension between a focus on agriculture and the need to build up industry as necessary to increase agricultural productivity.

The experts of The Institute believe that those are necessary tensions in creating a social, economic, and political designed to maximize both individual fulfillement and community progress. The trouble with a freedom versus food trade off is that by oversimplifying and distorting it frightens people, preventing them from being able to learn from the valuable experience of their counterparts in other countries.

Mèsi anpil pou opotinité-a Zanmi konpatriot.

A suivre.

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