barriomulas.com - Food Autarky

The global food crisis makes autarky look good. While protectionist Presidents are often blasted by The Economist and champions of the free market, it is quite difficult for a politician to permit food exports while his countrymen are on the verge of starvation. If our leaders were not to do this their Presidential palaces would quickly be overran by mobs of angry, hungry citizens.

Though reliance on liberal borders, free trade, and imports might be more cost efficient (importing foodstuffs from a foreign country, for example, can often be cheaper than growing it yourself), it is not secure. The moment fuel prices jump and the cost is reflected in food prices, governments will shut down exports and thus cause a chain reaction that will make things only worse. One could loosely say that food production is a matter of national security.

My proposal was always that nations produce as much food as possible to tend to their population and then import the difference or export the surplus. Though this might be a bit more costly than relying on the mechanisms of the free market, it does provide a level of national security. Many nations have obtained substantial economic growth during the past decades as they opened their borders and liberalized trade. Ironically, decades of neoliberal fiscal policies and Western pressure were rolled back at the snap of a finger as an instant jump in prices reversed any poverty reduction obtained. "Roughly a billion people live on $1 a day," states The Economist. "If, on a conservative estimate, the cost of their food rises 20%... 100m people could be forced back to this level, the common measure of absolute poverty."

How would one go about doing this without heavy interference in the private market on behalf of a paternalistic state? And how could this be economically viable? The creation of public and non-profit corporations that would partake in non-profit agricultural ventures is one option. The non-profit vision of the organization saves the company operational expenses (for the profit of shareholders is no longer subsidized by the product's prices). The waver of a sales tax on locally produced goods is another possibility. Publicity campaigns are yet another. There exists a number of options aside from import substitution or heavy tariffs.