Food Security, Agricultural Policies and Economic Growth

Long-term Dynamics in the Past, Present and Future

Niek Koning

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138803046
• eBook ISBN: 9781317622567
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Agribusiness
• Index: Business

Using a political-economic approach supplemented with insights from human ecology, this volume analyzes the long-term dynamics of food security and economic growth. The book begins by discussing the nature of preindustrial food crises and the changes that have occurred since the 19th century with the ascent of technical science and the fossil fuel revolution. It explains how these changes improved living standards but that the realization of this improvement was usually dependent on government support for smallholder modernization.

The author sets out how the evolution of food security in different regions has been influenced by farm policy choices and how these choices were shaped by local societal characteristics, international relations and changing configurations in metropolitan countries. Separate chapters are devoted to the interaction of this evolution with debates on food security and economic growth and with international economic policies. The final chapters highlight the new challenges for global food security that will arise as traditional sources of biomass production and the more easily extractable reserves of fossil biomass become depleted or can no longer be used. Overall, the book emphasizes the inadequacy of current explanations with regard to these challenges. It explores what is needed to ensure a sustainable future and calls for a rethinking of these issues; a necessary reflection in today's unstable global political situation.

1

Introduction

No more hunger?

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, Enlightenment thinkers in Europe and Confucian reformists in China proclaimed that reason and good governance could liberate humanity from war and hunger. In the following decades, pressure on natural resources, civil war and foreign invasions pushed China into crisis. In the West, however, the Industrial Revolution reinforced the existing expectations of progress and prosperity. European imperialism was fitted into the picture as a civilizing mission that would allow other nations to share in the benefits. By the end of the 19th century, differences started to emerge about what policies would stimulate economic development. In many Western countries and in Japan, governments began to assume a more active role, not least to secure their national food security and assist their farmers. In European-controlled Asia and Africa, though, farmers received little support, and international policy debates continued to be dominated by economists who advocated free trade and leaving things to market forces.

In the 20th century, the belief in global progress was shaken by events originating in the West itself. The Great Depression caused widespread distress. Devastating wars and persecution killed tens of millions of people. After the Second World War, Western leaders were determined that this should never happen again. Economic planning, international cooperation and human rights declarations would preserve the dream of peace and prosperity. Welfare states were built, and large amounts of money in the form of development aid were used to stimulate economic progress in poor countries. Both in the West and in Asia, governments intervened to modernize smallholder agriculture with the aim of boosting food production. As long as the memories of famines and wartime shortages remained fresh in people’s minds, this policy was widely accepted. Over the decades, however, things began to change. Food scarcity gave way to overproduction. Rich countries used hefty subsidies to dump surpluses on the world market. Rather than being seen as a matter of public interest, support to agriculture began to be regarded as a burden on consumers and taxpayers, and environmental side effects of modern farming techniques started to draw increasing attention. Questions were also raised about the social and environmental impact of the Green Revolution in Asia. Many social critics argued that hunger was caused by social inequality and lack of democracy rather than shortages in production. A few even contended that the Green Revolution perpetuated hunger by causing many small farmers who lacked the means for buying fertilizer and high-yielding seeds to lose their land.

Others maintained that government-supported smallholder modernization was vital for feeding a growing world and for kick-starting economic growth in poor countries. They argued that existing farm policies should be corrected rather than done away with. In their view, policies for agricultural progress should be coupled to safety nets for the poor and measures to ensure food safety, environmental health and animal welfare. Agricultural price supports should be coupled to production controls to prevent surplus dumping. For a while, policy makers seemed to take notice of this kind of advice. In 1984, for example, the European Union introduced a milk quota system that eliminated the mountains of butter and milk powder that could only be released with taxpayers’ money. However, pleas for more responsible support were soon overwhelmed by demands to dismantle supportive farm policies altogether. Changes in the political landscape in the West and the collapse of the Soviet Empire triggered a shift towards ‘rolling back the state’. Welfare states were trimmed down, and austerity measures and free-market reforms imposed on poor countries. In international trade policy, stabilizing arrangements gave way to agreements to reduce import tariffs. The effects on farmers in many rich countries were cushioned by subsidies from the treasury, but many poor countries were forced to renounce all protection of their farmers. Western economists told them that this would be beneficial for their economies. ‘Do what we say, not what we do’, one poor-country representative called this type of advice.

