Message-ID: <199503212024.PAA153844@atlanta.american.edu> Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 14:25:44 EST From: mailto:LANFRAN@VM1.YORKU.CA> Subject: My Myths vs. Your Myths (I win!) To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L
There are always two forms of Politically Correct, your bad version and my good version. It is to be remembered that there are few agricultural settings in the world where "getting the prices right" and "letting the market work" are one and the same thing. Since the year when the U.S. government first imposed acerage restrictions on corn (and the Sec. of State's family business came out with high yield corn) the mix of policial and market forces has never been far from the cutting edge of food policy.For example (and I am an ex-Farmer from California), never did we pay the full cost of water and seldom did we market in a competitive market. That is not to say that water was "free" or that there were no market forces, only that the entire history of agriculture in Western Europe and North America (to cite two examples) is one of subsidies, managed markets, etc. These policies have long term effects elsewhere - of course.
For example, just when Guyana's rice industry is crawling back from the period of terrible non-market interventions by the Burnham government, its prospects for rice exports to the Caribbean have been dealt a setback because of the US decision to subsidize the export of (already subsidized) U.S. rice to Jamaica. The reason, of course, is to keep food prices low in Jamaica so that the poor will not riot. The consequence is to hammer Guyana's prospects for "letting the market work" and blocking exports of Guyana rice to another Caribbean country.
The posting on Hunger in Africa has a number of assertions, hypothesis, and analytical frameworks within it. Anyone familiar with the "Food First" body of work would not be surprised by what it says. That does not mean that it is heavily wrong or heavily write. It should be food for thought and a basis for a more measured response than a semi-anonymous posting from the U.S. State Department saying my Politically Correct opinion is better than your Political- ly incorrect opinion. At least that is how I see it from my PC Pentium opinion.
Sam Lanfranco < mailto:lanfran@vm1.yorku.ca >