The Guardian (Manchester, U.K.)  [Printer-friendly version]
April 15, 2008

A MAN-MADE FAMINE

By Raj Patel

For anyone who understands the current food crisis, it is hard to
listen to the head of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, without
gagging.

Earlier this week, Zoellick waxed apocalyptic about the consequences
of the global surge in prices, arguing that free trade had become a
humanitarian necessity, to ensure that poor people had enough to eat.
The current wave of food riots has already claimed the prime minister
of Haiti, and there have been protests around the world, from Mexico,
to Egypt, to India. The reason for the price rise is perfect storm of
high oil prices, an increasing demand for meat in developing
countries, poor harvests, population growth, financial speculation and
biofuels. But prices have fluctuated before. The reason we're seeing
such misery as a result of this particular spike has everything to do
with Zoellick and his friends.

Before he replaced Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank, Zoellick was the
US trade representative, their man at the World Trade Organisation.
While there, he won a reputation as a tough and guileful negotiator,
savvy with details and pushy with the neoconservative economic agenda:
a technocrat with a knuckleduster. His mission was to accelerate two
decades of trade liberalisation in key strategic commodities for the
United States, among them agriculture. Practically, this meant the
removal of developing countries' ability to stockpile grain (food
mountains interfere with the market), to create tariff barriers
(ditto), and to support farmers (they ought to be able to compete on
their own). This Zoellick did often, and enthusiastically.

Without agricultural support policies, though, there's no buffer
between the price shocks and the bellies of the poorest people on
earth. No option to support sustainable smaller-scale farmers, because
they've been driven off their land by cheap EU and US imports. No
option to dip into grain reserves because they've been sold off to
service debt. No way of increasing the income of the poorest, because
social programmes have been cut to the bone. The reason that today's
price increases hurt the poor so much is that all protection from
price shocks has been flayed away, by organisations such as the
International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and the
World Bank.

Even the World Bank's own Independent Evaluation Group admits that the
bank has been doing a poor job in agriculture. Part of the bank's
vision was to clear away the government agricultural clutter so that
the private sector could come in to make agriculture efficient. But,
as the Independent Evaluation Group delicately puts it, "in most
reforming countries, the private sector did not step in to fill the
vacuum when the public sector withdrew." After the liberalisation of
agriculture, the invisible hand was nowhere to be seen.

But governments weren't allowed to return to the business of
supporting agriculture. Trade liberalisation agreements and World Bank
loan conditions, such as those promoted by Zoellick, have made food
sovereignty impossible.This is why, when we see Dominique Strauss-Kahn
of the IMF wailing about food prices, or Zoellick using the crisis to
argue with breathless urgency for more liberalisation, the only
reasonable response is nausea.