Food Crises - I

1
Food Crises - I

• Development Underdevelopment,
• From Green Revolution to Famine

2
Readings

• H.Cleaver, "Food, Famine Int'l Crisis"
• NACLA, "US Grain Arsenal"
• "US Food Power Ultimate Weapon in World Politics"

3
Food as Feast

• Food as staff of life, fundamental necessity
• gathering, production always social act
• Food as social medium
• family meals
• religious rituals
• collective rituals, holidays, festivals
• sharing of food sharing of self ? bonding

4
Food as Power

• Control over food ? power over life
• control over land - food ? autonomy
• power to live independently
• control over land - food ? Power over others
• Power to make others lives dependent
• e.g., sharecropping
• e.g., wage labor
• e.g., soviet family plots

5
Power over Others

• Families
• control over children
• no work, no supper, primogeniture
• Local community
• control over land fundamental to structure of
  power
• Nation States
• internally role in food distribution function of
  pressures, top down, bottom up
• externally food as weapon in diplomacy

6
Food in Capitalism

• Control over land - food ? control over work
• Without autonomous sources of food, people are
  forced into labor market
• Monopoly of control gives capitalists Power to
  impose work
• History of capitalism is history of business
  efforts to achieve monopoly control of land -
  food
• enclosure, Wakefield, etc.

7
Food Resistance

• Conversely, access to land - food gives power to
  resist, material basis for autonomous life
• Historical resistance to enclosure, from England
  in 18th Century to Zapatistas at beginning of
  21st Century
• Those who have lost access to land fight for
  "access" to food, e.g., welfare, food stamps
• greater the access, greater ability to resist low
  wages

8
Development Underdevelopment

• Development underdevelopment
• as states-of-being
• developed industrial, rich
• underdeveloped agrarian, poor
• as processes
• development investment, growth,
  industrializing, rising real income per capita
• underdevelopment disinvestment, decline,
  falling Y/cap
• as strategies
• development giving food to get work
• underdevelopment witholding food to get work

9
Giving Food ( Land) - I

• Lack of food seen as source of revolution
• 30s - 40s private foundations developed "food
  politics" for Third World
• land reform, community development, new ag
  technology
• especially Rockefeller Foundation in China
• even earlier in US South
• "development" strategies, give to get
• state took over private policies and integrated
  into foreign policy thru foreign aid programs,
  diplo.
• state also subsidized increased food production,
  increased real wages in US Europe, welfare

10
Giving Food - II

• 1960s "Development Decade"
• "Green Revolution" technologies from IRRI,
  CYMMIT,
• high yielding rice wheat varieties
• replaced land reform com. dev.
• promise of food in exchange for acceptance of
  capitalist rules of the game, integration into
  global economy
• Development Keynesianism in 3rd 2nd worlds
• Soviet Keynesianism in countryside, cities

11
Withholding Food - I

• After World War I, Herbert Hoover American
  foreign aid in Eastern Europe
• food aid given to those who followed the American
  line, vis a vis Germany USSR, US investment
• food aid withheld from those who didn't go along
  with US policies

12
Withholding Food - II

• 1950s - 1960s PL 480
• subsidies to US agriculture ??food surpluses
• Hubert Humphrey saw surpluses as leverage
• food for starving if and only if governments
  accepted American directives
• e.g., Indian famine 1965-66
• Orville Freeman, Sec of Agriculture tells Indian
  Min of Ag Subramaniam food aid if
• population control
• opening of Indian fertilizer industry to US firms

13
Contradictions of Green Revolution Technologies

• Unforeseen consequences of Green Revolution
• uneven application across regions
• accessible to rich farmers, not poor, aggravated
  inequalities
• rich farmer investment in labor saving capital
  equipment caused unemployment for landless
• environmental problems due to
• monocropping
• increased use of inorganic fertilizer,
  pesticides, herbicides

14
From Green to Red Revolution

• Regional Disparities aggravated Pakistan Conflict
  as West benefited and East didn't
• Increased intra-peasant conflicts in India btwn
  those who benefited and those who didn't
• Naxalite Rebellion in W.Bengal, Bihar

15
Welfare State Rebellion

• Food subsidies to poor
• school lunches, food stamps, etc
• Viewed as inadequate, part of cause of
  rebellions
• central city uprisings
• Black Panther Party extortion for breakfasts
• State response dramatic spread of Food Stamp
  program to meet demands, quiet rebellion

16
Food Rebellion in East

• Circa 1960 food riots in Russia
• chronic peasant resistance
• results in Krushchev's opening steppe production
• later Keynesian policies for peasants
• 1970 Polish govt increases food prices
• widespread rebellion in Poland, food prices
  dropped
• sympathy strikes in USSR, 5-yr plan revised,
  increased food imports (1972 grain deal), efforts
  to industrialize food production

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