profits Of famine
Apart from the 100,000 lire (less than $200) that the delegates poured into the collection taken up at the conference, the major decision made - application of which is problematical anyway — was to form a grain reserve of 500, 000 tons to be reconstituted regularly and to establish an international system of food information and rapid alert. The proposal made by the FAO to develop a coordinated policy of stockpiling within the framework of an international agreement on food security was rejected. All these proposals, whether accepted or rejected, move in the same direction: assuring both the multinational firms exporting cereals and soya and the big capitalist farmers that prices will not go down in the medium term. The April 20,
1974, issue of The Economist wrote: "Farmers as well as financiers have begun playing the swings and roundabouts now that prices are unsettled; that means when the next downturn in prices does come, perhaps early next year if harvests go well, it will be as sharp as the rise since 1972. " Nevertheless, for the immediate future, given the euphoria provoked by the skyrocketing prices, the big producers are opposing the constitution of controlled reserves at the governmental level (as recommended in the FAO proposal). Thus, the president of Cook Industries, Inc., one of the main American grain companies, exclaimed: "When reserves are held by any government, the uncertainty of how they will be used discourages planning. " But in the context of a new overproduction - relative to effective demand - the constitution of these stocks, like the alarm system, acts to bolster prices and guarantee capitalist profits; it is not an effective response to the real needs of millions of hungry people. Thus, Roger Revelie writes: "Establishing a wellmanaged world food bank during the next three or four years could be helpful to farmers in the principal exporting countries. With normal weather the U.S. can expect a succession of bumper crops, with a resulting downward pressure on prices. "(2) The representative of one of the largest cereal broker firms, Piper, Jaffray, and Hopwood, confirms this judgment: "If any surplus begins to pile
the absudity от a system leo by the anarchic up and the prices dwindle, you will see some real pressure from the farm sector for the government to buy and hold reserves. " (Business Week, November 12, 1974.) These few remarks alone underline to what extent all the discussion about "world food security" and "responding to the famine" has to be located within the narrow framework traced out by the policy of the United States and the interests of the giants who dominate the food sector. Five companies control the essential part of the soya and cereal exports of the United States, which holds hegemony over food exports on the world market: Continental Grain, Cargill, Archer Daniels, Midland Bunge, and Central Soya. Thus, the essential concern of many representatives of the imperialist powers about the necessity of setting up food reserves can be summarized in this simple phrase: Beginning from effective demand, what are the best ways of trying to stabilize the prices of the various cereals and of soya at the highest possible levels over a prolonged period? A great part of the work of the Rome food conference and of the two previous conferences can be explained when viewed in this light. Undernourishment, malnutrition, and hunger, with all their effects (the death rate of preschool-aged children who suffer from malnutrition is 30-50% higher than that of well-fed children; obstacles to the development of intellectual faculties, vulnerability to disease, and refardation of growth are other effects) are not at all the inevitable product of climatic conditions, drought, or population growth, but rather of the conditions of capitalist production and distribution, which create poverty side by side with abundance. This was explicitly admitted by an ex-president of the FAO Council who wrote on the occasion of the 1970 world food conference: "The objective for 1960 set in 1946 was the doubling of prewar food production. In 1960 the index of food production stood at only 155, not 200, for as soon as production approached quantities equilaws ot the market... valent to effective demand, markets became clogged with alleged 'surpluses. ' These annoyed governments much more than insufficient food levels did. "(3) Crisis of overproduction The bourgeois press has not missed any opportunity to scream about natural catastrophes or the wheat purchases made by the Soviet Union in 1972 as "explanations" of the explosion of cereal shortages and the famine. But first of all, famine was making itself felt, although less acutely, in a great number of colonial and semicolonial countries a long time ago. Second, the present shortage of cereals and other food products absolutely does not have the character of a "crisis of subsistence, " of an under-production of use values, as could have been the case during the sixteenth century in France or during the "dearths" that periodically marked the history of China. These types of crises express either insufficient