Starving the Poor
By Noam Chomsky
The International News

Wednesday 16 May 2007

The chaos that derives from the so-called international order can
be painful if you are on the receiving end of the power that determines
that order's structure. Even tortillas come into play in the ungrand
scheme of things. Recently, in many regions of Mexico, tortilla prices
jumped by more than 50 per cent.

In January, in Mexico City, tens of thousands of workers and
farmers rallied in the Zocalo, the city's central square, to protest
the skyrocketing cost of tortillas.

In response, the government of President Felipe Calderon cut a deal
with Mexican producers and retailers to limit the price of tortillas
and corn flour, very likely a temporary expedient.

In part the price-hike threat to the food staple for Mexican
workers and the poor is what we might call the ethanol effect -- a
consequence of the US stampede to corn-based ethanol as an energy
substitute for oil, whose major wellsprings, of course, are in regions
that even more grievously defy international order.

In the United States, too, the ethanol effect has raised food
prices over a broad range, including other crops, livestock and poultry.

The connection between instability in the Middle East and the cost
of feeding a family in the Americas isn't direct, of course. But as
with all international trade, power tilts the balance. A leading goal
of US foreign policy has long been to create a global order in which US
corporations have free access to markets, resources and investment
opportunities. The objective is commonly called "free trade," a posture
that collapses quickly on examination.

It's not unlike what Britain, a predecessor in world domination,
imagined during the latter part of the 19th century, when it embraced
free trade, after 150 years of state intervention and violence had
helped the nation achieve far greater industrial power than any rival.

The United States has followed much the same pattern. Generally,
great powers are willing to enter into some limited degree of free
trade when they're convinced that the economic interests under their
protection are going to do well. That has been, and remains, a primary
feature of the international order.

The ethanol boom fits the pattern. As discussed by agricultural
economists C Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer in the current issue of
Foreign Affairs, "the biofuel industry has long been dominated not by
market forces but by politics and the interests of a few large
companies," in large part Archer Daniels Midland, the major ethanol
producer. Ethanol production is feasible thanks to substantial state
subsidies and very high tariffs to exclude much cheaper and more
efficient sugar-based Brazilian ethanol. In March, during President
Bush's trip to Latin America, the one heralded achievement was a deal
with Brazil on joint production of ethanol. But Bush, while spouting
free-trade rhetoric for others in the conventional manner, emphasized
forcefully that the high tariff to protect US producers would remain,
of course along with the many forms of government subsidy for the
industry.

Despite the huge, taxpayer-supported agricultural subsidies, the
prices of corn and tortillas have been climbing rapidly. One factor
is that industrial users of imported US corn increasingly purchase
cheaper Mexican varieties used for tortillas, raising prices.

The 1994 US-sponsored NAFTA agreement may also play a significant
role, one that is likely to increase. An unlevel-playing-field impact
of NAFTA was to flood Mexico with highly subsidised agribusiness
exports, driving Mexican producers off the land.

Mexican economist Carlos Salas reviews data showing that after a
steady rise until 1993, agricultural employment began to decline when
NAFTA came into force, primarily among corn producers, a direct
consequence of NAFTA, he and other economists conclude. One-sixth of
the Mexican agricultural work force has been displaced in the NAFTA
years, a process that is continuing, depressing wages in other sectors
of the economy and impelling emigration to the US.

It is, presumably, more than coincidental that President Clinton
militarised the Mexican border, previously quite open, in 1994, along
with implementation of NAFTA.

The "free trade‚" regime drives Mexico from self-sufficiency in food
towards dependency on US exports. And as the price of corn goes up in
the United States, stimulated by corporate power and state
intervention, one can anticipate that the price of staples may continue
its sharp rise in Mexico.

Increasingly, bio fuels are likely to "starve the poor‚" around the
world, according to Runge and Senauer, as staples are converted to
ethanol production for the privileged--cassava in sub-Saharan Africa,
to take one ominous example. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, tropical
forests are cleared and burned for oil palms destined for bio fuel, and
there are threatening environmental effects from input-rich production
of corn-based ethanol in the United States as well.

The high price of tortillas and other, crueler vagaries of the
international order illustrate the interconnectedness of events, from
the Middle East to the Middle West, and the urgency of establishing
trade based on true democratic agreements among people, and not
interests whose principal hunger is for profit for corporate interests
protected and subsidised by the state they largely dominate, whatever
the human cost.

What's new? Where do present supplies of crude oil originate? Do you think there are no poor in those countries? Have another look! (e.g. http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/20/business/angola.php , not to name that other war-torn ME country).

So what's the solution, stay home, return to the stone-age?

Also, take a look at China and India - we (the west) could be the poor one day soon.

In another board, Technologist was supporting cryopreservation. Now, what would I prefer, to starve to death or be pushed off the edge of the cliffs at Dover as the population swells?

At least biofuels are CO2 neutral(ish). And ... there is good research indicating that the same crops could be used for both fuel and food. Anyway:

http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_food.html
http://www.bio2007.org/Attendees/Tue02.html
http://www.york.ac.uk/org/cnap/aboutcnap.htm

The problem ignored mostly is that deforestation in tropical areas
contribute much more to CO2 in the atmosphere than fossel fuels does.
I'd much rather us not use biofuels if we could regrow the forests.
With carbon offsetting it could make it financially viable to claim
forest back from farm use.

Actually, of course, trees can be viewed as biofuel. But how could growing trees provide fuel for (e.g.) transport and energy in the short term? OK, wood-burning power generation for (e.g.) electric cars - need to solve big problems of emissions. OK the lignocellulosics potentially could be converted but we are still miles away from that. OK maybe a return to wood-fueled steam engines (not so far fetched), but again, pretty smokey. And reclaiming land for forest means less land for food, housing, industry etc. I appreciate there are arguments indicating that there is not a problem with quantities of food, but issues of location and distribution. However, until we have a politically stable world (ever?) food distribution will be a problem. And the world's population size will not stabilize in the near future, so both urban development and food supplies will have to be considered. I support GM methods for both more efficient food production, biofuel production and hopefully (as I indicated in an earlier post) combined production in the same source plants. But this is all enhanced by more/better recycling, energy efficiency, multi-source energy and so on. The key phrase is "Sustainable Development". This should also take into account, importantly, protection of biodiversity and not just for aesthetical conservation reasons, but also for the ecosystem services some of which we haven't even imagined yet. So, yes, to some extent, forests (all types) should be better managed. You know, there are some areas of the world (Europe and the Far East) were reforestation has occurred, although this does not outweigh the amount of deforestation.

As you mentioned CO2 emissions I must flag, once again, the issue of the relative importance of various greenhouse gasses. There is a great deal of misleading information on global warming. The most important greenhouse gas is water vapour and this has implications for the interpretation of the contribution of anthropogenic CO2 levels.