Indians Discuss Doha, World Trade, and Indian Agriculture
Rajagopal Sukumar, who often comments on this blog, just posted on the recent failure of the Doha round on his own blog. It has prompted an informed and discussion. I hope to contribute something to the discussion in the next couple of days. In the meantime, if you, like me, find it awfully hard to find what your equivalents in other countries think about the globalization of agriculture and food trade (as opposed to politicians, journalists etc, informative as they may be), don’t miss this exchange.
Thanks for the link Rachel. It will be interesting to know what you and your readers think.
Hi Rajagopal,
Interesting discussion. I’m a bit hesitant to get into the middle of the mix since Indian development isn’t my specialty.
African continental development with a regional focus in Northwest Africa is my area of focus for the “developing world” (PR, research and writing papers, economic partnerships, business development, agriculture, education, technology transfer, digital networks, etc..)
A few points off the top of my head-
1. Organic does not automatically equal sustainable. Organic farming is about inputs, a verifiable set of ingredients go into the mix. Sustainable is about outcomes, a much more nebulous concept.
2. Farming and agriculture are businesses. There’s no meta-farming method or business chain that will address all the issues concerning food security.
3. History tells us that industrialized farming feeds more people than small farms ever did. For example, it was vital for South Korea’s development away from a two-tiered socio-economic stratification with former peasant/indentured servants now forming a vibrant middle class and a democratic government.
4. Big foreign agriculture going into “developing countries” also includes technology transfers. It’s the nature of corporations to act in self-interest (bottom line $$$). It’s not beneath corporations to dump excess capacities as part of a deal. Don’t be surprised to read a news story about big machines that were purchased and something goes wrong. There’s a basic flaw, no one at the local level was trained to repair the most basic things, etc..
5. Producing more food doesn’t solve distribution problems. Poverty and hunger/food insecurity go hand in hand.
6. I just realized that I’m cluttering Rachel’s blog. I started off not wanting to comment much and then got carried away… OOPS!
Thanks for the informed comment Ji Young. I agree with all of your points. The only point where i think you may have misunderstood the central point i made – poverty of farmers. I agree poverty can’t simply be removed by producing more food. But the poverty i am referring to is one due to farmers going bankrupt because they are unable to compete against foreign-produced foreign-subsidized food. SSM has been envisaged in this context to protect local farmers under some exceptional circumstances. I don’t favor protection in general, but this case of 200 million farmers most of whom are subsistence farmers is something we need to think carefully about.
Hi Rajagopal,
Subsistence farmers in Africa are also adversely effected by subsidized foreign produce even when it comes in the form of food aid and not just market goods. It’s one of many problems they have.
The cost of seeds (behind the smoke and mirrors fear mongering of GMO seeds, this is more of a corporatist $$$ issue IMO), landownership issues, cash flow, land degradation caused by poor land management (often due to lack of resources rather than carelessness), and so on make life extremely difficult and precarious for subsistence farmers and those who rely on them for food crops.
Implementation of small technologies, micro-loans (not usury), education in land and resource management, a seed saving and distribution system (that’s NOT the GMO equivalent of Nestle baby formula, i.e., get ’em hooked, give them no choice but to buy) and many more things can help subsistence farmers.
But at the end of the day if 200 million farmers have little or no say about what happens in the market where’s the democracy? How will they survive?
No worry about cluttering. I love it when discussions take off. More on this soon.
Thanks Ji Young. You are right, several things can be done and must be done to help the subsistence farmers. I am also wondering why cooperatives have not taken off in the farming sector. India has an extremely successful cooperative model in dairy production.
You are right, where’s the democracy? Which is why i think the trade negotiators are right in making sure there is a SSM with a reasonable trigger.
SCAD India (Social Change and Development) works with the scheduled castes in Tamil Nadu, India. Many are subsistence farmers.
Let’s not kid ourselves into believing that multi-national industrial agriculture will benefit them unless they have $$$ to buy (I don’t mean to imply that anyone here believes that). Or that a Costco will open up anytime soon in these marginal lands. (I’m familiar with various “creating jobs” arguments, but here we’re talking about those at the bottom of the trickle down theory)
I know that the nature and structure of aid is changing in Africa. I don’t know much about India. I know a little bit about SCAD’s work in Tamil Nadu. It’s more than the kind of humanitarian aid that applies bandages. They also work in educational and economic development.
Back to subsistence farmers in Tamil Nadu; land degradation and drought are big problems.
There are homestead gardening projects that utilize soil conditioners, drought tolerant plants and water saving technologies.
Small technologies such as pitcher irrigation (which is actually a very old technique) can help tremendously with water conservation, water stocking soil conditioners can also reduce salinity in soil and reduce fertilizer run off, etc..
Homestead gardening can seem hopelessly small. These programs aren’t meant to solve all the problems in the world. However, they do provide some supplemental nutrition, they encourage farmers to not abandon degraded lands, they can help mitigate the effects of climate change for the poorest of the poor, etc…
Big aid agricultural programs (the humanitarian aid version of industrial corporate farming) can seem like a better answer. But they can be very difficult to maintain. They can collapse after foreign big aid workers leave because the locals don’t have the skills or resources to sustain them.
The solutions aren’t either this or that, either small or big, humanitarian agricultural aid or big business agriculture, either extreme globalization or extreme localization, etc..
Just to say thanks for these comments. I’ve been reading Paarlberg’s Starved for Science which I found eloquent and persuasive on the African situation. Have either of you read it. May be it’s conclusions are something to blog about.