In one of my previous articles in this blog, I outlined the need for a global food management agenda involving multilateral agencies like the United Nations. However, the results on that front in the last several decades do not inspire confidence. The limelight in the United Nations is often stolen by military and geopolitical issues. Nuclear paranoia and the Cold War overshadowed agendas like global food security while people starved around the world in the first few decades of the United Nations. The drama surrounding the Cuban Missile crisis, for example, got way more attention than food scarcity in Asia or Africa. India got bilateral help from countries like the United States in the food area. However, future historians may well have to answer the question as to why a country like India that sent its soldiers to do peacekeeping in Korea did not receive adequate food help from UN agencies. Or why Prime Minister Nehru did not make India's participation in peacekeeping in Korea conditional on receiving adequate food aid from the UN in a world where countries like the United States, Canada and the Soviet Union had enormous areas available for agriculture, probably way beyond what they needed for their own populations.
After the end of the Cold War, the record has been even more dismal in many ways. Several African countries have faced historically high starvation levels and have not received adequate food through UN agencies. Of course, UN agencies like the World Food Programme are not going to meet full success unless the question of resource allocation for agriculture at the global level is also addressed. And that question has met with scant or no attention.
The future of the world food supply is likely to be even more precarious, not only due to climate change, but also due to other factors like the depletion of minerals necessary for fertilizer production. In such a scenario, and given the inertia of institutions like the United Nations, nations that are likely to face severe food problems may do well to bargain with nations that are likely to be comfortable in food production and reach accords in the area of economic exchange. For example, mineral-rich countries can try to strike agreements with food-rich countries about stipulated exchanges of crucial resources ( like minerals and food ) in advance. Public management of food resources and mineral resources will be crucial in this regard. Leaving everything to the whim of market forces will prove disastrous. These kinds of agreements about crucial resources will be meaningless in a fully capitalistic framework since one cannot control when and how capitalistic agents will engage in exchange. While market agents can use instruments like futures to ensure supply price stability, these instruments are unlikely to solve overall problems of food scarcity inside a nation. Also, futures cannot eliminate the shortage of food and cannot prevent its price from rising due to scarcity. Also, poor people in food-scarce countries cannot be left to the whims of capitalistic forces in this kind of world. It is time for governments of countries to act to save public land for agriculture and mineral extraction. And even consider fair ways to nationalize agricultural land and mines, if need be, keeping economic justice priorities in mind. This kind of nationalization can be unpopular among both rich landowners and small landowners. However, experts need to determine both the need for nationalization, the amount of fair compensation etc. Public awareness needs to be built about the need for nationalization in countries with scarce agricultural resources. In countries like India, where hundreds of millions of people lack entitlement to food, such measures ( that are likely to be unpopular with landowners ) may become necessary if the future well-being of the masses are to be ensured. The current system of minimum support prices can run into serious difficulty in achieving its aims in scenarios of more serious food scarcity. The government will then have to pay exorbitantly high prices for its public distribution system and it may still not be able to buy enough food to provide for the very needy. In other words, the combination of capitalistic agriculture combined with the minimum support price system that the government has in place will fall woefully short if, for example, the world supply of phosphate fertilizers is seveely constrained and no alternative is found. Heavily indebted governments running already huge deficits will not be able to afford the exorbitant payments if food prices skyrocket. Also relevant here is the extent to which governments can prevent misallocation of land for uses other than agriculture when there is concern about severe food scarcity in the future.