While the onslaught on state interventionism continued, governments began signing solemn declarations in which they committed themselves to meeting quantitative targets for reducing poverty and hunger. Experts suggested that these targets could be achieved with the right mix of free-market policies and measures to protect and empower the poor. They differed about the nature of those measures. Some argued for social safety nets, others for facilitating local farmer initiatives based on indigenous knowledge, but all seemed to agree that market intervention would not be needed. Meanwhile, reality is harsher than theory. Eight hundred million are still undernourished, while around two billion suffer from vitamin and mineral deficiencies. The Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of hungry people in the world has not been achieved. In Asia, the food situation has improved, but Africa continues to be plagued by widespread food insecurity, conflicts and distress. Food price spikes have contributed to civil wars in the Arab world, while the resurgence of land-poor Asian giants is leading to the return of geopolitics. Meanwhile, poverty-induced high birth rates in Africa are forcing population experts to adjust their projections. A decade ago, they still expected that the world population would level off at around nine billion by mid-century. Today, they think that the world population will rise to almost ten billion in 2050 and will continue expanding to well over eleven billion by 2100.¹ This will make achieving global food security in our century all the more challenging.

Should we give up the idea of global progress and prosperity, of which Enlightenment philosophers in Europe and Confucian reformers in China were dreaming? Our dignity and responsibility to future generations demand that we remain faithful to the old ideal. However, this obliges us to seek a deeper understanding of the causes of hunger and poverty than that provided by the theories that have dominated the discussions until now. I have written this book in the hope of contributing a little more insight. In it I discuss the evolution of human societies and their biomass economies in the past, present and future, highlighting the role of the state in ensuring sustainable food security. A better comprehension of these issues, I think, is essential if we want to tackle today’s troubles more effectively and avoid greater problems in the future.

A fictitious encounter

To give an impression of what this book is about, let me call up two towering 19th-century figures: Thomas Malthus and Karl Marx. Almost any treatise on population and food security begins with the vision of Thomas Malthus, the well-known British economist and demographer. He postulated that population increased faster than the production of biomass that people needed to subsist. Without restraint through celibacy and late marriage, he warned, hunger, disease and warfare would restore the balance between population and resources the hard way. Karl Marx, the German revolutionary thinker, worked hard to debunk this theory. Food crises were caused by exploitation, not overpopulation, he claimed. The Irish Great Famine of the 1840s killed one million people, but it killed ‘poor devils only’.² At the peak of the crisis, shiploads of food that Irish tenant farmers had to pay as rent were still being carried off to Britain.

Imagine that these two scholars meet in the hereafter. The stern Malthus (he was also a Protestant minister) tries to ignore his notorious opponent. But Marx seizes the opportunity to engage Malthus in critical debate. He feels strengthened by the writings of two well-known 20th-century authorities: Amartya Sen, the Indian economist who has affirmed that famines are caused by inequality and lack of democracy, and Ester Boserup, an agricultural economist from Denmark who argued that population growth induces technical change rather than Malthusian crisis.³ ‘Your theory suggests that humans are trapped in the growth-and-starvation phases of a simple predator-prey model’, Marx snaps at Malthus. ‘But shouldn’t you admit that humans are not like lynxes or foxes? That they are creative animals that can adjust their techniques and increase the carrying capacity of their resources?’ Malthus answers curtly that he isn’t stupid. In his Essay on the Principle of Population, didn’t he himself state that population growth encourages people to ‘employ more labour upon their land, to turn up fresh soil, and to manure and improve more completely what is already in tillage’?⁴ Yet in the end, Malthus insists, the demand for food always increases faster than the supply. Marx chortles. Maybe that sometimes happened in preindustrial times, he says. But capitalist production has such an inbuilt drive towards investment that scarcity has given way to abundance. ‘Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets’, he exclaims.⁵ To drive home his point, he wields statistics showing that since the late 19th century, international food prices have shown a clear downward trend.

Malthus refuses to admit defeat. Forgetting his reluctance to engage with his opponent, he points out that humanity has remained strongly dependent on biomass for food, clothing, shelter and transportation. The abundance that Marx is speaking about, he asserts, is not due to capitalism, but to the fact that humans have learned to use fossil biomass. His law that the demand for biomass increases faster than the supply has been suspended, but only temporarily. The leeway that the fossil biomass revolution provided has been used up by an explosion in world population and by the much higher consumption levels that affluent citizens have become accustomed to. Moreover, the more easily exploitable reserves of fossil biomass are now being depleted. At the same time, it is becoming harder to expand the global production of living biomass. Much land and water is already in use, and even being overused. And aren’t plant breeders finding it increasingly difficult to develop higher-yielding varieties of wheat or rice? Taken together, Malthus contends, these conditions will surely cause the return of scarcity.

