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Among many international dimensions of development programs, the Food for Aid Program
(FAP), the Green Revolution (GR) and the Alliance for Progress (AFP) are some projects
concerned with agricultural development program. From the Marshall Plan through the Third
World Green Revolution, the US encouraged international agribusiness program with export
credits and counterpart funds designed to universalise the American farming and dietary models.
The Second Food Régime (1947-1970s), i.e. The Postwar Food Regime (Order)
The second food régime is a period characterised by an intensive form of capitalist
production relations and involving the modernisation and industrialisation of farming.
This account of the régime incorporates the following key processes:
• The restructuring of agricultural sectors by agro-food capitals to supply mass markets.
• The development of durable food and intensive meat commodity complexes.
• Extension of the state system to former colonies (decolonization).
• Organization of the world economy under U.S. geopolitical hegemony.
• Strong state protection for agriculture.
Starting with agri-food capitals, they are implicated in the restructuring of agriculture
within the metropolitan states. Agri-inputs (chemicals and farm machinery) and
food processing capitals instigated an ‘industrialization’ of agriculture.
Capital replaced land and labour as the primary factor of production and almost all food
reaching the consumer became subjected to some form of ‘value added’ processing. The
results for the farm sector included a rapid increase in average farm size, rural depopulation
and fewer people employed on the land.
Friedmann and McMichael (1989, 103) observe that such restructuring blurred the
distinction between sectors in national economies as large industrial capitals began to
dominate both ends of the agri-food chain and farm products became inputs to
manufactured foods rather than as final use.
Agri-industrial capitals were also implicated in the growing incorporation of former colonies
into the global agri-food system.
Turning to ‘commodity complexes’, the following account follows Friedmann (1994) in
recognising the development of wheat, durable foods and livestock complexes.
The wheat complex drew its strength from national regulation, such as the farm price support
programmes of America and the E.U., with surpluses disposed of by food aid programmes and
commercial trading. Newly independent states either received U.S. wheat in the form of
foreign aid or purchased wheat imports at the expense of domestically grown grains. For
example, the share of world wheat imports by developing countries grew from 19 per cent in
the late 1950s to 66 per cent in the late 1960s (Friedmann 1994).
The livestock complex expanded greatly after World War II as income growth allowed
northern consumers to eat meat and dairy products. Production intensified on pig, poultry and
beef feed lot farms, a trend facilitated by the international trade in cheap U.S. maize and
soy-based feedstuffs. European agricultural protection against wheat imports, under the
C.A.P., was accepted by the United States in return for the exclusion of soybeans and soy meal
from import duties; this facilitated U.S. exports of animal feed to the E.U. through the
operations of North American grain corporations, such as Continental and Cargill.
The durable food complex increased in step with the rising proportion of processed and
manufactured ingredients in the diets of consumers in northern countries; indeed the
mass consumption and mass production of standardised products underpinned the complex in
the 1950s and 1960s. Under agro-industrialization, farm producers were faced by increasingly
oligopolistic relations with corporate buyers rather than local markets.
These economic developments in food production and consumption were interrelated with
global political developments, particularly the extension of the state system to former
colonies (decolonization) and the organization of the world economy under U.S.
geopolitical hegemony. For example, decolonization broke up the colonial trading blocs and
enabled the new states to import food, including food aid, to facilitate their industrialization.
This development led to the displacement of traditional foods and the borrowing of
capital to finance food imports, with consequences for the growing foreign debt burden
of most developing countries.
At the time, the U.S.A. was searching for new markets for its surplus wheat, including the
use of grain exports/food aid to politically stabilize state systems in former colonial
dependencies. Thus the spread of the state system diffused a dependence on wheat exports
from the United States, although European states protected their agricultures against this
development.
As regards state intervention, the second food régime developed under two international
agreements:
A) The 1945 Bretton Woods Agreement governing the stability of exchange rates
between national currencies (based on the dollar/gold standard); and
B) The 1947 G.A.T.T. rules on international trade.
The former underpinned the international diffusion of the national model of economic
growth; the latter excluded agriculture from more liberal trading practices and instead
facilitated the further development of national systems of state protection for
agriculture.
In the metropolitan states, such protection had its origins in the economic depression of the
1930s and the food production exigencies of the Second World War. National import controls
and export subsidies first fostered and then regulated the international disposal of food
surpluses from developed countries, initially to the advantage of U.S. economic hegemony
through the export of grain and other commodities.
The states of the E.U. were subsequently drawn into subsidised food exports as their own
surpluses began to emerge in the 1970s. The rapid expansion of agribusiness corporations
during the second food régime facilitated these developments in food trade, as supported
by state protection and the subsidy of national agricultures.
