After a decade of agricultural neoliberalism in India, one is tempted to say, "I see the broken eggs, but where is the omelet?" Some arguments for food security in India with seven separate policy suggestions.
"The scourges of hunger and poverty are morally unacceptable and have to be defeated. Hunger and chronicmalnutrition diminish human life. The lack of physical or economic access to safe, nutritious and healthy foodat all times leads to negative consequences for peoples and nations."
--- Jacques Diouf,
Director General of the Food and Agricultural Organization,
A Millennium Free from Hunger,
World Food Day, 2000
Globalization
In the Fifteenth Century, the tomato came to India. It soon became a staple for those who could afford tocook a curry. At the same time Punjabi peasants began to grow corn, the bounty of central Mexico, andmakkai-di-roti became the favorite food of the Punjabi-speaking people. The food of India today is intertwinedwith the foods of the rest of the world, including of the Americas. It didn바카라™t take McDonalds to introduceIndia to the rest of the planet: that process has an ancient history.
Indian agriculture has not, therefore, had an insular history. Crops and plants move across the planet withlittle regard for the political borders that mean so much to human beings. The great trade of the early modernperiod spread vast quantities of Indian luxuries (spices) and necessities (cotton) to the world market,although this was not the first time these goods had been to the bazaars of Canton and Constantinople.
Far be it for us to go against this trend and argue against the tangled agricultural history of our planet:India and America will continue to trade and trade they must.
The current process known as "globalization," however, is a mockery of the long history of globalinteractions. Globalization is without question about world trade, but it is not trade for the world. It istrade that benefits global corporations and squelches the liberty and destiny of ordinary people.Globalization is actually corporate globalization, because it does not operate for planetary welfare, neitherin the Indian region of Telengana nor in the US state of Iowa. 1
Subordination by Subsidy
Between 1998 and 2002, over a thousand farmers in the region of Telengana committed suicide. In the UnitedStates, according to the Centers for Disease Control, the highest rates of suicide take place in the stateswith the largest farm populations: the Rocky Mountain states, the Dakotas, Iowa and Florida. Small farmers andfarm hands are killing themselves. Why is this?
Globalization in agriculture works against those who work the soil. Farmers and farm hands do not own thebulk of farm production, and certainly not the major profit-generating part of the agro-business industry.Whether in India or the USA, those who work the soil for those who own it have been vulnerable to the fixedgame of globalization.
In the relationship between nations with regard to agriculture, double standards are the order of the day.The World Trade Organization (WTO) and the main advanced industrial states (the G-8 or Group of Eightcountries, including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom and the United States)pressure the Third World states to reduce government support for farmers and open their agricultural economiesto the rest of the world. The G-8/WTO argue that subsidies and price controls "distort" the market andcontribute to the poverty of places like rural India.
Meanwhile, within the G-8, the governments provide a high level of support for agriculture and they keeptheir economies closed to agricultural products from the Third World.
Barry Coates of the UK-based World Development Movement says of this global regime, "The G-8 haverepeatedly refused to end their abuse of the system through massive agricultural subsidies and barriers toexports of processed goods and textiles. Yet they are pushing developing countries to open up their markets.They are playing fast and loose with the multilateral trading system."
A significant fall in the incomes of the poorer farming population in India can be directly traced to thefarm-subsidy and tariff structures that exist in the G-8 countries, most notably the US. The subsidy regimehas allowed large agro-businesses to dominate the world agricultural industry, and create misery not only forthose who work the soil in India, but also in the USA. Many US small farmers have lost their lands andlivelihood to banks and agro-businesses who flourish on the world market, mainly because of their economies ofscale, their use of industrial science on the fields and the considerable subsidies and tariff support theyreceive from the G-8.
The WTO바카라™s ally in the destruction of older schemes for food security is the International Monetary Fund (IMF).Since 1991, the IMF in India has pushed a structural adjustment policy that demands that the state reduce itssupport in the production of agricultural goods and in its consumption. As the state withdraws from theagricultural arena, agro-businesses enter and decimate the security of ordinary people.
If there are now less well-paid jobs, there is also less food to eat. In the 1960s, a relatively liberalIndian government instituted a food procurement and distribution system known as the Public DistributionSystem (PDS). The PDS system stabilized food prices by the purchase of food grains at a fixed price fromfarmers. That food then entered the homes of farmers and workers through Fixed Price or Ration Shops. Thecrackdown on PDS in the last decade has produced dire results both in rural and urban India. Not only cansmall farmers not rely on fair prices for their products, but workers across the country cannot rely upon fairprice shops for their goods.
