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Re: Farm Aid News & Views Nov/Dec 1996
In article <199612232145.NAA16645@igc2.igc.apc.org> iatp@igc.org (IATP) writes:
>FARM AID NEWS & VIEWS
>November/December 1996
>Volume 4, Number 11
>Via Campesina, a growing movement of farm workers,
>peasant, farm and Indigenous Peoples' organizations from
>all over the world, was also active at the World Food
>Summit. According to a statement released at the
>Summit, "[We] know that food security cannot be achieved
>without taking full account of those who produce food.
>Any discussion that ignores our contribution will fail
>to eradicate poverty and hunger... We have the right to
>produce our own food in our own territory. Food
>sovereignty is a precondition to genuine food security."
>Larry Swartz of the Via Campesina member National Family
>Farm Coalition, says "The most under represented group
>at the World Food Summit, next to consumers, was
>farmers. The perspectives of the farmers who were
>present can be understood in terms of polar opposite
>approaches to the problem of food security. Those are
>that the technologically superior farmers of the North
>will produce ever-increasing amounts of food, which will
>be made available to the rest of the world through
>further liberalization of trade policies; or that the
>only real path to food security is food self-
>sufficiency, or food sovereignty. The fact that the
>moral and economic bankruptcy of the first position has
>not been widely revealed gives witness to the power and
>influence of the corporate pirates who promote and
>profit from it."
I wish people could get their arguments straight. Choosing
to isolate one's country from the world food markets is a
decision to have a greater control of one's food supply at the
expense of higher food costs. This is a simple strategy decision.
There is no need to vilify the farmers in countries that produce
low-cost food. Low-cost food is not NECESSARILY a bad thing. Some
people actually believe that the poor really OUGHT to be fed.
Admittedly, the Rome conference was mostly a showcase for
paternalistic elitist statist jerks whose solution to all problems is
to arrogate more control to themselves, but the level of invective
aimed at the countries that produce food that people can actually
afford was amazingly high, even so.
No doubt some countries can achieve food self-sufficiency by closing
their borders, at which point food prices will shoot up until the
starvation rate equals the birth rate, causing an equilibrium of
sorts. But Malthusian economics are known to be not only false, but
a hypocritical and soulless pandering to the desires of the
heartless, class-ridden, selfish jerks of his day -- and, it seems,
ours as well.
-- Robert
--
Robert Plamondon, High-Tech Technical Writing, Inc.
36475 Norton Creek Road * Blodgett * Oregon * 97326
robert@plamondon.com * (541) 453-5841 * Fax: (541) 453-4139
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