March 13, 2003
Selling Starvation
I.
Hunger
The need to increase food production is a matter of
vital importance in our time. Improved
crop yields could prevent the further increase of mass starvation, and insure
better nutrition, in the face of Earth's escalating population growth. One third of the world's children are
malnourished. In total 800 million people, one in seven of the world's
population, do not get enough to eat. These include nearly 40% of all Africans
and also one in nine people in the United States. In his 1996 address before
the World Food Summit, Jacques Diouf,
Director of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said: "It is
unacceptable that hunger and malnutrition continue to diminish the human
potential of nearly 20% of people on earth in an age when we explore planets
and beyond.”
The main factors accounting for this shortage in food
distribution are free enterprise and trade’s effects on society. With the combined use of hybrid seed and
increased cultivation of land, food production and nutrition would
increase. The growth of agricultural
production has slowed in recent years despite large numbers of undernourished
people in developing countries. The
FAO stated, “The growth of agricultural production throughout the world is
slowing because supplies are sufficient for consumers with the means to
purchase food while the undernourished in developing countries need more food
but cannot afford to buy it.” The growth
rate of world agricultural production was 3 percent a year in the 1960s, 2.3
percent in the 1970s, 2 percent in 1980-92, is now 1.8 percent and will
continue to drop in the period to the year 2010, FAO reported.
To create hybrid seed, plant breeders usually select
two distinct 'inbred lines' - plants that produce new plants from seed that are
identical to each other and to their parent plant. Each of the two lines
selected will be quite different from one another. The two lines are crossed,
and the resulting seed is called ‘hybrid,' 'F1' or 'F1: hybrid.' Inbred lines have their particular
characteristics fixed over years (generations) of inbreeding. One line may
carry desirable characteristics such as earliness, hardiness, attractive color
and high sugar content. While the second line may carry insect- and
disease-resistance. When the two lines are crossed, the resultant seed will
contain the characteristics of both lines; as well possess ‘hybrid vigor' - the
ability to resist environmental stress. When two cultivars, which are not
inbred lines, are crossed, the offspring are usually variable in size and other
characteristics. The hybrids fro! m inbred lines are uniform and robust.
There are many obvious advantages to using hybrid seed. It is often impossible to get uniform,
robust plants with many desirable characteristics without using hybrid seed.
Hybrids yield as much as two to three times the crops per acre and are of
better quality than straight-line cultivars.
In Ethiopia, Maize is the predominantly produced crop
used for human consumption. Average
productivity of maize in Ethiopia is attributable to many factors: drought,
degradation of natural resources, poor state of infrastructure, insufficient
technology generation, lack of credit facilities, poor seed quality and weak
extension support. Recognizing the
importance of maize hybrid seed in improving productivity, the Government of
Ethiopia addressed the most pressing problem facing the seed sub-sector. To this effect, seed laws that encouraged
the participation of the private sector and marketing of seed were put in
place. As a result, Pioneer Hi-Bred
Seed Ethiopia PLC is engaged in producing, processing, distributing, and
selling hybrid seed of maize in Ethiopia particularly for small-scale farmers
since 1993. The company has a worldwide
leadership position in maize seed product development, production, quality
control, marketing, and general management technology. Conse! quently, one would believe that
Ethiopian farmers are benefiting from improved and high quality maize hybrids
supplied by Pioneer. The company is
playing a vital role in the food self-sufficiency program launched by the
Government of Ethiopia.
However, one of the main disadvantages of using hybrid
seed is that you cannot reproduce the same quality of plants from seed you save
to plant next year. Should you replant seed from your hybrid plants, instead of
robust, uniform plants like the first generation, the second generation will be
low in productivity and variable. Therefore you must always buy new hybrid seed
each year. The suppliers, unfortunately, may raise their price tremendously as
well as breed seed that is irreproducible.
With Pioneer Hi-Bred seed having a monopoly on biotechnology in
Ethiopia, the Ethiopian government has put its people into a dangerous
position. They are at the mercy of
Pioneer’s pricing. Ultimately, Pioneer
gets to make the decision of who is allowed food.
In the case of Monsanto, one of the largest
agricultural corporations in the world, making money is the key objective. A worldwide campaign has grown in a fight
against Monsanto’s corporate goals. A
Monsanto official told the New York Times, October 25, 1998, that the
corporation should not have to take responsibility for the safety of its food
products. “Monsanto should not have to vouch for the safety of biotech
food," said Phil Angell, Monsanto’s director of corporate communications.
"Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety
is the FDA's job." Roundup Ready,
Monsanto’s newest line of hybrid seed, is not only irreproducible, but it is
only compatible with a certain brand of fertilizer needed for growth. Monsanto, conveniently, holds the patent on
the only type of compatible engineered nutrients. With private corporations controlling market prices, the benefits
of hybrid seed are quickly destroyed.
In 1960 the FAO launched its Freedom
from Hunger Campaign. This program
recognizes three essential services that a government must provide for a
country’s agricultural development: (a) education, (b) research, and (c)
extension. These three elements are
often underfinanced, understaffed, and underequipped. In many developing countries, there is no budget for research or
extension so education tends to be purely academic with no hands-on or applied
learning.
The FAO defines agricultural
extension as “an informal out-of-school educational service for training and
influencing farmers (and their families) to adopt improved practices in crop
and livestock production, management, conservation, and marketing.” This type of program can be implemented in
several ways. In some Asian villages,
this includes the procurement and distribution of improved seeds, farm implements,
fertilizers, and insecticides. However,
the ultimate goal of extension is to help people help themselves through
education. It is the application of
knowledge they possess to the fields they work. It is a long-term project in which they have several targets and
goals to strive for each year. “Plan
your work and work you plan” is the guiding principle of any extension worker.
