I’m not quite sure we disagree as much as you say. Your example of Ethiopia exporting food while there is simultaneously a famine occurring seems to me to be a square example of a distribution problem. The food is right there in the same country, but not going to those who need it most. Where my distribution claim becomes “not incorrect, yet spurious”, as you say, is when there are warehouses of excess food in the U.S. but famine in hard-to-reach or conflict-ridden areas Africa. It’s not necessarily realistic to distribute those stores of food; or perhaps, as Lauren pointed out, it must be done through Food Aid which creates perverse incentives. But most areas hit by the food crises last year were not hard to reach or conflict ridden, and thus it remains a global distribution problem.

Secondly, I really liked the point you highlighted about communities being degraded due to high food prices. I agree that in general, this type of social capital is a key driver for a family’s success. However, in rural areas in the Global South, at least 90% of the people are farmers or farm laborers. So if food prices increase in the market in town, the carpenter may take a hit, but it “should” benefit 90% of the rural poor.

I say “should” because, due to the reasons I listed (e.g. market linkages, capital, information, etc.), these food producers do not benefit as much as they should. Furthermore, as you kinda pointed out, many are not growing the types of crops, or at sufficient yields, to subsist. So farmers themselves actually purchase staples in the market to feed their families, and that is why there’s the paradox of food producers starving due to high food prices.

Lastly, I’m interested in your point regarding promoting other rural industries. What are some examples of the types of work you’re referring to?

This concentrates our supports on the farmers who are actually sustainable (not really the case with industrial organic, if you believe Michael Pollan). It reduces poverty and encourages stable livelihoods in rural communities. It improves our trade relations with WTO countries, who are fed up with dumping–that is, massive imports of US commodities priced below the cost of production. And it gives local producers in the developing world a chance.

This is also an incentive problem, as when food aid is distributed in a time of stability, people lose incentive to produce their own crops. A friend provided a very good example of this in Southern Sudan, where he was working with local farmers on an agricultural collective. A large NGO offered to support the program by giving oil and bags of grain to farmers. The result was that the farmers lost their incentive to farm and stopped working.

Regions in Sub-Saharan Africa that have been stable for a while are relatively well-off in terms of food. For example in Uganda (minus northern Uganda because it is a conflict region) people are fat! Almost no one goes hungry because soil fertility is so high and their relatively long-lived stability has created an opportunity for farmers to make the time and financial investment in their land! You can basically drop a seed anywhere and it will grow, people have fruit growing on their lawns and food is cheap and plentiful.

I also wanted to note that saying to drop all subsidies is a dangerous idea. I would agree that large agribusiness should be starved of subsidies, but small farmers in the US need these subsidies to survive. I believe that we should follow the Europeans and subsidize organic agriculture in the US. Most farmers complain that it is too expensive to switch over…so this is where subsidies would come in handy. I also think that third world governments should subsidize small farmers (this of course can become an equity issue) so that they can compete with the low prices of food imports on their local markets. There are too many different nuances in this, in terms of subsidies and also tariffs, that we cannot say to just get rid of food subsidies.

Just one final note on Collier: Economists really need to stay out of food issues. Doesn’t he get that by using GM crops to feed our current population, the population will continue to grow to that 9 billion point that we are avoiding and also that GM crops will potentially destroy soils and therefore the food supply for the generation of children produced by the GM food eaters?

So, if we’re on the same page there, what’s up with points 1 and 4?

-”This is first and foremost a distribution problem.”
That’s not technically inaccurate, but it’s specious. If it were that simple, we wouldn’t continuously observe food exporting in famine-stricken regions like Ethiopia (1973) and Bangladesh (repeatedly during the colonial period). It is more useful to frame the issue as a failure of food –entitlement- decline than food availability decline. When a food crisis causes prices increases, a carpenter finds himself unable to afford food and unable to find work, because his neighbors are stretching their incomes just to buy the food they need. In other words, his income dries up just when the cost of survival soars. So what about farmers?

-”The majority of the world’s poor are food producers. They should benefit from high food prices!”
First of all, you correctly point out that forced mono-cropping has caused farmers to specialize in products which can be relatively un-nutritious (like corn compared to grain) or even inedible. If food prices soar, these farmers will be unable to afford food just the same. Will a rice producer benefit from rising prices? Not if the crisis has put his doctor out of business, malnutrition in the community has caused disease to spread to his family, and the members of his village who supplied him with animal feed and water have moved to the city to find more stable work. Suddenly the rice producer’s position isn’t as enviable.

What are the solutions? End subsidies, yes. Encourage crop diversification. Link to external markets, yes, but recognize that this can actually exacerbate the problem if there are not adequate systems in place to ensure that rural-dwellers maintain their entitlements to food during a crisis—entitlements which are as strong or stronger than those that foreigners command. To start, how about creating some employment opportunities in farming communities which are unrelated to food?

Erika, 2009 NYU Reynolds Scholar