The mournful choir greeting the results of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) summit last week was rather painful. Because there was no agreement about the causes or those responsible for the problems or the appropriate response, it was unrealistic to hope that that an operational strategy would come out of the summit to combat the explosion in prices and risks of food shortages. The debates were vacuous and demagogic and the comments made were even worse. Even the Vatican was tempted to brandish the threat of excommunication.
The truth hurts. Partial failure was predictable. The World Bank, IMF and WTO presented a lengthy document that claimed everything to the contrary and omitted their responsibility for the current difficulties. The World Bank and IMF encouraged poor countries to develop mono-crops for export (and have funded these projects to this end). The WTO called for complete free-trade in agricultural products. All three bodies until now have been making obviously banal and demagogic recommendations: provide poor countries with seed, fertiliser and veterinary services; introduce social security and insurance against risks to their small farmers and so on. Common sense statements that cost nothing. The secretary general of the UN was just as banal and superficial
It is hard to tell the truth when the truth hurts. It is easier and more politically profitable to denounce the major causes for the crisis as being biofuels and support for farming in developed countries. The Brazilian president has pointed out that agricultural land in his immense country that is given over to biofuels has been assessed at 340 million hectares and accounts for 1% of land. Biofuels are not causing shortages, although pressure needs to be maintained to ensure that biofuels respect the environment and forests. There also needs to be a move towards the use of agricultural waste.
It's a shame that the Brazilian minister Celso Amorin (in Paris) had resorted to the platitude of “hunger and poverty being caused by agricultural subsidies” in rich countries. What is in fact the effect of the war on aid to farmers? In Europe it has led to the obligatory leaving of fallow land, which noticeably reduces wheat production. In the US, it has led farmers to orientate maize production towards biofuels, instead of food production because of the more profitable subsidies. We are now striving to correct the orientations that were previously demanded (by the Greens and the pseudo-friends of poor countries too): the EU has got rid of the obligation of leaving land fallow, which will enable it to produce 12-15 million additional tonnes of cereals, and the US has extended most of its aid to agricultural production, despite the protests from superficial observers.
Indispensable orientations. If European and US farmers are suffocated, it will be a disaster for everyone, except for the big trade interests, speculators and some multinationals. The EU should certainly abandon export subsidies (which it largely has done: these subsidies were more than €10bn in 1993 and fell to €1.4bn in 2007 and this year they will fall again by half). The US should also stop using their surpluses as food aid. Food self-sufficiency should become the priority for everyone again, with support and assistance from the international bodies. Less developed countries should return to subsistence farming and produce food for their people. Some of them are already doing so and others are moving in this direction. How many powerful forces are opposed to this, especially in Africa? The big exporters from other continents are also opposed, as are the economic and financial powers that benefit from mono-crops for export, the local corrupt political classes and major organisations, like Oxfam, which call for global free-trade in agricultural products etc.
A certain rise in world prices could ultimately prove useful because it would allow for farming profits to improve and encourage a productive relaunch, particularly in Africa, on the condition that the conflicts there are resolved because we cannot pretend to ignore that 80% of famines and other disasters on this continent are provoked by domestic conflicts.
The developments mentioned above are much more significant than the expansion in aid that the FAO and other international and so-called “humanitarian” organisations strive to present as a panacea, because the final destination of this funding is often suspect: it is used more to finance the bodies managing the funding, as well as certain politicians in power, than it is to help small farmers.
(F.R./transl.rh)