Free trade, loss of support systems crippling food production in Africa

Oregon State University ^ | Feb 15, 2010 | Unknown

[decimon]

The problem is not free trade within Africa but subsidized agriculture elsewhere. That, they can't compete with.

[GeronL]

Free trade is not the problem, your right. Foreign food aid that puts local farmers out of the market is part of the problem too.

[the_Watchman]

It would be interesting to see how they view Zimbabwe where a self-sufficient agricultural system has been ruined by the actions of the government expropriating farms.

Somehow the description in this article would be used by Marxists to explain why the newly enfranchised farmers were unable to compete. Is that what this article is about, providing cover for Mugabe and friends?

[dangus]

Burning your food crops for fuel does a pretty nasty job of distorting the global food market.

[hinckley buzzard]

Bottom line, Africans mostly do not have the cultural infrastructure necessary to support a viable macro-economy. These include a system of recording ownership of property, so a domestic credit system has capital with which to function, and the systematic rule of laws regarding contracts.

Without these, any economy is floating in the thin air, with no reliable tether to reality.

[GeronL]

When you steal land from farmers, divide the land into tiny plots give to people with no agricultural know-how and where the animals were slaughtered and the fruit trees stripped bare and the seeds eaten...

I could imagine output might siffer.

[decimon]

Foreign food aid that puts local farmers out of the market is part of the problem too.

I did a Yahoo search on James Shikwate (if I got his name spelled right) and see he's been nearly forgotten. He was the economist who said in a Spiegel article something like, "For God's sake, stop helping us!"

[the_Watchman]

Has this socialized agriculture been applied in more than Zimbabwe since 1980? The truth about reduction in agricultural output could be somewhere in the middle. I just wouldn’t trust a study from liberal academia to throw rocks at Mugabe and his friends.

[dr_who]

That and maybe just possibly kleptocrats who are driving farmers off their land and terrorizing anyone who’s honest including farmers.

[GeronL]

They might have done a bit of that in South Africa and possibly Venezuela. I know it was being “debated” in those countries.

[GeronL]

Sounds like a genius.

[narses]

The problem in Africa is corrupt government.

[decimon]

Sounds like a genius.

From what I recall of him, he would fit right in here. Free-market economist.

[hellbender]

Put yourself in the place of an African farmer. You do the best you can, but you cannot compete with an operation funded by Western billionaires who seek the cheapest labor anywhere, then apply their capital and technical expertise to crush independent competitors.

It's sad to see that so many people here can recognize how crony capitalism has crushed manufacturing here in the U.S., without seeing how it is doing the same in places like Africa.

[hellbender]

No doubt that is part of the problem, but there are hard-working and ambitious people everywhere, who try to succeed despite whatever handicaps they face. The question is: are we going to play the free-traitor game, or are we going to help the little people? It’s the same choice we face in this country, where crony capitalism is crushing small business and the middle class.

[dangus]

It’s hard to argue that economic freedom is the cause of hunger, when none of the most hungry countries have economic freedom

African nations with the most rapidly increasing hunger (increasing Global Hunger Index, 1990-2009):

Zimbabwe (2nd least free economy in the world, after North Korea)
Eritrea (4th least free economy in the world, after Cuba)
Democratic Republic of Congo (8th)
Congo (11th)
Guniea-Biseau (13th)
Comoros (15th)
Liberia (17th)
Burundi (20th)
Chad (21st)
Siera Leone (23rd)
Swaziland (77th)
Zambia (79th out of 179)

Rankings according to Heritage Foundation’s Economic Freedom Index. Of these, all but Zambia had decreasing economic freedom. Zambia has the 11th worst score on the Global Competitiveness Index.

[decimon]

Thanks.

I’d like to see one African country become the African South Korea. Hardly perfect but no country is.

[hellbender]

OK. Do you think China and Vietnam are free and non-corrupt societies? Yet the business elites of the West think it is just wonderful to trade with those oligopolies, where communist party elites run the “enterprises.” I would much rather support some small entrepreneur in Africa than some “company” run by commies in China.

[the_Watchman]

India’s early attempts at pulling themselves into the 20th century involved the use of one person sewing machines. They attempted to replicate the “sweat shop” model of rooms of people sewing on individual machines. It didn’t work out so well.

Someone could have easily “overlooked” the complicity of the Indian governmental policies and concluded that “free markets” don’t work so well for Indian workers. And the answer for India WASN’T that their fledgling sewing industry needed tariff protection.

I wonder if this is what is going on with this paper.

[dangus]

Absolutely not. And according to the reports I was reading, India (socialist in some states, but free in others) actually had LESS starvation that China, despite having a smaller economy. How’s that for irony? Socialists argue, “well, we might not have as much wealth as capitalist states, but we distribute the wealth more fairly.” Yet “socialist” means “kleptocratic.” A socialist state is one in which armed thugs take what they want from who they want for whatever purpose they want. And so even though China is wealthier than India, because it is a thugocracy, the people are more poorly fed.