development of productive capacities or limitations of the system of transport and exchange (Famine in one province and abundance in another). The present shortage, with its terrifying effects for the people of many countries, is explained fundamentally by the overproduction relative to effective demand during the late 1960s. The present shortages are the result of a past overproduction of exchange values, of a relative abundance of cereals that could not be sold on the market, since there were not enough paying customers! Hence, faced with price declines, cereal producers reduced production drastically, and a reduction in investment was undertaken both on plantations (sugar, cocoa and in the sector of cereal production, especially in Argentina, Australia, the United States, and Canada. In face of the development of a demand generated by the industrial boom of 1972-73, and with the addition of various other factors (drought, bad harvest in the Soviet Union in 1971-72, etc.), underproduction developed in the food sector beginning in 1973. This dispropor-
57
FAMINE tion is an expression of the anarchic development of a system of production that operates not on the basis of real needs, but instead on the basis of the imperative of the highest possible profit. From 1969 on, international trade experts began to become uneasy about the excess of wheat and the decline of prices. Thus, the director of the London Center for Trade Policy Research wrote: "Wheat surpluses are growing rapidly. According to present trends they could reach 70 million tons within two years. The international cereal accord, concluded during the Kennedy negotiations, failed because governments were not prepared to apply its provisions concerning price maintenance. The price of wheat therefore fell. And with falling prices, wheat is going to be increasingly utilized for animal feed, which will further weaken the price of cereals now being used as livestock feed. "(4) The cereal exporters, the big capitalist farmers, obviously were not going to wait around for the formation of surpluses exceeding 70 million tons. The evolution of the wheat stocks held by the exporting countries (Argentina, Australia, Canada, the Common Market countries, the United States) clearly indicates the capitalist reaction to the formation of surpluses and the fall of prices. (5) In its 1973 report on international trade, the GATT pointed in choice terms to the decline in investment in various agricultural sectors in the late 1960s and to the shortages that resulted, beginning in 1972: "For some agricultural products, in particular those with a long productior, cycle, ... the 1960s and the early 1970s constituted a long period during which prices were relatively low, and certain in-
TABLE | WHEAT (in millions of tons) Years Stocks of exporters World U.S. Canada Total share (1) share(1) 1964/65 46.1 21.5 12.5 50.3 1965/66 46.2 22.3 14.0 59.7 1966, 67 33.4 14.6 11.4 52.8 1967/68 35.1 11.6 15.7 47.2 1968/69 40.6 14.7 18.1 43.7 1969/70 60.6 22.3 23.2 48.1 1970/71 63.7 24.1 27.5 50.3 1971/72 48.8 19.8 20.0 51.2 1972/73 29.0 23.5 16.0 67.6 1973/74 20.7 11.6 10.0 64.7 (L) Open stocks (2) Calendar years 1971, 1972, 1973 58 dicators suggest that since the urge to invest was weak, the long-term production cycles passed to the bottom of their curves. Consequently, when demand increased toward the end of 1972 and during 1973, it was not possible to palpably increase production because of the long time lag between investment (planting) and harvest. "(6) Stocking arable land In the area of cereals, which are the major food resource exported on the world market, this movement can be clearly followed. The world export price of wheat had been diminishing noticeably since the middle of the 1960s. The price index (based on 100 in 1963) was 94 in 1969 and 90 in 1970(7) Under these conditions, stocks as a percentage of world exports could only increase, as table 1 indicates. From that point on, the amount of land sown with wheat was strongly reduced. According to certain sources, between 1968 and 1970 Australia, the United States, Canada, and Argentina decrease the amount of land on which wheat was planted by 39 million acres. (8) According to a study published in the journal Challenge (MarchApril 1974), the area of land cultivated with wheat in Canada in 1970 was 50% of what it had been in 1969 - and that amount was already inferior to the acreage cultivated in 1967 and 1968. For the United States, wheat acreage in 1970 stood at 80% of its 1968 level and 74% of its 1967 level. This can be seen in the increase in the amount of reals that could have been grown on land that was left fallow in the United States, which according to the calculations of Lester Brown and Erik P. Eckholm(9), passed from 51 million tons in 1967 to 73 million
World Pro- Stocks of exporters as Exports duction percentage of:
World World Production
277 92 17
267 77 17
310 63 11
299 71 12
332 93 12
315 126 19
318 127 20
354(2) 96 14
346(2) 43 8.5
378(2) 32 55
tons and 71 million tons in 1970 and 1971. (10) The effects of these restrictions are also reflected in the amount of wheat harvested.
