I predict a scenario where food inflation skyrockets. Considering each person has to eat about the same, the poorer the person is, the quicker their standard of living will fall. The economists and pundits will pretend the economy is in balance, with target inflation, as food is exempted from core inflation, interest rates reasonable, high employment and the economy growing. Meanwhile, I can see mass discontent among the poorer segments of society as the food bank lines grow longer each time the food bank asks for more donations and government funding. Even working and middle class people will notice a stagnant or declining standard of living. On top of that, the current trend of a large emerging skilled labour force means employers won’t have a problem hiring skilled labour at a progressively lower wage, which eventually bottoms out at the minimum wage. Why are more and more young adults living with their parents? It’s because there aren’t as many well paying jobs anymore that allows a young single person to come anywhere close to the standard of living they enjoy at home. When they do move out and have kids, it’s not into a single family home but a townhouse, which are growing like weeds in the suburbs these days.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Free_Radical:
The price of food is already artificially low.

If western governments would drop their wasteful and immoral subsidisation of agricultural products they would have billions of extra dollars to deal with any adverse effects. Food production in poorer parts of the world would also increase and balance out the impact.

---

Ah! But free market forces under true-to-form state-capitalism were what led to Canadian and U.S. farmers going bankrupt in the 1930's. Many lost farms due to at least one or two bad seasons, and the banks moved in. That, and a lack of money to upgrade farm equipment caused thousands of hard-working people to lose their farm mortgages to predatory banks.

After leave-it-to-the-market" capitalism was scrapped in the U.S., wealthy farmers and agribusinesses became the most subsidized farmers in the world and with the addded advantage of access to the most expansive and fertile farmlands in the world. Today, a majority of nations consider food production or trade for food to be the backbone of the economy. And world financial institutions and bad economic theories have led to food shortages for hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Mechanized farming is said to be desertifying significant areas of the U.S. mid-west. I think technological stagnation has affected wide ranging aspects of industrial expansion as well as the technical ability to support population expansion.

But subsidization of agriculture is not the prescribed ideology that IMF, World Bank and WTO are recommending/foisting onto developing nations. Those countries are being encouraged, and prodded, to level their forests and practice cash crop capitalism for export to "the market" at all costs over and above fulfilling their own needs for food. http://www.fao.org reports that about 80 percent of nations categorized as chronically hungry are exporting cash crops to "the market" today. A similar situation existed in 1847 Ireland.

[ 14 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Fidel:
http://www.fao.org reports that about 80 percent of nations categorized as chronically hungry are exporting cash crops to "the market" today.

---

Because that is the only way to make a living as a farmer - subsidies have depressed the price of food stuffs. If food crops were actually profitable for third-world farmers, they would be growing more of them (and most importantly, investing in their operations) rather than just at a subsistence level.

Developing countries are left in a terrible bind - food is at the same time a precious commodity but also virtually worthless.

In fact, this is essentially what those countries did which were tranformed into Asian tiger economies post-WWII. Those countries used protectionist policies to nurture their peasant agricultural bases as well as investing in education and health care in breaking the cycle of third world poverty. What they did wasn't exemplary of 1990's Washington consensus or IMF/WTO trade rules, and so I believe that's why we don't hear much about what actually has worked around the developing world(socialism basically)in the past.

[ 14 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

Keep in mind that one of those "Asian Tigers"; South Korea, is one of the worst offenders when it comes to subsidising their rice farmers. Recall the demonstrations in Hong Kong against the WTO in January 2006 when farm subsidies - and import quotas - were on the agenda.

"Export Orientation" may have worked 40 years ago in East Asia, but today there is a greater expectation for trade. Developing countries aren't going to be hurt by trade - provided that western countries play ball by dropping the unfair support for their agricultural sectors, which is where the developing world has a decided advantage, if all things were equal.

Fresh food is worse, because done properly without chemicals to keep the produce pretty for the shelves (on the truck\boat\plane ripening works just great for taste, by the way), it's impossible to ship any distance, and of questionable worth when Canada could supply our own needs, for the most part, sustainably, domestically.

NA farmers are certainly not helping the issue any. But it is a fuckuva lot easier to grow thousands of hectares of wheat, corn, soybeans, than it is to raise a bunch of mixed ready for the kitchen or plate type of food.

This problem is of course excaberated by the lack of labour, eh Fidel?

quote:

---

Originally posted by Free_Radical:
Keep in mind that one of those "Asian Tigers"; South Korea, is one of the worst offenders when it comes to subsidising their rice farmers. Recall the demonstrations in Hong Kong against the WTO in January 2006 when farm subsidies - and import quotas - were on the agenda.

---

There tend to be IMF bailouts for subsidizing Asian and western bankers who followed Washington Consensus to a tee in placed like Korea and Thailand, but there aren't many subsidies for food or fuel handed down from those governments to their poorest people.

Joseph Stiglitz said that subsidies going to 25,000 cotton farmers in the the U.S. South are more than the value of what they produce. Cotton prices are depressed so much that it's estimated millions of cotton farmers in just Africa lose more than $350 million every year. For Africa's poorest countries, this one crop loses more than the U.S. foreign aid budget for each of Africa's poorest nations. This is what neo-Liberal market expectations do to developing countries, and Stiglitz likens globalization to colonialism.

quote:

---

Imagine how much smoother things would be in Afghanistan if farmers could make a living growing wheat instead of poppies because its market price wasn't being suppressed by the multi-billion dollar largess of North America, Europe, Japan and elsewhere.

---

Whenever there are drugs, oil or weapons involved, the CIA and their global mafia associates are likely in there like dirty shirts. Drug money has financed a good many right-wing political campaigns and covert interventions abroad. We can be naive about these things, or we can be realistic. Who funded the Talibanization of Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 1980's. Who flew "Air America" shipments out of Burma and golden triangle across the Himalayas during and after VietNam war?. Weapons for contras paid for with Colombian cocaine?

[ 14 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]