aldosalato - 10-16-2003 at 10:01 PM
I consider the following as Baja related
because in some measure also fishing and agricolture exports from Baja are affected.
Subsidies Keep Poor Nations Poor
by Robert Reich
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. - World Food Day, which is Thursday, seems an appropriate occasion to consider both where our food comes from and also who's hungry
in the world. The two topics are connected. Poor nations need to export food to the US and other rich nations, if they're to have half a chance of
alleviating poverty there. But rich nations are making it difficult for them to do so.
Poor nations don't have much industry, but they do have farms. The corn, wheat, cotton, sugar, rice, and dairy products they produce are just about
the only things many of them have to trade for what they need from the rest of the world.
Poor nations can produce a lot of these staples cheaper than rich nations, so you might think there's a natural fit. Think again, because rich nations
have farmers, too. Not many of them, mind you, but they're politically powerful. Fewer than 3 percent of Americans work directly on farms, but
agribusiness is big business in the US. It's the same in Europe and Japan.
Rich countries spend hundreds of billions a year subsidizing their farmers, making it almost impossible for poor nations to compete. Japan gives rice
farmers seven times what it costs them to produce rice, which allows farmers to sell the rice for very little, shutting out cheap rice produced in
Thailand and other developing nations.
By blocking access to the market, rich nations end up depriving poor nations of an opportunity to improve their living standards.
One of the biggest culprits is the US. Last year the Bush administration announced it would give American farmers an extra $175 billion during the
next decade. It said it was acting to defend farmers against artificially cheap produce from Europe.
This is crazy, folks. These subsidies cost Americans twice over. They pay more for the food they eat, and they pay more taxes to make these farm
payments. Meanwhile, poor nations get clobbered. How are they going to earn the money they need to develop their economies if they can't sell their
farm produce?
The US talks a good game about foreign aid. Baloney. The yearly subsidy it gives just to American cotton farmers is three times its total aid to
Africa. From 2001 to 2002, the US granted its cotton farmers $3 billion in subsidies - more than the entire economic output of Burkina Faso, just one
poor West African nation.
Poor nations don't need foreign aid. They need a fair shot at markets in rich nations. While the most recent round of World Trade Organization talks
collapsed, rest assured, farmers in rich countries won't give up without a fight, but poor nations have almost nothing to fight with. We in rich
nations should be ashamed.
On World Food Day we should try to remind ourselves that poor nations need to export their food. By preventing them from doing so, our farm subsidies
are keeping poor nations poor.
? Robert Reich was Secretary of Labor under the Clinton administration and is the Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at
Brandeis University.
It's just one facet of the many looks of corporate welfare
Stephanie Jackter - 10-16-2003 at 10:23 PM
Although I realize the gap is huge between the poor of this country and the poor of many others, the subsidies that support our farmers and many other
corportations that are supposed to be economically self sufficient, come straight out of the pockets of the American taxpayer.
Instead of funding the needs of those who are truly struggling, we have the working poor in this country walking around with less medical coverage
than a Mexican has with Seguro Social while that very person is subsidizing massive corporate pork with his taxes, making the rich richer........
But trust that the U.S. will wind up hanging by it's own petard anyway. Not because of any clout it loses to developing nations, but because we have
a 5 to 1 trade deficit with China and more companies are taking off to do business with their cheap labor markets every day.
The hew and cry for protectionism will only increase as the pendulum swings and jobs keep leaving this country wholesale. - Stephanie
Packoderm - 10-16-2003 at 10:54 PM
I think I can see a couple of logical problems with this report.
While I can believe that farming employs only about 3% of our population, that doesn?t really tell that whole story as far as the extent of farming in
wealthy nations. Farming is highly mechanized in the wealthy nations, while farming in less wealthy nations is more labor intensive. Wheat and corn
farming for instance, is very highly mechanized, yet the U.S. would surly suffer, and other countries as well, if we were to forsake wheat and corn
production for the sake of eliminating subsidies.
If wealthy nations stopped propping up their farming industries, and instead bought food products solely from the countries that can produce it the
cheapest, what is going to happen the population in the cheap farming countries; will they be able to afford to buy the produce when the wealthier
countries are setting the prices? Who would you rather sell an orange to: A native for 2 cents or an American for 40 or more cents? This agro/export
scenario has been repeated, to horrifying effect, in many countries in recent, and not so recent, history.
What would happen to the countryside in the wealthier nations if farming was not propped up?
How much would a Mexican farm worker make and what would his working conditions be like if U.S. agricultural jobs dried up? (Maybe this would be a
good thing in the case of Mexico, and then they would need to make some real changes for once. But I doubt changes would come; the Mexican bosses
would fight their fight to the very last man, if even for only out of spite, before real economic reform is to occur.)
Would we use the money that is otherwise spent on farming subsidies to cause harm (war) around the globe, or on yet more prisons? Would we use the
money to better support secondary education? I think we all know the answer to that one. That famine is manufactured.
It is not unfair to withhold aid from idiot countries, or countries led by idiot despots, yet business forces transcend all else in the case of
agribusiness. Sometimes, aid is our only leverage.
One thing that many people don?t think about when it comes to subsidies (or welfare for that matter) is that the money does not disappear. It is
sprinkled back into the general population in many forms. In the case of the farmer, he needs to buy seed, equipment, labor, and many other things
that support our rural populations.
In closing, the whole picture is so big that nobody can put their finger on any aspect of it without something else coming into play. Sure, there are
problems, but there could possibly be many bigger, unforeseen problems if we were to tamper with it on a gross scale.
By the way, the pear I ate today was from Chile; the banana was from somewhere else, and the package of Green Giant green beans was from our favorite
place on earth: Baja.