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ALL FOOD

Sceptics might argue that fish or meat or coffee, or any other selected commodity, is a special case. After all, the illustrations offered here were chosen to support a part)" cular argument. Whether or not these cases are representative can be decided by examining the larger pattern, the pattern with respect to all food. Let us first examine the case of the United States. Table 4 shows the overall food trade for this country in 1977. Measured in terms of dollar value, the United States does export more than it imports Much of this export is composed of grains and other cereals, and also of feed for livestock. At the same time, however, the United States imports very large quantities of meat and fish. Great quantities of coffee and other beverages are imported as well. Although the import and export flows are mixed, it appears that, on balance, the United States exports relatively low-quality food and imports relatively high-quality food, measured in terms of nutritive value.

The overall network of world food trade for 1976 is described in table 5. Drawing on these data, the trade among and between developed and less-developed countries is highlighted in figure 1. Here it is clear that, of the food entering into international trade in 1976 (US$123.65 billion worth), 11.9 per cent went from richer to poorer countries, while 20.2 per cent went from poorer to richer ones. Developed countries exported 3.8 times as much food to other developed countries as they did to the less developed (US$55.83 billion/US$14.75 billion). Less developed countries exported 3.1 times as much to developed countries as they did to other less-developed nations (US$25.02 billion/US$8.02 billion).

TABLE 5. Network of Exports of All Food Items (Including Beverages, Tobacco, and Edible Oils and Seeds), 1976, in Millions of US Dollars, f.o.b., and in Percentage of World Total

Source: ref. 25, pp. 672-683.

FIG. 1. Food Trade among Developed Market Economies and Developing Countries and Territories in Millions of US Dollars, f.o.b., and as Percentages of World Total, 1976 (Source: ref. 25, pp. 672-683)

FIG. 2. Shares in World Food Trade as Percentages of World Total, 1976 (Source: ref. 25, pp. 672-683)

TABLE 6. Shares of World Exports and Imports of Food, Beverages, and Tobacco, 1977

Source: ref. 26, p. 200.

Figure 2, also derived from table 5, describes the global food pattern in terms of shares of exports and imports. The developed market economies export 61.7 per cent of the total food exports, but they take out a larger share - 67.7 per cent. The developing market economies put in 30.9 per cent of the total value of food entering into world trade, but they take only 20.4 per cent out of that pot. Data from another source, reported in table 6, display the same basic pattern, but show the developed countries taking out an even larger excess over what they put in. Clearly, the developed countries extract a larger share of food than they put into the world trade pot. The less" developed countries remove a smaller share than they put in.

The supplier role of poor countries is very clear. In the Pacific, for example, the islands are described in magazine articles with titles like "Solomons Fish for Europe" and "The Pacific Becomes a Pantry for Japan" (27). Export agribusiness in Southeast Asia "has grown by leaps and bounds to satisfy the affluent world's almost insatiable appetite for luxury foods," so that in effect "ASEAN is becoming a vegetable plot and fishpond for the developed world" (20).

The general pattern in the world food market is that (a) most of the trade is among developed countries, (b) there is little trade among the less-developed countries, and (c) in the trade between the two groups, on balance, food tends to flow from the less developed to the more highly developed countries. The net flow is upward, not downward. The poor do feed the rich.

REMEDIES

Remedies for this problem of the systematic flow of food from the poor to the rich in world trade will not be explored in detail here, but a few observations are warranted. It should be clear that promoting increased production of food in poor countries may not be as useful as is sometimes assumed. Much of the benefit from the production, and the products themselves, are likely to go to the already well off.

Many development programmes are designed not simply to increase food production in less-developed countries but specifically to increase exports. However, the promotion of exports from Third World countries- or indeed, the promotion of international trade generally- promotes the widening of the gap between the rich and the poor. As James McGinnis put it, increased trade "actually reinforces the privileged position of the few on the top at the expense of the many on the bottom. Increasing the interaction between parties of unequal bargaining power only perpetuates the inequities of the current international economic system" (28, p. 51). The World Bank's own analysis shows the result of increasing trade: "About 75 per cent of the increase in total national income would flow to the wealthiest 40 per cent of society" (3, p. 32). This pattern holds within countries as well as in international society.

In early 1980 the Group of 77, the lobbying groups of Third World countries at the United Nations, set its targets for the Third Development Decade. The Group proposed that the less-developed countries of the world should increase their share of world food and agricultural exports to 50 per cent of the total. I think they made a serious error. As shown here, one of the major effects of increasing the involvement of poor countries in international trade is to increase the extent to which the poor supply the rich.

Many people and organizations concerned with world hunger and malnutrition devote much of their effort to promoting increased food aid or foreign aid generally. It is presumed that the less-developed countries have inadequate productive capacities and that they need help. As discussed above, however, in many cases poor countries prove themselves to be very effective producers. The problem is that they are producing for others rather than for themselves. The rich should give more attention to the substantial amounts of food they draw away from poor countries, rather than focus only on the supposedly charitable gifts they provide to them. The primary responsibility of the rich is not to give more, but to take less.

Many analysts of the problem of hunger and of development generally have concluded that one of the best answers is to move toward increasing self-sufficiency and self-reliance. (I take self-sufficiency to refer to the use of one's own available resources, while self-reliance refers more to independence in decision-making). I agree. What is particularly striking, however, is that these analysts consistently advocate increasing self-sufficiency for others. In their view, it is the poor, the Third World countries, that should increasingly rely on their own resources to meet their nutritional and other needs. The Presidential Commission on World Hunger, for example, did not consider the possibility that the United States might usefully increase its self-sufficiency by cutting down its imports of food. In effect, it did just the opposite in formulating a broad range of recommendations "to improve developing nations' export performance" (3, p. 56). Surely, one good way in which the United States could help poor countries to increase their food self-sufficiency would be to increase its own food self-sufficiency- that is, by reducing the amount of food it imports.