TABLE 1I WHEAT HARVEST (in millions of tons) 1969,70 1970/72
United States 39.7 37.5
Canada 18.6 9.0
Australia 10.8 7.6
Argentina 7.0 4.2 The overall evolution of land stocks - that is, land set in reserve - in the United States has also been calculated by some French authors. The results are convincing and totally confirm the tendencies stressed earlier as far as cereals are concerned (11):
TABLE III LAND UNDER CULTIVATION (in millions of hectares)*
65/66 66/67 67/68 68/69 69/70 70/71. 71/72
7.3 7.1 3.6 5.0 8.1 9.5 7.7
* 1 acre - .4 hectare These severe restrictions in the area of land under cultivation in cereal in the United States, Australia, and Canada stimulated a price increase that was further accentuated by the combined effects of some additional factors: reduction of cereal production in the Soviet Union in 1971-72, which led the USSR to make large purchases on the world market; climatic changes that occurred throughout most of 1972 and whose effects were strongly felt in 1973; insufficient monsoons in vast areas of Asia causing reductions in production of rice and a growth in demand for cereals as replacements; strong demand in the imperialist countries in the context of the 1972-73 boom, etc. Prices literally skyrocketed. The world price index for wheat rose from 90 in 1970 to 96 in 1971 to 110 in 1972 to 214 in 1973 (and to 253 in the third quarter of 1973, 292 in the fourth quarter, and 321 in the first quarter of 1974). A bushel of raw wheat on the Kansas City market sold for an average of $1.68 in the second week of March 1973; it later rose to $2.63 and then, by the second week of March 1974, to $5.57. In the third week of December 1974 the price "declined" and was set at $4.49 (in the third week of December 1973 it had been
$5.17). (12) To be sure, speculation - by Japanese capitalists, among others, who responded to American imperialism by playing the game of tassive purchases of basic products - stimulated this soaring of prices, but the speculation operated on the fertile ground prepared by the reduction of acreage cultivated in 1969 and 1970. Stocks were then placed on the world market at strongly remunerative prices. By the second half of 1973 in the major wheat-exporting countries stocks were reduced to the minimum and could not provide sources of supply (see table 1). Stocks of secondary cereals (barley, corn, rye, oats) experienced the same fate. Their production rose to 57.20 million tons in 1971 and then fell to 32.40 million tons in 1973 (for Argentina, Australia, Canada, the original six Common Market countries, South Africa, and the United States). The price of corn went through the same dizzying increase. The index of its world export price (1963=100) reached 98 in 1969, 110 in 1970, 108 in 1971, 111 in 1972, 181 in 1973, and 231 in the first quarter of 1974. 13) This price explosion could only encourage the capitalists to begin cultivating land that had been lying fallow. The American government then eliminated the traditonal land-quota system (passing a new law in 1972) in order to leave the producers complete freedom to draw maximum profits from the exceptionally high world market prices. In 1974, subsidies for leaving land fallow were eliminated. Thus, in Canada for the 1973-74 harvest the area cultivated increased 16%, but yield increased only 2%. In the United States the equivalent figures were 14% and less than 3%. There is no doubt that a new subsidy for fallow land will be enacted as soon as additional quantities of wheat threaten price levels dangerouslyLong-term Malthusian policy The bad harvests of 1972 worsened the shortage. In fact, world wheat production in 1972 was 2% less than it had been in 1971; rice production was down 4%. Likewise, corn production dropped from 305.61 million tons in 1971 to 301.39 million tons in 1972. Nevertheless, even if one combines the annual average growth in demand for cereal products (25-35 million tons) and the fail in production, one arrives at a figure that falls far short of the total losses due to the reduction of acreage under cultivation in the late 1960s and early 1970s. If during the period 1969-72 the United States, Argentina, Australia, and Canada had simply maintained a constant rate of cultivation, the supplementary production of wheat would have been approximately 90 million tons. (Washington Post, October 21, 1974) To totally demolish all claims that the fam-
59
FAMINE ine is a result of "natural calamities" produced by climatic conditions or population growth it is sufficient to compare this figure of 90 million tons with the 8 million tons of wheat needed during the next eight months by India, Bangladesh, Tanzania, and the Sahel countries - and refused by the exporting countries! The equation that explains the famine that is now affecting tens of millions of inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent and the Sahel is simple: Malthusianism in the imperialist countries plus the failure of the so-called green revolution in the semicolonial contries. In examining the manipulations of the cereal sector during the past few years, if must be noted that during the past twelve years in the United States alone about 62.5 million acres of arable land were left fallow in the framework of the application of agricultural programs. (14) The United States plays a decisive role on the world food market: U.S. participation in world exchange of secondary cereals stands at about 60% of the