Until education, research, and
extension spread throughout third world countries that are inflicted with
hunger, hybrid maize will fail to be beneficial. Proper use of hybrid seed must be taught for it differs from
natural seed in production style. For
example, in the Morogoro District in Tanzania, about 71% of farmers used
improved seed. Contrary to
expectations, those who claimed to have used the hybrid seed produced and sold
less maize, on average, than did their counterparts. This suggests the importance of other factors, such as the
appropriate use of new inputs and technologies.
In many countries, besides problems
of agricultural education, research, and extension, there are other problems to
be solved before food production can be considerably increased. These are concerned with socioeconomic and
institutional factors that influence the amount of maize marketed by small
farmers. In the West, farmers are paid
subsidies to leave their land uncultivated.
This creates a higher demand on the crops that do exist and, in turn,
raise the price of those crops. Also,
many governments have a regulation on the price of crops. This is another tactic used by governments,
in order to maximize the profits gained.
In the United States, many government leaders had been previously
employed by major private agribusiness (http://www.organicconsumers.org/Monsanto/revolvedoor.cfm). This evolves into a government which creates
policies that are most beneficial to the agricultural corporations to which
they were formerly employed. The
govern! ment loses sight of its ultimate goal of helping the general
population.
V.
Concept of “Consumer Surplus”
In the study of economics, we coin
the difference between what a group of people are willing to pay and what they
actually have to pay to buy a certain amount of a good as the “consumer
surplus”. This idea of a “consumer
surplus” is outright absurd. A world of
people are willing to pay a certain price for food. The average of the world’s willingness is considered the
consumers willingness-to-pay. If a
producer sells food at a price below that of the consumers willingness-to-pay,
it is considered a “consumer surplus”.
This term forgets about the individual consumer who’s willingness-to-pay
is below the producer’s selling price.
How is it possible to claim that the consumer has been granted a surplus
when half of the consumers are starving?
Based on the reason that some portion of the consumers are not paying to
their full willingness does not allow for the label ! blquote surplus”. Try explaining to these 800 million starving
people that there is an overall “surplus” in the food economy for consumers.
Similarly, the “producer surplus” is
the difference between the price for which a producer would be willing to
provide a good or service and the actual price at which the good or service is
sold. The ultimate goal for producers
in Western societies is to maximize this producer surplus. There is, in fact, no shortage of food, but
food is denied to the people who need it most.
“Access to food is a universal human right,” declared an activist
gathering at The World Food Summit in the Philippines, February 1996.
“Protecting that right must be accorded a higher priority than the pursuit of
commercial advantage and free trade.”
Running parallel to this continuing
crisis in food security is a rapidly expanding trade in agricultural
commodities - which is gradually becoming dominated by a small clique of
transnational corporations. Some 60% of
global food stocks are in the hands of private companies, six of which control
70% of the world’s grain trade. Cargill is the largest player in the world
grain market. The chairman, Whitney
MacMillan, has said: “There is a mistaken belief that the greatest agricultural
need in the developing world is to develop the capacity to grow food for local
consumption. That is misguided. Countries should produce what they produce
best -and trade.”
While some trade in food has always
and will always be necessary, it should not cause any person to unnecessarily
starve. In Mexico, small-scale farmers
are not able to compete with the intensive, subsidized, high-capital American
Mid-West production systems. In 1999,
Mexico imported half a million tons of maize; it now imports seven million. This has become a hardship on Mexican
peasants where one out of two does not have enough to eat.
The best foreseeable solution to the existing world
hunger is to cultivate more land and to use agricultural biotechnology that is
currently available. This biotechnology
must be taken out of the private sector and dispersed throughout public
organizations. Currently, the
“International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)” of the Philippines, has begun
working on this problem. As a public, non-profit organization, IRRI’s goal is
to generate and disseminate rice-related knowledge and technology of short- and
long-term environmental, social, and economic benefit and to help enhance
national rice research and extension systems.
This goal is beneficial to the millions of starving people in the
world. It does so by producing
biotechnology with no expected profit.
This is only found in the public sector. Corporations, like Monsanto and Cargill, have long-range goals to
increase producer surplus and profits.
These goals benefit! only
themselves and leave millions hungry.
The original concepts of free trade and laissez-faire
economics rejects state control and regulation and emphasizes economic
individualism, a market economy, and natural economic laws to guide the
production and consumption of goods.
Tariffs and other trade restrictions are rejected in favor of a
worldwide system of free trade. The
economic system becomes self-regulatory in nature, and each individual’s
pursuit of self-interest contributes to the well being of all. As far as agriculture is concerned, Western
Civilization does not follow the true spirit of this notion of free
enterprise. People’s self-interest is
not contributing to the overall good.
Agribusiness needs to be taken out of the hands of the private sector
and placed into that of the public in order to satisfy its ultimate duty of
ending world hunger.
Based on the statistics presented,
if all the uncultivated land in the world was used to raise crops, we would
have enough food to feed every human in the world. As the world population grows, this may become harder. However, with the free use of hybrid seed
technology along with the new land being put in production, we could keep up
with this number as well. Genetically
engineered seed has infinite benefits if used the right way and without
government restrictions and private corporations selfish desires. Some argue that the deforestation involved
in cultivating this extra land is a tragedy in itself. However, the small amount of land being
taken from the beauty of the earth does not compare with the tragedy of
millions of starving lives.
Civilization has the means to end hunger. It just needs to put these means into production.
Works Cited
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Menasha, Washington.
Fitzgerald, Deborah 1990 The
Business of Breeding: Hybrid Corn in Illinois.
Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York.
Fraenkel, Richard M. 1979 The
Role of US Agriculture in Foreign Policy.
Praeger Publishers, New York, New York.
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Technology Development and Transfer: A GIS Application for Research Planning in
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York.
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