The challenge is relevant to all major food-importing countries. Regarding the Soviet Union, for example, Ole Holsti argues:

The inability of the Soviet Union to produce consistent agricultural surpluses- and more seriously, the Soviet policy of periodically importing large amounts of grains- constitutes a significant threat to the welfare of the international community. By organizing the agricultural sector to satisfy its ideological preferences and political needs, the Soviet ruling class has prevented the USSR from being a consistent net contributor to the world's food supply. Worse yet, by periodically entering the international market to buy vast amounts of wheat and other cereals, the Soviet Union is contributing at least indirectly to malnutrition in many parts of the world, and it is creating a major barrier against the establishment of the food reserves necessary to cope with future emergency situations arising from regional crop failures. [29]

In Japan, too, recent spectacular increases in meat consumption are based on increasing imports. "Japan depends on foreign farmers for almost all its feed grains, 94 per cent of its wheat and 95 per cent of its soybeans, mostly from the United States.... Japan is only 34 percent self-sufficient in grain . . . " (30).

The first responsibility of all countries, rich or poor, is their own behaviour, not that of others. The major food-importing countries should not be calling for reforms in the poor and hungry nations of the world while they themselves constitute major drains on the world's food system.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to acknowledge with thanks the very useful comments on earlier drafts provided by John Bardach, Jesse Floyd, William Furtick, Michael Haas, Oliver Lee, Deane Neubauer, and Robert Stauffer.

REFERENCES

1 R. Righter, "Alert on the Food Front," Development Forum, 8 (no. 10): 1 11980).

2. North-South, A Program for Survival: The Report of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues under the Chairmanship of Willy Brand (MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass,, USA, 1980),

3. Overcoming World Hunger: Report of the Presidential Commission on World Hunger [Presidential Commission on World Hunger,Washington, D.C., 1980).

4. The Global 2000 Report to the President: Entering the Twenty-first Century (US Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1980).

5. R.D. Laird, "America Feeds the Wealthy, Not the Poor," Christian Science Monitor. 7 Sept. 1980.

6. G. Borgstrom, Too Many: A Study of Earth's Biological Limitations {Macmillan, New York, 1969).

7. D.S. McLaren, "The Great Protein Fiasco," Lancet, 2: 93 11974).

8. N.S. Scrimshaw, "Through a Glass Dankly: Discerning the Practical Implication' of Human Dietary Protein-Energy Interrelationships" (W.O. Atwater Memorial Lecture), Nutr. Rev.,,, 35 {no. 12): 321 (1977).

9 F.M Lappé and J Collins, Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity (Houghton-Mifflin, Boston, Mass . USA, 1977).

10. US Foreign Agricultural Trade Statistical Report, Fiscal Year 1977 (Economics, Statistics, and Cooperatives Service, US Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C., 1978).

11. "India- Ban Anti-national Multi-million Fishing Complex at Colaba, Bombay, or Anywhere Else in India," For a Society Overcoming Domination: International Study Days, Case Study 112, March 1980.

12. Imports and Exports of Fishery Products, Annual Summary, 1980. (National Marine Fisheries Service, Washington, D.C., 1981)

13. A. Simon, Bread for the World (Paulist Press, New York, 1975).

14. Fisheries of the United States, 1979 (National Marine Fisheries Service,Washington, D.C.,1980).

15. Imports and Exports of Fishery Products, Annual Summary, 1979 (National Marine Fisheries Service, Washington, D.C., 1980).

16. "Senegal- The Food Aid of the Third World to the Developed Countries is in Good Health," For a Society Overcoming Domination: International Study Days, Case Study 110, March 1980.

17. J, Farias, Jr., "Land and Water Resources Vital to Our Agriculture," Honolulu Advertiser (Honolulu, Hawaii, USA), 2 Feb. 1981.

18. Fisheries of the United States, 1978 (National Marine Fisheries Service, Washington, D.C.., 1979),

19. G. Kent, The Politics of Pacific Islands Fisheries (Westview Press, Boulder, Colo., USA, 1980).

20. Ho Kwon Ping, "Profits and Poverty in the Plantations," Far Eastern Econ. Rev., no. 11, pp. 53-57 (July 1980).

21. N. Rao, "The State of Fisheries in Six Countries of Southeast Asia," Philip. Quart Culture Soc., 4: 199 (1976),

22. A, Amarshi, K. Good, and R. Mortimer, Development and Dependency: The Political Economy of Papua New Guinea (Oxford University Press, Melbourne, Australia, 1979).

23. Ho Kwon Ping, "The Implications of Export-Oriented Industrialization for Southeast Asia," paper presented at a conference at the Australian National University, February 1980.

24. Food and Agriculture Organization Trade Yearbook, 1978 (FAO, Rome 1979).

25. UNCTAD, Handbook of International Trade and Development Statistics (United Nations, New York, 1979).

26. John Sewell and the Overseas Development Council, The United States and World Development: Agenda 1980 (Praeger, New York and London, 1980).

27. Pacific Islands Monthly. June 1974, p. 96, and May 1974, pp. 6971,

28. J.B. McGinnis, Bread and Justice: Toward a New International Economic Order (Paulist Press, New York, 1979).

29. O.R. Holsti, "Global Food Problems and Soviet Agriculture," in D.W. Orr and M.S. Scroos, eds., The Global Predicament: Ecological Perspectives on World Order (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hi/l, N.C,, USA, 1979), pp. 150-175.

30. G. Murray, "Japanese Diet Gnawing at Economy," Honolulu Advertiser (Honolulu, Hawaii, USA), 2 Jan. 1981.

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