[Peace-discuss] "Food Riots Erupt Worldwide" and analysis

[Stuart Levy]

Some commentary passed along by Ken Salo to the CUCPJ Discuss list...


On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 1:42 PM, Mandi Smallhorne <mandiwrite at icon.co.za> wrote:
 > Food Riots Erupt Worldwide
 >
 >  By Anuradha Mittal, AlterNet. Posted April 25, 2008.
 >
 > Food riots are erupting all over the world.
<snip>
 > As a result, food riots erupted in Egypt, Guinea, Haiti, Indonesia,
 > Mauritania, Mexico, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen.
<snip>
 >  Analysts have pointed to some obvious causes, such as increased
 >  demand from China and India, whose economies are booming.
 > Rising fuel and fertilizer costs, increased use of bio-fuels and
 > climate change have all played a part.
<snip>
 > Over the last few decades, the United States, the World Bank
 > and the International Monetary Fund have used their leverage
 > to impose devastating policies on developing countries. By
 > requiring countries to open up their agriculture market to giant
 > multinational companies, by insisting that countries dismantle
 > their marketing boards and by persuading them to specialize
 > in exportable cash crops such as coffee, cocoa, cotton and
 > even flowers, they have driven the poorest countries into
 > a downward spiral.
 >
 >  In the last thirty years, developing countries that used to be
 > self-sufficient in food have turned into large food importers.
<snip>
 > First, it is essential to have safety nets and public distribution
 > systems put in place. Donor countries should provide more aid
 > immediately to support government efforts in poor countries
 > and respond to appeals from U.N. agencies, which are
 > desperately seeking $500 million by May 1.
 >
 > Second, we should help affected countries develop their
 > agricultural sectors to feed more of their own people and
 > decrease their dependence on food imports. We should
 > promote production and consumption of local crops raised
 > by small, sustainable farms instead of growing cash crops
 > for western markets. And we should support a country's
 > effort to manage stocks and pricing so as to limit the
 > volatility of food prices.

The diagnosis is correct, but the prescription won't work.

The North won't give up its energy-intensive ways of life, and the
South will continue to emulate them, so climate change cannot be
stopped -- ii will only accelerate.

Agriculture, once abandoned, cannot be quickly restored: the
destruction of agriculture that once made food self-sufficiency
possible and its replacement by imports of agribusiness products over
the last several decades has already changed work and residential
patterns of the South dramatically, dispossessing, displacing, and
urbanizing people, creating enormous slums, and pushing people into
informal sectors.

The supply-side squeeze will continue:

(1) Underinvestment:

(a) Exploration and production: capital and technology are in the
jealous hands of multinationals of the North that have difficulty
finding oil reserves that yield high profits at low costs; the
governments of the South that own the best oil reserves are faced with
rising domestic energy consumption that they have long subsidized, and
many of them also lack capital and technology necessary to increase
outputs (the Southern governments, especially populist ones, need oil
profits to subsidize the populace's immediate consumption overall, not
just energy consumption, build public infrastructure, and so on, which
subtracts from their ability to invest back into oil; and
multinationals of the North deny them access to the best technology);

(b) Refining: deregulation and privatization in many countries and
environmentalism in some countries have led to inadequate refining
capacity.

(2) War: conflicts -- the empire and/or its clients versus often
Islamist guerrillas -- will continue to disrupt production and supply,
from Iraq to Nigeria.

(3) Sanctions: the empire covets oil producer countries that are not
run by its clients and targets them for regime change -- from Iran to
Burma to Sudan -- leading to underinvestment.

(4) Labor conflicts: higher prices and tighter capacities strengthens
workers' hands.

Unless something like a great depression curtails world oil demand
drastically, it is likely that oil prices will stay high and volatile
in the near future, pushing up food prices.

Both structural (urbanization and lumpenization) and conjunctural
(higher oil and food prices) factors in many countries will resemble
the combination that led to Iran's Islamic Revolution.  I bet a lot of
governments will be toppled.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
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