Market distortions like the US subsidy regime and the privatization of credit markets, this booklet argues,directly cause the suicides of farmers around the world. In this sense, in the new global agricultural arena,
The Public Distribution System: a history
In 1943, the British engineered a massive famine in eastern India. The British government in Indiaformulated a broad policy to reallocate boats and trains toward the war effort to the neglect of thedistribution of food grains. In addition, the British bought up rice to feed the troops which resulted in arise in food prices; they did not attempt to control the prices or create any provision to get food to thepeople of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. According to Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen, more than three millionpeople died as a result of British policies, even as Bengal바카라™s agricultural growth rate rose in the famineperiod.
The future Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, wrote a letter during the famine to his daughter,Indira Gandhi. "Starvation is after all," he wrote, "a common experience in India." Nonetheless, thesituation is "ghastly, horrible. What a govt.! Hopelessly incompetent & totally incapable of dealingwith the situation. It is sickening to realize that the fates of hundreds of millions of our countrymen are inthe hands of these selfish, cruel, conceited, pompous incompetents & fools." Four years later, Nehru바카라™sparty took charge of the state. The memory of the 1943 famine helped form the food policy of the new nation.
Food shortages in the 1950s and 1960s sharpened the urgency of the problem. The Indian government tookadvantage of the US-inspired Green Revolution to produce a quick technocratic solution across certain selectregions that helped increase the aggregate food availability. Food stocks increased, but not necessarily forthe people바카라™s good. Enormous inequalities within regions and across regions developed, and the environmentalimpact of the highly noxious fertilizers created long-term problems. Nevertheless, the government achieved aminimal self-sufficiency in food grains at the aggregate level by the 1970s.
If the expensive technological inputs provided a short-term boost in agricultural productivity, thelongterm agenda had at its centerpiece land distribution or reform. If those who worked the soil controlledand owned the land they worked, they would have an incentive to add inputs to the farm and they would earnhigher incomes. Income equity and increased production in the long term would directly improve food securityfor all. Since the ruling Congress Party relied on rural elites for its political power, it did not givepriority to land reform on its legislative agenda. Indeed, in many states, the Congress Party scuttled debateon land reform and left land relations intact. Where the Left became politically dominant, in Kerala and WestBengal, land reform led the agenda and these regions now have the highest agricultural growth rate as aresult, among other factors, of land reform.
As the dominant Congress government relied on technocratic solutions to increase production, it had to turnto consumption-oriented strategies to prevent the famine conditions of the 1940s. The Public DistributionSystem (PDS) is a result of the failure of land reforms and of the need by the liberal state to feed itspeople.
The Congress government created the PDS initially to keep prices stable in urban areas, and to cut-down onprivate trade (which it deemed to be exploitative). In the early 1980s, PDS entered rural areas. PDS providedfood staples (rice, wheat, sugar, oil) and fuel (kerosene and coal) at below market prices through a networkof Fair Price or Ration Shops. The Food Corporation of India (FCI) procured food for a Minimum Support Price (MSP)from farmers and traders, stored the food in warehouses, distributed it across the country and then sold it inits shops. The PDS was universal, although some states used it to target specific income groups.
The Critics of PDS
(1) Neoliberalism.
Neoliberal economists and policy makers are the main critics of the PDS. Not only is the PDS expensive forthe state, they point out, but it distorts markets. PDS gives the wrong incentive to farmers by buying food atgovernment-decided prices, and it coddles the consumer who gets addicted to cheap food. The criticism of theworkers who rely on the PDS is similar to the criticism in the US against those who relied upon governmentalsocial welfare to raise their children.
Against this system, neoliberal policy makers argue that gaps between food production and consumptionshould not be filled by price controls and subsides but by purchases on global food markets. Support prices tofarmers must be replaced by direct income transfers and the PDS must be replaced by cash or coupons to thedestitute. The model for this new post-welfare regime came from Europe and the US, both contexts far removedfrom the everyday Indian reality. Since the Indian government knew that such a drastic "reform" wouldcreate a political backlash from the population, it created a Targeted PDS scheme in 1997, where only the mostdestitute people had access to price controls. Targeted PDS is, as we will show below, ineffective andregressive.
Certainly, the PDS is rife with corruption and it is expensive for the state. Furthermore, the PDS did notreach the most destitute and vulnerable populations. However, the PDS did have at least two significantachievements. First, it made available a minimum quantity of food grain at reasonable prices to all parts ofthe country. Second, it shipped surplus food grains from certain parts of India (Punjab and Haryana) to fooddeficient regions (Tamil Nadu and the North-Eastern states).
The increased consumption of grains and of the people바카라™s nutrition in Kerala shows us that this corruptionis not endemic to the PDS system. The shortcomings of the PDS owe much more to its implementation than to itspolicy.
(2) Too Few Machines, Too Many People.