Marx feels perplexed by the sheer size of Malthus’ incomprehension. He points to the large unconventional reserves of fossil biomass that still exist; to the prospects of replacing fossil fuels with solar power; to the reserves of suitable land that are still left in South America, Africa and Central Asia; to the wide gap between actual and potential yields that exists in many places; to the possibilities for growing biomass in bioreactors or the oceans; and to the vast scope for improving biomass conversion and for recycling. With the right policies, he asserts, there is no need at all for scarcity in the foreseeable future. Malthus looks at him with amusement. ‘Do you really expect mankind to implement the right policies?’ he asks with a thin laugh. ‘Haven’t they just given up any attempt at long-term planning, subjected as they are to the short-term whims of financial investors? Don’t you think that will hinder timely investment in all those beautiful things that you mention?’ Marx roars with indignation. ‘That’s not a natural situation but one for which you are to be blamed’, he retorts. ‘Wasn’t it your kind who urged rulers to leave everything to the invisible hand of the market?’ ‘Not quite’, Malthus replies dryly. Has Marx forgotten that, unlike his fellow economist David Ricardo, he defended Britain’s protectionist Corn Laws in order to maximize domestic food production? If anyone should be blamed for giving wrong advice, who else than Marx himself? Wasn’t it his followers who rejected all government support for agriculture, asserting that this would benefit only large landowners? Not to mention Stalin and Mao Zedong, whose collectivization campaigns bled farmers dry to speed up industrialization and left millions dead.

‘What followers?’ grumbles Marx. ‘Most of them were exponents of labour aristocracies or rebels from backward countries that were not ripe for a socialist revolution. Had they studied reality, as I taught them, they would have seen that after I’d written Das Kapital the evolution of agriculture changed course. Farm profits declined as a result of overproduction. Capitalist producers withdrew, confining themselves to trading and processing agricultural products. Primary farming was left to self-employed workers who could only raise their productivity when they received systematic assistance from the government…’

At this juncture, some cosmic thunderstorm clouds our vision of the hereafter, so we don’t hear whether our protagonists have anything to say about their own role in creating the misunderstanding Marx is referring to. We know that during their lifetimes, both thought that agriculture would be modernized by capitalist farms. Especially Marx was convinced that self-employed peasants were doomed to extinction. It would also be interesting to hear the opinions of the two scholars on some of the evolutionary-institutional schools of economics that had a better sense of the new dynamics in the agro-food economy than their own followers. Unfortunately, as yet we can’t tell whether they have touched on the issue. When the sky clears up, the scene has changed. Malthus and Marx are looking down at the earth. They are observing the remarkable discussion that is going on in today’s global food security community.

The first party they hear are the nutrition scientists, who assert that reducing global hunger is all a question of school meals, home gardens, supplementation through tablets or food that is fortified with vitamins and minerals. This will reduce malnutrition and rescue households from a vicious cycle of poverty and ill health. ‘Mere palliatives’, Malthus groans. ‘Would you prefer them to die?’ Marx asks. Malthus ignores his accusatory tone. ‘Don’t you see that keeping the poor alive is fighting a losing battle?’ he replies. ‘What do these remedies do about the underlying causes of food insecurity?’

