Just Who's Doing the Hoarding? Food Independence and Real Democracy
by
Frances Moore Lappe
As about 30 countries scramble to protect their citizens from hunger by limiting food exports, the title of a front-page New York Times article calls out: "Hoarding Nations Drive Food Costs Ever Higher."
But where does responsible government action end and hoarding begin? (If the Irish government had begun a little hoarding instead of exporting grain in 1845, many deaths could have been avoided in the Irish potato famine.) It's not an easy question to answer, suggesting as it does that it might be a perfect time to ask how countries got into this no-win, export-or-not quandary to begin with.
Part of the answer is the longstanding premise, proposed by
international lending agencies, that nations should use their farmland
to grow what's most profitable in world trade and use the proceeds to
import food as needed. For decades countries have been "encouraged" --
even by making it a condition of a needed loan -- to use prime farmland
to grow luxury and non-food items from coffee to cut flowers for
export, and to adopt an agricultural model dependent on imported
fertilizers, pesticides, and seeds.
Surely today's deepening
crisis reveals the danger here. The end of hunger and real food
security require provisioning from domestic resources wherever
possible. This approach, combined with a solid international grain
reserve to be released in response to unforeseeable setbacks, has the
best chance of assuring adequate food supplies. Could we Americans ever
breathe easy if we were dependent on imported food for our very
survival? I doubt that any people could. Why is that "energy
independence" is embraced by the left and right, but you never even
hear anyone utter the phrase "food independence?"
Analysts go on
vying to tease out the varied pieces of the puzzle of today's renewed
hunger crisis: Is it "hoarding" that's to be blamed? Is it heightened
speculation? Is it the growing Asian elite's market-demand for
grain-fed meat? The rising price of oil? The diversion of food to
produce agrofuel? But these questions avoid asking why we have failed
to end hunger even in the good times.
For years, the world's
more-than-ample supply of food -- keeping well ahead of population
growth -- has left over 800 million hungry. Because we've not grasped
the root causes, today's prices risk pushing another one hundred
million people into the ranks of the hungry. No amount of lifting of
agricultural trade barriers will address this longstanding, now
intensified, crisis.
Understanding hunger begins here: In our
world where the
bottom 40 percent of us have to survive on just over
three percent of world income and eight in ten live in societies where
inequalities are worsening, the real "hoarding" is done by those with
vastly disproportional income: Their market demand diverts 37 percent
of the world's grain and about a third of the world fish catch to
livestock, and now almost a third of U.S. corn to ethanol.
How
could this extreme and worsening inequality happen? Because of our thin
concept of democracy -- that elected government plus a one-rule economy
(highest return to existing wealth) are all we need to meet human
needs. As a result, economic and political power concentrate in such a
way that policies emerge which defy the values and common-sense of most
citizens.
For, where are everyday citizens who would choose to
have their survival dependent on the vagaries of volatile international
markets? Nowhere.
Thus, our hunger crisis is actually a
democracy crisis. Hunger can be eliminated only as we remove the
influence of concentrated wealth over public choices and ensure the
ongoing, healthy distribution of power. The sooner we start recasting
the crisis thusly, the sooner we'll all be able to thrive.
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