Governments that own and manage large areas of land for agriculture will find it much easier to deal with a world of severe food scarcity. In order to obtain control of significant amounts of agrocultural land, several countries will have to face the thorny question of compensation to landowners. Also, when the country is likely to face severe food scarcity, significant sacrifice may be required from very rich farmers. While nationalization of significant areas of agricultural land is an extreme step, some countries may be able to meet their aims with more benign arrangements like requiring rich farmers to donate a substantial part of their produce to national food funds. Nationalization is a less throny problem in the area of minerals since national ownership of mines is often a norm. Countries that have embarked on divestment or denationalization drives for things like mines will need to re-examine these policies. As mentioned earlier, significant national ownership of these resources will allow food security diplomacy to proceed on a bilateral basis between countries. The ability to institute such arrangements may well prove crucial to avoiding mass hunger given the stepmotherly treatment that UN food agencies receive from rich and food-rich countries.
by C. Jayant Praharaj
After the end of the Cold War, the record has been even more dismal in many ways. Several African countries have faced historically high starvation levels and have not received adequate food through UN agencies. Of course, UN agencies like the World Food Programme are not going to meet full success unless the question of resource allocation for agriculture at the global level is also addressed. And that question has met with scant or no attention.
The future of the world food supply is likely to be even more precarious, not only due to climate change, but also due to other factors like the depletion of minerals necessary for fertilizer production. In such a scenario, and given the inertia of institutions like the United Nations, nations that are likely to face severe food problems may do well to bargain with nations that are likely to be comfortable in food production and reach accords in the area of economic exchange. For example, mineral-rich countries can try to strike agreements with food-rich countries about stipulated exchanges of crucial resources ( like minerals and food ) in advance. Public management of food resources and mineral resources will be crucial in this regard. Leaving everything to the whim of market forces will prove disastrous. These kinds of agreements about crucial resources will be meaningless in a fully capitalistic framework since one cannot control when and how capitalistic agents will engage in exchange. While market agents can use instruments like futures to ensure supply price stability, these instruments are unlikely to solve overall problems of food scarcity inside a nation. Also, futures cannot eliminate the shortage of food and cannot prevent its price from rising due to scarcity. Also, poor people in food-scarce countries cannot be left to the whims of capitalistic forces in this kind of world. It is time for governments of countries to act to save public land for agriculture and mineral extraction. And even consider fair ways to nationalize agricultural land and mines, if need be, keeping economic justice priorities in mind. This kind of nationalization can be unpopular among both rich landowners and small landowners. However, experts need to determine both the need for nationalization, the amount of fair compensation etc. Public awareness needs to be built about the need for nationalization in countries with scarce agricultural resources. In countries like India, where hundreds of millions of people lack entitlement to food, such measures ( that are likely to be unpopular with landowners ) may become necessary if the future well-being of the masses are to be ensured. The current system of minimum support prices can run into serious difficulty in achieving its aims in scenarios of more serious food scarcity. The government will then have to pay exorbitantly high prices for its public distribution system and it may still not be able to buy enough food to provide for the very needy. In other words, the combination of capitalistic agriculture combined with the minimum support price system that the government has in place will fall woefully short if, for example, the world supply of phosphate fertilizers is seveely constrained and no alternative is found. Heavily indebted governments running already huge deficits will not be able to afford the exorbitant payments if food prices skyrocket. Also relevant here is the extent to which governments can prevent misallocation of land for uses other than agriculture when there is concern about severe food scarcity in the future.
Governments that own and manage large areas of land for agriculture will find it much easier to deal with a world of severe food scarcity. In order to obtain control of significant amounts of agrocultural land, several countries will have to face the thorny question of compensation to landowners. Also, when the country is likely to face severe food scarcity, significant sacrifice may be required from very rich farmers. While nationalization of significant areas of agricultural land is an extreme step, some countries may be able to meet their aims with more benign arrangements like requiring rich farmers to donate a substantial part of their produce to national food funds. Nationalization is a less throny problem in the area of minerals since national ownership of mines is often a norm. Countries that have embarked on divestment or denationalization drives for things like mines will need to re-examine these policies. As mentioned earlier, significant national ownership of these resources will allow food security diplomacy to proceed on a bilateral basis between countries. The ability to institute such arrangements may well prove crucial to avoiding mass hunger given the stepmotherly treatment that UN food agencies receive from rich and food-rich countries.
by C. Jayant Praharaj