One Hand Clapping

Domestic and environmental protectionism - recipe for famine
Technological agriculture is the only path to success for Third World countries

I posted earlier about a CNE article that savaged European tariffs on imported foods. The tariffs are very hurtful to Africans because agricultural products are about all they can produce.

Several readers commented that American domestic farm subsidies also have much the same effect, if less severe. Comes now a Reason Online report of how tariffs, domestic farm subsidies and environmental protectionism combine to keep Africa poor.

The CNE report concludes that Africa in particular suffers from the developed countries' agricultural subsidies. Just how desperate the situation is in sub-Saharan Africa is made clear by British demographer Angus Maddison's calculation that the average annual gross domestic product in the region is just $450 per person.

But some non-Westerners don’t get that fact that the key to increasing ag exports is technological.

High-yield farming is technological farming, it is the only way to increase per-acre yield and reduce manpower required. Low labor intensity means that men and women can be freed for other productive pursuits, such as education and low-level industrial production.

That in turn diversifies the local economy, which is good for everyone. Unless, of course, you have some romantic idea of African yeoman farmers, leading simple lives. Some delegates to this week’s WTO conference in Cancun seems to have just such a notion:

several participants in the IFG conference urged that the world move back toward low technology and subsistence farming. Indian political environmentalist Vandana Shiva insightfully told the IFG activists, "Domestic agriculture in India has been destroyed by developed country farm subsidies and dumping." Then she quickly veered from this reasonable observation to unthinking environmentalist dogma. Her solution is not to eliminate the subsidies and open up food trade. Instead she wants Indian farmers to reject the Green Revolution which boosted Indian grain production four-fold over the past four decades and move back toward small-scale agricultural production. This is a recipe for famine.

Technological agriculture is good for the environment, not bad. It uses less land, hence destroying fewer forests by clearing and causing less wetlands to be drained. However tech farming is equipment intensive, and African countries’ along with Third World countries generally, are not rich enough for high level of equipment investments. But they can and should use improved seed products (yes, GM crops!), fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.

Environmentalism is a death sentence for the world’s poor.

Update: It's worth remembering that the Left has a plantation mentality about the Third World.

by Donald Sensing, 9/10/2003 10:02:16 PM. Permalink |

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