Agricultural technocrats argue that aggregate food availability can only be increased by the adoption of amore technocratic approach to the food security issue. What we need is a new Green Revolution. In 1994, theUnited Nations바카라™ Food and Agriculture Organization바카라™s Director General underlined the importance ofincreased food production through technology, an approach endorsed by the World Food Summit in 1996. What theFAO meant by "technology," however, is not the same as what the Green Revolution advocates mean by theword. The latter mean that we need to use any scientific means to increase productivity, including GeneticallyModified seeds, toxic fertilizers, and other such instruments. The FAO, in its Plan of Action from 1996,notes, that while food production must be increased it can only be done "within the framework of sustainablemanagement of natural resources, elimination of unsustainable patterns of consumption and production,particularly in industrialized countries." Furthermore, the FAO acknowledges the "fundamental contributionto food security of women, particularly in rural areas of developing countries, and the need to ensureequality between men and women." Research on technology and farms shows us that such inputs tend to createunemployment among women and remove them from farm activity.
Others point out that the problem with food security is population: if we reduce the world바카라™s populationthen we바카라™d all have enough to eat. Food security is a manifestation of a deeper problem: overpopulation.Ample evidence shows that while overpopulation is a concern for us, to identify it as the main problem of foodscarcity is to confuse cause and effect. Overpopulation does not cause hunger, even as it does contribute tohunger. Conventional wisdom holds that social and economic development creates a population balance, whilepopulation control does not lead to socio-economic development.
What is most bizarre about those who want to increase food production or decrease the population as aresponse to the problem of food security is that they don바카라™t register the tragic paradox of recent times: themassive food surpluses in the PDS combined with the increased starvation deaths across India. The critics ofthe PDS don바카라™t engage with this paradox which we take as central to our approach to the problem. There isample food produced in India. It simply does not get into the hands and the mouths of ordinary people.
Factories in the Field: farming in the US
At the close of John Steinbeck바카라™s 1939 The Grapes of Wrath, he writes, "There is a crime herethat goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure herethat topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trucks, and the ripefruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coronersmust fill in the certificates 바카라“ died of malnutrition 바카라“ because the food must rot, must be forced to rot."
In the 1930s, during the Depression, those who worked the land did not have the money to buy its products,now owned by larger and larger agricultural industries. "The monster," Steinbeck wrote, "has to haveprofits all the time. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can바카라™t stay one size." The "monster"is agricultural capitalism, the factory in the field, as socialist writer Carey McWilliams put it in the titleof his own 1939 book. Industry had expanded onto the farms, and despite the "drought and dust" it was thenew factory farms that intensified the depression for those who worked the soil.
President F. D. Roosevelt바카라™s New Deal responded to the Depression with an array of programs collected inthe Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. The 1933 act allowed the government to get the farmers a controlledprice for their products (either through the payment of a guaranteed minimum price for products, through a "deficiencypayment" to make up for a drop in market prices below the costs of production, through payment to decreaseland under cultivation and therefore keep a check on total production, and through the purchase of cultivatedcrops to keep the price down). Such price controls helped small farmers stay in business, even as it didlittle for migrant workers.
The post-Depression protectionism of US policy is replicated across Europe, where governments alsoincreased tariffs to prevent the "dumping" of cheap commodities from elsewhere, and initiated pricecontrols to protect farmers. From the 1950s to the 1970s, the massive growth in US maize and soy productsenabled it to expand its livestock production, because these two field crops are the base for livestock food.Animal husbandry and livestock feed became the engines for the growth of the US agrobusiness industry in thepost-War period. European subsidies for domestic wheat and diary, and US subsidies for almost all sectors offarm production, enabled the buoyancy of the Atlantic world바카라™s agricultural dominance. Central to the farmsector in this region was the agro-business that slowly began to overrun the small family farm.
The crisis in international agriculture in the 1970s, matched by the general economic crisis of the decade,allowed the large agro-businesses to consolidate their position. These agro-business concerns supportedprotectionism if it allowed them to thrive, but they argued against it where it hurt their interests. USbasedagro-business giants that enjoy the subsidy within the US fought to protect and expand this agrocorporatewelfare, just as they fought to end the tariff and subsidy regime that protected the Third World economiesfrom the wiles of the profit motive. The agro-businesses integrated the world바카라™s agricultural economy bydisrupting the logic of food security in the service of the logic of corporate profits: it was more importantto make a profit than to feed every mouth.
In the 1996 Federal Agriculture Implementation and Reform Act (FAIR), the US government eliminated thedeficiency payment scheme and replaced it with the Production Flexibility Contracts. By the new contracts, thegovernment expanded its subsidies to agriculture 바카라“ now more to agro-business and less to small farmers. Asthe Institute for Agricultural Trade and Policy shows, the new farm policy provided an average of 15% annualreturn on equity for agro-businesses and only 2% for small farmers.
One result of this has been the decline of the family farm, where income is currently just above $23,000.Between 1994 and 1996, 25% of hog farmers, 10% of grain farmers and 10% of dairy farmers went out of business.The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that between 1998 and 2008 the number of family farms will decrease byjust over 13%.