total; for wheat the figure is 50%; it is 95% for soya and 56.6% for soya fodder (figures for 1972-73). But Malthusianism takes on a new dimension when one compares the areas withdrawn from production in the United States with those affected by the "green revolution" in the semicolonial countries. Thus, a study conducted by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development affirms: "The lack of dynamism of wheat export markets was also among the elements that led the United States to reduce by one-fourth the land under cultivation in 1968 and 1969. If to this is added the lands that were previously devoted to cultivation of other crops and have also been withdrawn from cultivation, the total comes to about 20 million hectares (about 50 million acres) withdrawn from production, which is, perhaps by an ironic coincidence, slightly more than the land cultivated with new varieties of crops in the less developed countries. "(15) Concurrently, in India or Pakistan increased commercialization of agricultural production under the effects of the "green revolution" is strengthening the effects of the world market on production itself, regardless of the actual needs of the population. Thus, between 1964 and 1969 rice stocks in the United States, Thailand, and Pakistan tripled, increasing from 358 million tons to 1,050 million tons. Immediately voices were raised denouncing overproduction and the risks of a fall in prices. (On the basis of 1963-100, the world export price index was 113 in 1969 and 97 in 1970.) Hence, at the beginning of the 1960s, investments were withdrawn, even in the couniries affected by the "green revolution. " This was recognized by the Far Eastern Economic Review, which wrote (April 24, 1974):
"The output fall (in rice production) of 1972-73, although largely the result of bad weather, was partly caused by a preceding downswing in prices brought on by still earlier surpluses. " In 1973 the world export price index reached a record of 198! This deliberate organization of underproduction af a time when the "world is courting famine, " according to the expression used by many experts, has been carried out in other sectors as well. Thus, although the lack of animal protein and dairy products is one of the indications of underfeeding and malnutrition, the Malthusian policy developed within the Common Market was such that the number of milk cows passed from 22.1 million in 1968 to 21.2 million in 1971, and 21.4 million in 1972. (16) Examples could be multiplied. It is not at all an exaggeration to ossert that the millions of human beings who are threatened with starvation during coming months will have been murdered by the profit laws of the market economy. Strangling productivity According to FAO Secretary Boerma, the total number of people who are underfed (insufficient quantities of foodstuffs and thus of energy) or undernourished (insufficient nutritional quality of food amounts to about half the world's population. (Le Monde Diplomatique, October 1974.) In 1946 the FAO published a study conducted by the League of Nations in 1934-38 which affirmed that average per capita consumption of food in the countries that then represented two-thirds of humanity was insufficient to maintain a human being in healthy condition. At the end of the 1960s the director of the FAO declared: "It is no exaggeration to state that two men out of three suffer from hunger. "(17) Thus, even though progress in the realm of agricultural productivity has been fabulous, capitalism has proven itself incapable of even beginning to resolve the crucial problem of hunger. In addition to that, in the immediate future the disastrous effects of the increase in wheat, secondary cereals, and rice prices are going to hit the underdeveloped countries full force, countries whose dependence on the major capitalist exporting coun tries can only expand, as the following table of net imports and exports of cereals shows (18):
TABLE IV CEREAL IMPORTS AND EXPORTS (in millions of tons) Africa Asia North America
1934-38 +1 + 2 + 5
1948-52 -- 6 +23
1960 -7 -34 +39
1973 -4 -39 +88
Thus, in 1974 India will have to increase its usual expenditures by at least $100 million in order to pay the new cereal import bill. Bangladesh has suffered a loss of 2 million tons of cereals following grave floods. At present prises, buying that quantity of cereal will cost nearly S1 thousand million, while the total currency reserves of the country amount to about $40 million! (Paradoxically. West Germany saved millions of Deutschemark in 1973 by buying wheat at European prices, which, temporarily, were less than those of the world market.) In the present phase, the increases in food prices are being combined with increases in fertilizer prices. Thus, India will have to pay $500 million more in 1974 than in 1973 to buy nitrogen fertilizers. This increase in fertilizer prices, like the agricultural price increases, must be understood beginning from the imbalance that emerged between the growth of productive capacity of fertilizer factories during the 1960s and the effective demand on the market. Thus, in 1971 the chemical industrialists declared: "The world fertilizer industry went on a plant building spree that resulfed in massive overcapacity. Prices plummeted and profits disappeared. "(19) In the United States at the end of the 1960, the nitrogen- and potassium-based fertilizer industries were working at 80% capocity. While