The Third Food Régime (1980s-present): The crisis of capitalist accumulation that ended the
second food régime can be traced to the oil and food crises of the early 1970s (Friedmann
1994), comprising global recession, the collapse of Bretton Woods, soaring grain prices, the
excessive costs of national farm support programmes, and the antagonism between the
national regulation of agriculture and the growing commercial power of globally organized
corporations. Goodman and Redclift (1989), Goodman (1991) and Friedmann (1994) account
for the ending of the second food régime in these terms:
The E.U. began to take on the status of an equivalent power bloc to the U.S.,
resulting in a decline in the geopolitical hegemony of America.
Agricultural export competition under subsidies between the U.S. and the E.U.
threatened a trade war.
As traditional patterns of trade with developing countries were disrupted, a crisis point
was reached in 1973 with U.S.- U.S.S.R. grain deals eliminating the American
wheat surplus from the international market.
The increasing commercial power of agro-food corporations amplified the tension
between nationally organized economies and transnational capital.
The contradictions of institutionalised food surpluses, especially the economic cost of
farm subsidies, emerged in the early 1980s to underpin the political desire amongst
states to wind down state support for agriculture.
The final form of the third food régime, which has been emerging from the international
farm crisis of the 1970s, is still far from certain but a number of often contradictory
structures and processes have been identified (Figure 3.1). Le Heron (1993) usefully
summarises such transitional features under five headings:
1) Increased global trading of food;
2) Consolidation of capital in food manufacturing;
3) New biotechnology;
4) Consumer fragmentation and dietary change; and
5) Declining farm subsidies (deregulation).
The Concept of Food Dependency can be defined based on the above definitions given to
economic dependency of certain group of countries. Food Dependency refers to reliance of a
country or countries in food for national consumption on other dominant countries. This food
dependency is a situation in which the food production and national food supply of a certain
group of countries is conditioned by the development and expansion of another food production.
Certain groups of countries mainly depend on food produced elsewhere in more developed
countries. They import food commodities either in the form of trade or food aid.
Import dependency grew most among the world’s poorest regions, particularly the 48 Least
Developed Countries (LDCs) and the 70 Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries (LIFDC). 35
LIFDCs have a very high cereal import dependency, relying on imports for more than 30 per
cent of their cereal consumption.
In more than 20 LIFDCs, the import/consumption ratio even surpasses 50 per cent, like, for
instance, in Congo, Mauritania, Liberia, Somalia, Ivory Coast, Yemen, Georgia, Iraq, Papua
New Guinea, Haiti and Honduras.
Over the last three decades, food production per capita dropped in most of Africa due to
the so-called Green Revolution with its technology package of
new high yielding varieties of maize, wheat and rice,
irrigation facilities and agrochemicals that occurred mainly in Asia and Latin America.
In the following years, huge surpluses, often made even more competitive by further subsidies,
flooded the world markets (“dumping”), presented as a contribution to global food security.
Global trade in cereals is highly concentrated in a handful of a few countries and companies. The
EU has been one of the leading powers in agricultural trade, but now is desperately struggling to
maintain its position in the face of strong competition from other countries, for example Brazil in
chicken exports to Africa.
Food imports on the other hand became more attractive for many governments to feed growing
urban populations than investments into agriculture except for cash crop cultivation for exports.
This policy (food importing) was supported by many influential development institutions like the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and structural adjustment programmes.
Consequently, this has eliminated government support for agriculture and poor farmers. This
brought about ever higher import dependency:
Neglect of domestic food production,
changing dietary patters favouring the consumption of wheat derived products
(at the expense of locally grown crops like cassava, sorghum or millet), and
forcing local farmers out of the market,
(because they could not compete with the subsidised imports).
Since the 1980s, many countries turned from net agricultural exporters to importers. Today, two
thirds of the developing countries suffer from
trade deficits and
growing expenses for cereals, dairy products and vegetable oils.
Due to stagnating demand and declining prices for coffee, cocoa, tea or bananas, the equation of
paying for food imports with exports of cash crops became more and more negative. Internally
too, the neglect of agriculture and the competition by cheap imports marginalized peasant
agriculture and cemented food insecurity for millions of family farmers, who became net food
buyers.
B) Green Revolution
1. Concepts of Green Revolution
Throughout history there have been many revolutions that have occurred and changed human
lives, such as the American Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. In the mid- and late-20th
century a revolution occurred that dramatically changed the field of agriculture, and this
revolution was known as the Green Revolution.
Precisely, Green revolution refers to the introduction of High yielding variety (HYV) of seeds
and increased use of fertilizer and irrigation methods. It took place during the 1960s especially
1965 onwards.
The term Green Revolution can also simply refers to the renovation of agricultural practices
beginning in Mexico in the 1940s. Because of its success in producing more agricultural
products there, Green Revolution technologies spread worldwide in the 1950s and 1960s,
significantly increasing the amount of calories produced per acre of agriculture.
