Understanding the Global Famine
How Corporate Agriculture Has Undermined Food Security and Stability
Nov 18, 2008
To understand the current global famine, we must look outside typical perspectives of famine as simply resulting from an increase of demand or the inability of some Third World nations to meet the necessary sustenance requirements of their population. Famine at the end of the 20th century and start of the 21st can’t be examined in a social vacuum, just as famines under European imperialism can’t be truly analyzed unless the cause of colonial “mismanagement” is presumed.
The Irish “potato famine” is the best example of commercialized agriculture primarily serving Western consumers while an impoverished population collapses under looming mass starvation. The British myth surrounding the potato famine is that absolute Irish dependence on their staple food crop resulted in the famine once the crop failed.
As Irish farmers were stripped from their land, absentee landlords increased their holdings and furthermore primarily focused on cash crop exports for profits. The blighted potato crop would not have been so drastic had not the Anglo-Irish landowners continued to export vast quantities of grain that would have easily sufficed to feed the starving poor of Ireland.
Food as a Marketable Commodity
Looking at increased food prices misses the larger picture when it comes to famine-causes. Furthermore these prices are not a result of overpopulation and increasing demand, but speculation and market manipulation of commodity prices. Neoliberalism directly contributes to the lack of regulatory measures that could cap these artificial price increases.
Since corporate agriculture acknowledges food as a marketable commodity first rather than an actual human need, widespread need considered outside the realm of “market demand” is usually not recognized. Debt plays an important role in eliminating any sort of food security that could encroach on multinational corporate interests. International creditors force Third World nations to adopt “marketable conditions” considered “favorable” for foreign investors.
Free-Market Medicine and Destroying Local Markets
The structured package for indebted nations includes a forced reduction on tariffs that protect domestic farmers and subsidies for local producers. At the same time, Western nations maintain high tariffs and dump heavily subsidized agricultural goods onto these open markets. This undercuts the local producers, destroys their markets, and reduces production.
The Third World is expected to follow the “painful free-market medicine” as Western corporations enjoy heavy government intervention to undercut these fragile economies. The food prices not only increase as local production decreases, the prices climb further as farmers are induced to purchase expensive fertilizers and pesticides from the same multinational corporate bodies.
Third World domestic consumption becomes an afterthought to boosting revenue from exports. But this boost of income is only temporary as other impoverished nations begin to export their commodities to Western markets. The Western purchasing monopoly results in a competition between these impoverished nations, decreasing the export price. The indebted nations have no choice but to increase their exports if they want to pay off their debts with foreign currency.
Furthermore, the reduction of government social spending and general consumption is implemented in order to free up revenue for debt payments. Since most consumption in these impoverished nations is for food and other basic needs, the emergency grain reserves are more important than ever as market consumption becomes minimal.
Undermining Food Security
Since foreign exchange is necessary for debt payments, Third World nations are forced to export their emergency grain stores in order to obtain the hard greenback currency to pay the international creditors. These emergency grain reserves are necessary in case of a failed crop or increased prices unaffordable to the general population. Thus even during a famine, a nation may still produce far over their usual sustenance levels.
This severely undermines national food security and increases the vulnerability of the population to price fluctuations on commodities. As a result of these structural measures enforced by international creditor institutions, the sharp rise in food prices has recently threatened the existence of most of the world’s population.
