Greetings –
International food trade can contribute to the food security of those who are well off, but it tends to work against the interests of poor people who are not food producers and the small-scale producers who are not selling into the major markets. Thus trade is not a good means for ending hunger.
Some people think of the commodity-based global food system as if it were the only one, but for many people there are separate local food systems that have little connection with the global one. Small local farms, often dismissed as “inefficient”, play a crucial role in providing low-cost foods to the local poor. If those small local farms are consolidated, and made more “efficient”, perhaps under the ownership of outsiders, they are likely to ship their products out to people with money, whether in the same country or abroad. The local poor are bypassed.
Also, new large scale-farms are likely to do much more harm to the local environment than the agro-ecology that is traditionally practiced on small local farms.
Food exports from poor countries produce benefits for local people, but the distribution of those benefits is likely to be highly skewed, with much of the benefit going to outsiders, the local rich, and the government, not to those who work in the fields, and not to local non-farmers.
Many poor countries see trade agreements as increasing their vulnerability to exploitation by powerful outsiders. They become especially vulnerable when the agreements prohibit making any restrictions on imports. Powerful outsiders can easily displace local producers.
In the case of the North American Free Trade Agreement, for example, it was clear from the outset that small-scale corn producers in Mexico would be hurt as a result of massive imports of subsidized corn from the United States into Mexico. The pressure to open domestic markets to foreign suppliers often means the flooding of domestic markets with food from outside. Local food producers cannot compete with the imports, with the result that their incomes plummet, destroying their food security.
The division between international trade advocates and its critics can be understood in terms of two connected points: markets are beneficial mainly to the rich and powerful; and strategies of self-sufficiency are beneficial mainly to the poor and weak.
This explains why the strongest advocates of free trade are the rich, and the strongest advocates of self-sufficiency are the poor and their friends. Strategies of self-sufficiency protect the weak from potentially exploitative relationships with those who are stronger.
Richer countries promote trade in a way that suggests it would be beneficial to all, but it would not be equally beneficial, and it certainly would not favor the poor. Trade tends to provide its greatest benefits to those who are more powerful. It contributes to the widening of the gap between rich and poor. The market system promotes the flow of food and wealth toward money and power, not toward need.
One way to protect the vulnerable would be to ensure that all parties have a clear voice in deciding what would be good for them. If small-scale corn producers in Mexico had a seat at the negotiating table, they might not have been overrun by the North American Free Trade Agreement.
It is possible to add elements to trade agreements to protect the vulnerable. Rather than relying on the market alone to improve living conditions for the poor, trade agreements could include non-market measures such as social safety nets that protect and improve their living conditions. Those who are confident that the safety nets for the poor will not be needed should have no hesitation about providing them, as a kind of insurance.
Packaging trade proposals together with protective programs of this kind might increase the likelihood that poor communities would support them.
Aloha, George Kent
Проф. George Kent