The beginnings of the Green Revolution are often attributed to Norman Borlaug, an American
scientist interested in agriculture. In the 1940s, he began conducting research in Mexico and
developed new disease resistance high-yield varieties of wheat. By combining Borlaug's wheat
varieties with new mechanized agricultural technologies, Mexico was able to produce more
wheat than was needed by its own citizens, leading to its becoming an exporter of wheat by the
1960s. Prior to the use of these varieties, the country was importing almost half of its wheat
supply.
Due to the success of the Green Revolution in Mexico, its technologies spread worldwide in the
1950s and 1960s. The United States for instance, imported about half of its wheat in the 1940s
but after using Green Revolution technologies, it became self-sufficient in the 1950s and became
an exporter by the 1960s.
In order to continue using Green Revolution technologies to produce more food for agrowing
population worldwide, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation, as well as many
government agencies around the world funded increased research. In 1963 with the help of this
funding, Mexico formed an international research institution called The International Maize and
Wheat Improvement Center.
Countries all over the world in turn benefited from the Green Revolution work conducted by
Borlaug and this research institution. India for example was on the brink of mass famine in the
early 1960s because of its rapidly growing population. Borlaug and the Ford Foundation then
implemented research there and they developed a new variety of rice, IR8, that produced more
grain per plant when grown with irrigation and fertilizers. Today, India is one of the world's
leading rice producers and IR8 rice usage spread throughout Asia in the decades following the
rice's development in India.
Since fertilizers are largely what made the Green Revolution possible, they forever changed
agricultural practices because the high yield varieties developed during this time cannot grow
successfully without the help of fertilizers.
Irrigation also played a large role in the Green Revolution and this forever changed the areas
where various crops can be grown. For instance before the Green Revolution, agriculture was
severely limited to areas with a significant amount of rainfall, but by using irrigation, water can
be stored and sent to drier areas, putting more land into agricultural production - thus increasing
nationwide crop yields.
In addition, the development of high yield varieties meant that only a few species of say, rice
started being grown. In India for example there were about 30,000 rice varieties prior to the
Green Revolution, today there are around ten - all the most productive types. By having this
increased crop homogeneity though the types were more prone to disease and pests because there
were not enough varieties to fight them off. In order to protect these few varieties then, pesticide
use grew as well.
Finally, the use of Green Revolution technologies exponentially increased the amount of food
production worldwide. Places like India and China that once feared famine have not experienced
it since implementing the use of IR8 rice and other food varieties.
Along with the benefits gained from the Green Revolution, there have been several criticisms.
The first is that the increased amount of food production has led to overpopulation worldwide.
The second major criticism is that places like Africa have not significantly benefited from the
Green Revolution. The major problems surrounding the use of these technologies here though
are a lack of infrastructure, governmental corruption, and insecurity in nations.
Despite these criticisms though, the Green Revolution has forever changed the way agriculture is
conducted worldwide, benefiting the people of many nations in need of increased food
production.
The advantages of green revolution were that it helped in increasing the production of the crops.
Because of greens revolution there was a remarkable increase in crops especially wheat (in states
of Punjab and Haryana) and rice (in UP and Punjab). It ensured surplus wheat for the farmers.
Today, a lot of farmers are practicing modern farming methods under the Green Revolution,
which is an alternative solution pushed by the government to replace traditional ways to grow
crops. Its main objectives include making cultivation and harvesting more efficient, as well as
eliminating hunger all over the world. But due to its methods, this technology has become a
subject of heated debates on whether it can really do good than bad for the society. To come up
with a well-informed answer to this, it is best to look at its main advantages and disadvantages.
The Green Revolution has brought farming to a massive scale. Looking at the previous
agricultural sector, crops that were grown in huge volumes are only those that required extensive
human intervention to grow healthy, which means that it was not that easy. But now, we have
made things easier, where most crops are being grown on an industrial scale even by the smaller
farming community.
This innovative farming process has made it possible for agriculture to be done almost
everywhere. Though you still cannot grow potatoes on a beach, you will be able to utilize most
types of terrain or land to grow crops with it. This means that farmers do not have to be at the
most fertile lands to be able to do their thing, as the Green Revolution has made it possible for
agriculture to be more doable everywhere.
This agricultural method has allowed farmers to re-plant similar crops without fallowing their
lands, which is known to be a costly process. Though there are some crops on which soil still
needing to be fallowed, the Green Revolution has certainly made farming cost-efficient.
This modern method of farming is believed to cause the emergence of poisonous weeds and
pests that are difficult to control. Aside from this, there is also the concern of cross pollination
between genetically modified organisms and traditional plants that could result in invasive
species.
2. It employs mono-culturing
One of the biggest arguments against this modern technology is that it uses mono-culturing. This
practice is known to require large tracts of land, which are not often available, intensive amounts
of fertilizers and large volumes of water, bring about difficulties to farmers.
As the Green Revolution does not take into consideration the type of soil for farming, only
considering the area and doing what it needs for crop cultivation, it does not do anything to
ensure soil fertility is replenished or retained.