in the middle of the 1960s growth in demand for ferlilizer was 10% yearly, it was only 7% in 1969 and 5.5% in 1970. Hence, productive capacity was stabilized and even reduced. In 1971 the European nitrogen fertilizer cartel, Nitrex A. G., planned its production through 1975 on the basis of the productive capacity that had been installed before 1971, with no perspective of growth of productive possibilities. (20) In the United States some companies have even closed. Through this method the monopolies of fertilizer producers were able to boost their profits again. The prices charged by the three major American fertilizer producers increased 65% during the last quarter of 1973. The world market price of a ton of waste-based fertilizer passed from 540 in 1971 to $260 in April 1974. (The Economist, April 4, 1974.) In the present period, the fertilizer production trusts are not prepared to rapidly redeploy their productive capacities. They do not desire to fall back into the situation of the 1960s, even though actual need - which cannot find expression sion, because of the prices — is gigantic. At present prices, only the food-exporting countries, which in any case pass on rising costs by increasing sales prices of cereals, are in position to buy fertilizer in quantity. This can only accentuate the unevenness in utilization of insecticides and fertilizers beween the advanced and underdeveloped capitalist countries. Already today the former use 85% of all insecticides and 75% of all fertilizer, even though they have less than 30% of the land. To be sure, fortilizer production plants were set up in the semicolonial countries as part of the "green revolution. " Nevertheless, they were often controlled by imperialist trusts. This was the case with the Coromandel Fertilisers Ltd. complex, the first private complex set up in India, which was jointly controlled by a subsidiary of Standard Oil (Chevron Chemical Company) and EID-Parry Ltd, the largest producer and seller of fertilizer in India. Further, the transfer of technology as organized by the agribusiness multinationals can have the most disastrous effects on the agriculture of a country. India, for example, saw a rapid growth in its fertilizer production, which passed from 71, 000 tons in 195152 to 3.9 million tons in 1973-74. But the type of fertilizer produced, which was decided by the Bank for International Reconstruction and Development, depends on oil. The increase in the price of oil, distribution of which is often concentrated in the hands of the same monopolies that control fertilizers, means that it is impossible for India to utilize the productive capacity of its own factories (due to the price and relative scarcity of naptha). Of an existing capacity of 2.1 million tons, only 1.5 million will be used in 1973. (21) Initially it was quite possible to set up fertilizer production based on coal, but that was not in the interests of the imperialist monopolies. An additional repercussion of the transfer of technology according to the exigencies of the multinational firms lies in the utilization of fertilizers that endanger the existence of certain animal populations providing food that is qualitatively and quantitatively indispensable for guaranteeing odequate nourishment for the peasantry. The resulting nutritional deficiencies diminish the productivity of labor and have deleterious effects on all agricultural production. Thus, certain fertilizers used in the rice paddies kill fish, eliminating food that is qualitatively essential for the balanced diet of the rural population. Nevertheless, it remains true that the created shortage of fertilizer, with the resulting price rises, fends to increase the gap in agricultural productivity between the advanced and underdeveloped capitalist countries, even though the effects of using fertilizer would normally lead to much higher production increases on nonsaturated land (in underdeveloped countries) than on saturated land (in developed countries). Once again, when examined from the standpoint of fertilizers, the present famine is seen not to be a result of technological problems or accidental
61
FAMINE shortages, but of capitalist anarchy, of the impact of the "laws of the market" on production, distribufion, and utilization of fertilizers. It could be added that utilization of the surplus productive capacity that has appeared today in the automobile industry (more than 25%) would permit the production of motors (designed to utilize the minimum of carbons) for irrigation pumps or tractors. Population, climate, Soviet purchases Like a Wagnerian leitmotiv, three themes have been systematically taken up to "explain" and excuse the "responsibility" of the capitalist system in the exacerbation of the famine: population, climate, and massive wheat purchases by the Soviet Union. It is not necessary to make lengthy comments on the first theme. According to the tableau drawn up by Colin Clark (which excludes possibilities of irrigating arid or semiarid land and artificial heating of the tundra, etc., but takes account of possibilities of fertilization), it can be deduced that the developed countries alone could satisfy the food needs of 11.2 thousand million human beings. (22) Taking account of the need to change fertilizers in order not to accentuate the destruction of the soil and to make adjustments in the realm of energy, a very recent study arrived of the conclusion that it is possible to