Ch.4. Trade Agreements, Imperialism, Working Poor, Cold War

World Foodless Day

Raj — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:54:26 -0600

Next week sees World Food Day. Some of us will be trying to draw some indication about food policy out of the McCain and Obama camps by holding a big event in New York City. But in Asia, the Pesticide Action Network is telling it how it is, for nearly a billion people. Below, the press release for World Foodless Day. ... read more »

Poverty caused by food prices in El Salvador

Raj — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:50:06 -0600

EL SALVADOR: Increase in Poverty Driven by Soaring Food Prices
By Raúl Gutiérrez

SAN SALVADOR, Oct 6 (IPS) - In the village of Talchiga in northeastern El Salvador, 20 families live in wooden shacks with earth floors, have no piped water, electricity or sewer services, and suffer from high levels of malnutrition.

The village is in the remote mountainous department (province) of Morazán, on the border with Honduras and 200 km from San Salvador, one of the areas that was most affected by the 1980-1992 civil war.

But while the armed conflict is long over, conditions have not improved in this village located 900 metres above sea level, where the dire poverty contrasts with the fresh mountain air and the natural beauty of the small rivers and streams that run over the rough terrain around the community. ... read more »

The IMF's Consumption Function

Raj — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:31:33 -0600

The title of this post is an economics and public health pun in very poor taste. But the story behind it is fairly unsavoury too.

Two academics, David Stuckler at Cambridge University and Sanjay Basu at Yale recently looked into the effects of the IMF's policy impacts on public service reform in the former Soviet Union, using tuberculosis as an indicator. Their full results are here, but here's the bottom line:

After correcting for confounding variables, as well as potential detection, selection, and ecological biases, we observed that participating in an IMF program was associated with increased tuberculosis incidence, prevalence, and mortality rates by 13.9%, 13.2%, and 16.6%, respectively. ... read more »

World Trade Organization Round Up

Raj — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:53:36 -0600

There are a number of theories going around about the demise of the WTO talks. Mine are here but a couple of others worth noting are by Martin Khor, here and Devinder Sharma. I particularly like Devinder's take - which shifts the blame entirely toward the US reluctance to give up cotton subsidies. It's something we got to discuss a little when Devinder helped to launch Stuffed and Starved in Delhi last week (thanks Devinder!). I'm not sure I agree that the elections in India has nothing at all to do with the outcome, but we're both agreed that soon enough, the talks will be back from the dead. Indeed, if the Third World Network is to be believed, the corpse of the talks is already being revivified by Lula and Lamy.

Meanwhile, just to bust a hole in the Third World vs First World narrative that some have tried to spin around these talks, here's a press release from the US National Family Farm Coalition, applauding their demise... ... read more »

Starvation Politics: From Ancient Egypt to the Present

Raj — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:19:53 -0600

The splendid George Caffentzis has kindly allowed me to share this piece, written for Turbulence in the UK.

Starvation Politics: From Ancient Egypt to the Present

When Oliver Becomes Fagin

Raj — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:41:50 -0600

Here's something on the WTO now up at Comment is Free.

When the World Trade Organisation talks collapsed in Seattle in 1999, there were parties in the streets, and a wailing and renting of clothes in the corridors of power. The failure of the Doha round of WTO talks in Geneva this week has drawn a more muted reaction from both its boosters and critics. In Seattle, it was possible to tell a story in which the voices of people on the streets mattered, and in which the disenfranchised had scored a victory against an unaccountable front company for international capital. This week's failure had less to do with global justice, and much more to do with the growing pains of international capitalism. ... read more »

Monsanto Raises Price of Seed by $100/bag during food crisis

Raj — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:14:01 -0600

The headline says it all, and the article gives the details.

What's curious for me, though, is the organisation that sponsored the research. On its 'about' page, the Organization for Competitive Markets advertises itself thus:

We are "pro- business" because we believe in free markets and the law of supply and demand to allocate resources properly. We are "conservative" because we view American values such as honesty and morality should be demanded of our businesses and politicians. We are "liberal" because we believe government has a regulatory role to create and enforce the rules of doing business, thereby avoiding crony capitalism. We are "populist" because we have determined our nation is made economically and culturally wealthy by preserving the ability of independent families to produce our food without fear of the economically dominant firms in agribusiness.

In other words, they think that capitalism would be great if it weren't for the capitalists. It's something that my libertarian readers might like to chew over and, if they're libertarian, agree with. Oo, and that reminds me, I know I owe Luddhunter a fuller response, and I'll try to get to that in a couple of weeks time (I'm married to a lapsed libertarian, and have a rehab system that I'm happy to share). Until then, though, I get to post my favourite libertarian joke, as told to me by the excellent Martin O'Neill:
Q: What's the difference between anarchism and libertarianism?
A: Under anarchism, poor people get to shoot back. ... read more »

Trade Lessons from Latin America

Raj — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:41:07 -0600

When advocates of free trade policies pick a developing country poster-child, they often go for Brazil and Argentina. Which is why a new report, below, is especially useful in undermining the myths around agricultural trade liberalisation. The most important observation:

South America's soybean industries are winners from global trade liberalization, but few of the benefits go to rural communities. Based on high-input, industrialized monoculture farming, employment and wages have both declined despite dramatic increases in production.

Now read on... ... read more »

End of an Era for Free Trade?

Raj — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:25:43 -0600

Couple of articles at odds with one another on the prognosis for free trade, given the current political climate, and the food crisis. The Washington Post has editorialised about why "an obscure Frenchman" - Pascal Lamy, current head of the World Trade Organization - "might be able to save the world. The only question is when he should do it."

Away from the free-trade leg-humping comes a more sober article from Bloomberg on the fading enthusiasm for free trade. ... read more »

The Opposite of Science

Raj — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:36:04 -0600

The Financial Times is doing what it usually does - providing concise and honest insight into how the ~~elite~~ bosses think, this time around genetically modified crops. The recent op-ed by John Gapper follows a logic that I've been bumping into increasingly.

We need to increase food production to feed the world.
Yield-increasing science has worked before.
The nay-sayers want to reduce output through organic agriculture.
Monsanto, on the other hand, is investing in science.
Therefore we ought to embrace GM technology to fight the food crisis.

Almost everything about this argument is wrong. ... read more »