Economic Sufficiency Agriculture Food Subsidy System
Prof. ALI ABDALRAHMAN ALI
President of the International Union for Development, Environment and Investment
Sufficiency Economy is a philosophy that guides the livelihood and behavior of people at all levels, from the family to the community to the country, on matters concerning national development and administration. It calls for a ‘middle way’ to be observed, especially in pursuing economic development in keeping with the world of globalization.
Sufficiency means moderation and reasonableness, including the need to build a reasonable immune system against shocks from the outside or from the inside. Intelligence, attentiveness, and extreme care should be used to ensure that all plans and every step of their implementation are based on knowledge.
At the same time we must build up the spiritual foundation of all people in the nation, especially state officials, scholars, and business people at all levels, so they are conscious of moral integrity and honesty and they strive for the appropriate wisdom to live life with forbearance, diligence, self-awareness, intelligence, and attentiveness. In this way we can hope to maintain balance and be ready to cope with rapid physical, social, environmental, and cultural changes from the outside world.”
This philosophical statement has lent itself to interpretation by diverse groups of people. First, we can dismiss outright the extreme interpretation that the Sufficiency Economy means complete self-reliance or autarky. In an autarchic system, a country or unit thereof relies upon itself and its people to produce all its needs with no dependence on others.
It may do this voluntarily (cutting off contacts with the outside world) or by necessity (because it is incapable of generating those contacts). But His Majesty the King explicitly rejected this interpretation: “This self-sufficiency does not mean that every family must grow food for themselves, to make clothes for themselves; that is too much. But in a village or sub-district there should be a reasonable amount of sufficiency.
If they grow or produce something more than they need they can sell them. But they do not need to sell them very far; they can sell them in nearby places without having to pay high transport costs.”
Food Subsidy
The subsidy is an important part in the system of social spending, which aims to ensure that members of the community on their needs of basic goods and services such as food, health, education, transport, water and electricity, is a program of nutritional support of policies that ensure the state in order to improve the nutritional status of individuals and ensure food security for them and eliminate the problem of hunger, and it was total support center to support the food even arrived in some years to 90% of the total value of support, and the program is aimed at nutritional support to the provision of basic commodities at affordable prices are in affordable for low-income classes to ensure that a minimum of food necessary for the poor to stabilize the prices of goods in order to match the wages, and thus leads to the kind of redistribution of income and improve the pattern of distribution and social justice, and improve food security.
The subsidy programs, food for the benefit of consumers are common in many countries, and provides these programs are many benefits to consumers, so the financial cost of this type of nutritional support of matters of interest to policy makers and decision makers, and usually support programs high cost.
Where the government has time as the organization of the provision and distribution of food commodities necessary to individuals at prices relatively low in order to take into account the social dimension, and this support includes the support of direct and indirect, and subsidy includes food and non-food, and the state allocates annually in the general budget State provision of social spending, which includes:
• Subsidy for basic commodities such as food, medicines and slides of the initial consumption of electricity, drinking water and petroleum products and LPG and natural gas.
• Subsidy services include subsidy for cooperative housing and public subsidy for rail and other means of transport, subsidy for treatment at the expense of the state and health insurance and medical insurance for students, subsidy university students, subsidy lending public, cooperative and slums, subsidy services, religious and youth.
• Subsidy for the agriculture sector by lowering interest rates, and increase the price of the supply of cane sugar.
• Subsidy for social insurance by opening the door of the pension does not host them and pay the deficit in the pension funds and increase the number of uninsured.
• Subsidy is dedicated to the integrated development of villages, and is spending on these services as a real entry added to the entry of individuals and on their behalf the State bears the costs of such services.
The alternatives to the reform policies of food subsidy:
System is a food subsidy is an integral part of government policy long term to achieve food security policy and achieve social justice, and thus achieve political stability, although the state has made progress in reducing the cost of the subsidy system, but the absolute costs of the system is still high, so the state is trying to reform the subsidy system towards improving the targeting of the poor and increase their access to subsidy and improve the effectiveness of cost management system, and when studying the options of policy reform, it is important to balance the state the benefits of each option and costs, in addition to taking into account the benefits and costs of supporting the political, social, and because of the inherent system of the current subsidy of the politically sensitive care, it is necessary to study alternatives for change, taking the political implications of each choice.
The subsidy program for food with a good target beneficiaries, will lead to improvement of real incomes and improve food security of the target groups without the benefit of this subsidy is not needed, the leak of the subsidy increased costs and decreased cost-effectiveness of these programs.
There are several options for direct food subsidies to those who deserve it and blocked for non-eligible, and these options are:
Option indirect which mean self-direction, and direct administrative guidance.
It occurs when the self-oriented benefits are available to all, but the course is designed in a way that only makes the poor tended to participate.
The systems are self-directed support food attractive because it reduces management costs, which do not need to be a large administrative apparatus to determine entitlement to benefit.
They are also politically acceptable ways to direct subsidies for food, because participation depends on the free choice of the individual and not on the occurrence of selection upon by a governmental entity. It also requires direct targeting of the administrative definition of the poor, and there is a quantitative approach to estimate the low-cost households, which is known as alternative test averages (Proxy Mean Test), which depends on the indicators are high, and thus lead to improved rates of targeted subsidy for the poor.
The subsidy of the food is not just a technical issue, but it is the subject of political implications as well. We have been efforts to reform the food subsidies directed to those who deserve better and reduce costs for fear of civil unrest.
That is why I have to policy makers and decision makers to take into account the political implications of what is to be made of the decisions when thinking about the reform of food subsidies.
The experiences of the past to study the importance of the following steps when considering the reform programs in support of food:
Adopt a gradual approach in bringing about change in the system of food subsidies, Organize public awareness campaigns to prepare the population for the justification and the need to reform
The application of some compensatory measures for groups that are exposed to some of the adverse effects of the reform programs of subsidy.
This approach aims to improve food security, and comes through:
The study of policy alternatives to increase food availability in the context of ongoing changes in local and global markets.
Develop policies to improve opportunities for households to obtain food in the framework of policies, market mechanisms and economic reform programs.
Analysis of the nutritional aspects of food security in terms of the biological advantage of food, and to identify the factors affecting the nutritional status.
Analysis of the food security situation within the household in terms of individuals most vulnerable to food shortages and methods of care, and therefore can be replaced other goods subsidized food to achieve household food security, according to desire these families and by geographic region, has this is costly in financial terms, but it will help to improve food security.
Identification of micro-nutrient deficiencies (iron, zinc, iodine vitamin A), and explore ways to improve the status of micro-nutrients through the addendum, or through plant breeding and genetic improvement.
Prof. Ali Abdalrahman