feed between ten and thirteen times the present world population at an average daily level of 4,000-5,000 calories, that is, well above the minimum set by the FAO. (23) As for climate, technological possibilities exist for partially modifying climatic conditions (e.g., the experiments in desalinating sea water for purposes of irrigation, etc.). But the solution is not of a technological order. René Dumont has written on this score: "From India to Bangladesh more than a third of rural labor is unused; but only 27% of cultivated Indian land is irrigated, as against 77% of Chinese arable land. " (Le Monde, April 3, 1974.) In addition, the consequences of droughts or bad monsoons could be largely reduced if the utilization and distribution of harvests, and all agricultural production as well, were centrally planned on a continental or world scale. The response to drought in China was given on two levels: irrigation and planning of production and distribution of harvests. Thus, the situation was eliminated in which there would be famine in one province and relative abundance and speculative stockpiling in another, neighboring province. Finally, what about the Soviet wheat purchases? Their impact on the reduction of stocks was not as 62 great as that of the reduction in cultivated land in 1970. But these purchases gave rise to an extraordinary speculative operation favoring the monopolies that are the top cereal exporters in the United States. The negotiations between the USSR and the United States took place in July-August 1972. The Soviet Union promised to buy at least $750 million worth of wheat and received a $500 million credit from the United States. If world export prices are examined, it can be seen that they varied very little during these negotiations, but increased sharply with the end of the direct negotiations between the Soviet Union and the exporting firms (at the end of the first week of August). A large mass of farmers - those least closely tied to the big exporting companies and who thus did not know about the negotiations - delivered their harvest at relatively low prices. The companies (Bunge, Cargill, Continental Grain, Cook Industry, Louis Dreyfus, Garnac Grain, etc.) received government subsidies to replenish their stocks, subsidies that corresponded to the difference between the domestic price and the price fixed by the American government, a price that was close to the world market price. After having collected these subsidies, the companies could sell at a sharply raised price (after the negofiations were made public) that part of their previously reconstituted stocks that had not been sold to the USSR. The USSR bought the amount called for in the negoriations at a relatively low price (S60 a ton). (24) Thus, the purchases made by the Soviet Union permitted the companies that dominate the world cereal market to carry off a remarkable twofold coup that the hungry populations of Bangladesh and Sahel are now paying for! Failure of the "green revolution" The two previous world food conferences were held under the sign of the "green revolution. " The optimism of the technicians reigned. This time, it was the failure of this so-called revolution that provided the backdrop for the world food conference. The failure of this revolution was proven by the figures for the Indian cereal harvest: 104.7 million tons in 1972; 95 million tons in 1973 (the year of a drought). The Fourth Plan, which ended in March 1974, called for a production of 129 million tons. The harvest of 1974 is estimated at 108 million tons, which is the evel achieved in 1971, even though the population has increased each year. According to all available information, more than one-third of the 550 million inhabitants of India are in a very precarious situation. The present crisis brought out the classical contradictions of the "green revolution" much more sharply. First, from the standpoint of agricultural technology, this revolution involved a very high rate of utiliza-
tion of fertilizer and insecticides. While the rate of productivity for the special varieties of crops grown (rice eat, corn, etc.) was largely superior to that of the troditional varieties, they required a val of culture and fertilization: more fert er and insecticides, a perfected irrigation system (for example, hybrid rice cannot tolerate sub nion as con the long-grain rice grown in Cambodie or Vietnam), and a high level of professional technological training. An initial blow was dealt the green revolution" by the price increases for fertili 1 needed to run the motor pumps needed fian), insecticides, etc. But because of quirements, even before the price increase hand irrigated lands could make use of hiniques. But these lands were in the hands big landlords (47% of families in India ove es than one acre of land) or of capitalist compo Hat bow to the laws of the market and not to the food needs of the rural population, needs that unable to make themselves felt on the man Second, Integration of agriculture into the market, inclu g the world market of agricultural products, an absolute decrease in the troditional - citation of land; agriculture is buffeted by * Fluctuatiors and price increases for supplies octured products like fertilizers, pesticides, faim tools, etc.). Rural unemployment and undere ment increase. Result: stagnation or decline overall available buying power on the de arket. Consequently, stimulants to inves lide the