Before Marx can answer, agronomists raise their voices. They proclaim that fertilizers, high-yielding seeds, adequate pest control and good water management are the key to reducing hunger. Hasn’t the Green Revolution provided these blessings and thus brought economic growth and improved nutrition to Asian countries? ‘Indeed’, Marx comments. ‘But why has this miracle not been reproduced in other regions? Why has the Green Revolution in Latin America remained limited to large farms? Why has it barely got off the ground in Africa?’ ‘Because that region has poorer soils and weather conditions’, Malthus suggests. ‘And because Africans eat many different staples rather than a few cereals that a Green Revolution can focus on’. ‘Nonsense’, Marx retorts. ‘Maize yields in Africa have also lagged behind, even in areas with fertile soils and with regular rainfall’.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, economists have entered the scene. They are convinced that they have the answer to these questions. The heavy lifting in economic development, they explain, has to be done by markets and trade. Only markets can effectively coordinate the decisions of millions of producers and consumers. And trade allows countries to specialize and import knowledge from other countries. Therefore, the economists affirm, governments should limit themselves to providing law and order, a stable money supply and necessary infrastructures. They should not tamper with markets or the free flow of goods and resources. Sub-Saharan Africa declined and Latin America languished after the mid-1970s because their rulers ignored these principles. Malthus applauds. Latin American governments were too much in cahoots with the economic elite, he agrees. And African rulers milked their farmers dry to provide political clients with public jobs. ‘But if free markets are best for development’, Marx asks contemptuously, ‘why then have rich countries consistently supported their farmers?’ ‘Because they could bear the burden’, Malthus answers with a shrug. Marx laughs at him. ‘If that were true’, he asks, ‘how come most of these countries had already begun supporting their farmers while their incomes were still low? Besides, how do you explain the dismal effects of the liberalizing reforms that were imposed on Africa and Latin America from the 1980s?’ Malthus remains silent. He cannot deny that, by the turn of the century, these reforms had produced little more than continued stagnation and increased inequality.

Below, a new chorus has stepped on the stage. They don’t oppose the liberalizing reforms of the economists, they declare. However, these can only work when supplemented with measures to empower poor people. Otherwise, the poor can never escape from the poverty trap they are caught in. To his annoyance, Malthus hears that many economists agree with this argument. Since the turn of the century, they have combined their free-market reforms with targeted forms of ‘social protection’. The two choruses combine their voices, declaring that this approach has borne fruit. Hasn’t economic growth recovered and social inequality decreased in Africa and Latin America during recent years? Marx isn’t at all convinced. As he points out to his interlocutor, this favourable development has coincided with an increase in international commodity prices. Price rises have always improved the situation in these regions. Wasn’t what they have seen a simple commodity boom? Will it not fade away now that international prices have declined again?

Malthus is surprised. For once, he doesn’t disagree with the bearded firebrand. But before he can answer, yet another group has taken the floor. They call themselves ‘political ecologists’. They also want to empower the poor, they declare, but more radically. They condemn the agronomists’ Green Revolution, which they claim would ruin small farmers, and the free-trade-ism of the economists, which would open the door to multinational companies. Corporate interests and unscrupulous scientists, they say, are enforcing unnatural forms of production that destroy the environment. Sustainable development can only come from local farmers, indigenous knowledge and organic recycling. Pesticides must be avoided, artificial fertilizer be used as little as possible. Marx and Malthus look at each other. They agree that the Green Revolution has often entailed pollution and water depletion and displaced poor farmers who lacked access to credit and fertilizer. But apart from sporadic success stories, Malthus asks, what have these advocates of recycling achieved in Africa other than the recycling of hunger and poverty? In this respect, the two scholars agree, the Green Revolution in Asia has certainly been more successful.

Marx draws his interlocutor’s attention to what governments are doing. While the experts are bickering about how to reduce hunger, ministers are signing high-level declarations that promise to tackle the problem. In 1996, they undertook to halve the number of undernourished people by 2015. Four years later, they adopted a Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of undernourished people by 2015. Malthus explains to Marx that, because world population was growing, the latter target was much easier to achieve than the former. Nevertheless, it has not been realized. Especially in sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion of undernourished people has hardly decreased at all. Yet governments have already adopted a new set of ‘Sustainable Development Goals’.

Our protagonists are sceptical. They don’t believe that the world is driven by declarations made at international conferences. They think it is moved by the actions of myriad agents, most of whom are driven by self-interest and short-term considerations. Today those rulers are weeping crocodile tears about the poor, Marx sneers, but tomorrow they will forget their promises and do anything needed to stay in office. ‘And that doesn’t just hold for the ruling class’, Malthus reminds him. ‘Your activists also tend to become less wild once they have taken care of their own interests. Have you forgotten how fast your Bolsheviks changed into a new nomenklatura?’ ‘Not my Bolsheviks’, M...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures, tables and boxes
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 A long view
• 3 Growth and crisis in the pre-fossil era
• 4 The big change
• 5 How other regions coped
• 6 Agriculture and the welfare state: Emerging problems
• 7 The neoliberal decades
• 8 Looking into the crystal ball
• 9 Where there’s a will, there’s a way
• References
• Index