Feeding the few Read online

PART I: THE NEW INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORDER: WHO WOULD BENEFIT?

  Along with energy and the arms race, food is certainly one of the crucial political problems of the remainder of the twentieth century. Assuming that we do not manage to blow up the planet in the next twenty-five years or so, and that growing awareness of the scarcity of non-renewable resources leads to decisive action on alternate and safe sources of energy, food may indeed be the issue that shapes our economic and political future. Who grows food—and how much; who eats it—and at what cost—are questions that will determine social and political relationships not only inside the boundaries of individual nations but also between countries at the international level. When, for example, Egypt increases the price of basic foodstuffs, riots immediately break out, imperiling the government which retaliates with military force. Other governments with chronic food shortages risk imminent collapse in the absence of outside aid. And with the aid come directives from the donors as to what measures the recipients must take to put their political houses in order. Meanwhile, even pretenses of "development" founder in countries where large percentages of the population are in no position to grow enough or to buy enough food to meet their fundamental physiological needs. Food dependency conditions other kinds of dependency, and so long as a nation has failed to solve its own food problem, there is little chance that it can practice any truly independent policies, whether domestic or foreign.

  Ever since OPEC's arrival in the foreground of the international scene, a new mood of militancy has taken hold in the underdeveloped countries (UDCs) and calls for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) have become more vigorous. Nineteen seventy-six was an especially important year, marked by the Third Ministerial Meeting of the Third World in Manila, the fourth United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) meeting in Nairobi, and the Conference baptised "North-South Dialogue" (CIEC) in Paris.1

  The NIEO, as seen from the Southern hemisphere, is about economic justice on a world scale, to be achieved through more favorable, stable and guaranteed prices for the UDCs' major exports; together with equally important measures such as a larger share of the world's industrial capacity, debt relief, increased aid, indexation of the prices of primary commodities to those of industrial goods and greater access to Northern industrial markets. The NIEO has been fully defined by the UN General Assembly's sixth and seventh Special Sessions; while the basic Third World demands have been elaborated by UNCTAD over the years and stated most concisely in the Manila Declaration and Program of Action (February 1976), drafted by the representatives of the UDC's "Group of 77" which now includes over a hundred Third World States.

  Whatever the total package of measures that should ideally make up the NIEO, the only serious negotiations to date have concerned an Integrated Commodities Program, meaning producer-consumer agreements to hold stocks of the principal commodities and to keep their prices within predetermined limits; as well as a $6 billion Common Fund to finance the stockpiles. Whereas UNCTAD has recommended that eighteen primary products make up the Integrated Commodities Program; in fact, only ten have actually come under discussion. They are referred to as the "core commodities" and eight of them are agricultural products or foodstuffs. The list of ten is: coffee, tea, cocoa, sugar, cotton, jute, rubber, hard fibres, copper and tin.

  The industrialized nations unfortunately tend to become excited about commodities only when prices are high. When prices stabilize or fall, they revert to their customary foot-dragging behavior at negotiating conferences and this has prevented any serious progress from taking place. In this regard, Germany and Japan are as tough customers for the Third World as the US. The latest round of negotiations (April 1978) ended in failure. There are, however, signs that some concessions may be made to Third World claims in a relatively short term future.