agricultural sector do not exist, bec markets for manufactured industry are quite and expand only very slightly. Thus, the on between the growth of the rural population ied from the land and the creation of industria e ployment is in total imbalance. It's a vicious circle In this context - determined by an agricultural system that more and more directly obeys the lows of the capitalist market and that is dominaled by a castle of landed proprietors - increased use br -actors, for example, actually accentuates tur employment and coes not induce mion of available foodstuffs. In an overal India, despite the increase in the number of tractors, production of canals and other food products has not grown in proportion to the potential productive contribution of the tractors. Third, in regions Five the Sahel forced introduction of crops according to the requirements of the world market (peanuts, for example) causes a reduction in food croce, a the more so in that in order to get hold of the cash necessary for the purchase of various supplies and for paying taxes, the peasants are in fact compelled to give up subsistence farming. Added to this was a destruction of the soil (by fertilizers) well before the drought (which allowed the pillage to be camouflaged) and an insufficient amount of fallow land (because of the requirements of peanut growing); that is what is at the rout of the crisis of food production in this region. (25) But the exigencies of the capitalist market are unlimited. While the Sahel was faced with a terrible famine, a capitalist offensive was waged there aimed at developing ranches designed to raise young oxen to be exported to the advanced capitalist countries! Why? Because the use of "international did " for the purpose of assuring some level of irrigation and the use of a cheap labor force makes the total cost of raising oxen in Senegal, Niger, and Upper Volta twenty times less than in the United States! (See Afrique-Asie, December 2-15, 1974.) The circle of criminal absurdity into which capitalism has drawn the international economy in thus closed! The present generalized recession has already contributed to shaking the "credibility" of the capitalist system. The combination of this recession with the skyrocketing of agricultural prices - with the resulting social consequences, even in the imperialist countries (about 7 million people are in foodaid programs in the United States itself) - will be yet another element objectively denouncing capitalist anarchy and its crimes. The necessity of agrarian revolutions can only be felt with ever greater force: A part of the agricultural surplus (now consumed by landed proprietors or directed toward the world market) must be directed into productive investments; the national markets must be unified and controlled; rural unemployment and underemployment must be eliminated, and the level of consumption in the rural areas must be increased. Given a world that is courting famine, it is an immediate historic necessity to sef up on a world scale an economic system based on collective property in the means of production. In such a system, opfimum growth will be considered beginning from the social and political necessity (also profitable economically in the medium and long term for the whole of the world economy for a transfer of wealth from the "overdeveloped" to the "underdeveloped" countries, a transfer that will not at all involve a foll in the living standards of the workers of the most advanced countries, but will on the contrary lead to a qualitative and quantitative increase of those living standards. December 31, 1974 Footnotes: 1. See Erich H. Jacoby's article in Le Monde Diplomatique, December 1974.
63
Inprecor
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2. Scientific American, September 1974, p. 66. 3. Article by Michel Cépède in Le Monde Diplomatique, June 1970. 4. Ibid, article by H. Corbet. 5. Source: Rapport et perspectives sur les produits 1973-74, FAO, Rome, 1974. Cited in an article (manuscript) by J.P. Bertrand devoted to food reserves. 6. Le commerce internationale en 1973-74. General agreement on customs tarifs, Geneva, 1974, p.30. 7. Ibid, p.27. 8. Cited by E. Harsch, Intercontinental Press, December 16,1974. 9. "Les problèmes des réserves alimentaires mondiales" in Problèmes Economiques, July 24, 1974, p.4. 10. A. Azkenazy: "Panorama de la production de matières premières" in Problêmes Economiques, October 28, 1971, p. 23. 11. Cited by J.P. Berlan and J.P. Bertrand in a subscribe to (See page 2 for information on methods of payment.) 64 study entitled "Le marché mondiale des cérérales et du soja, " text of a conference held in May 1974 before the Fédération nationale porcine, France. 12. Business Week index. 13. Le commerce internationale en 1973-74, op cit. 14. Problèmes Economiques, July 14, 1974. 15. Yudelman Montague, "La revolution verte" in L'Observateur de l'OCDE, June 1971. 16. Nouvelles de la politique agricole commune, mimeograph, January 1974. 17. Michel Cépède: La Faim, PUF, 1970, p.78. 18. Economia, December 1974. 19. Chemical and Engineering News, July 5,1974. 20. Ibid. 21. Le Monde Diplomatique, October 1974. 22. Colin Clark, Abondance et famine, Stock, 1971, p. 144. 23. Scientific American, op cit. 24. Cited by J.P. Berlan, op cit. 25. See Qui se nourrit de la famine en Afrique, Maspéro, Paris, 1974. international press correspondence a journal of the world revolutionary marxist movement