Food Crises - I
Development & Underdevelopment,
From Green Revolution to Famine
Readings
 H.Cleaver, "Food, Famine & Int'l Crisis"
 NACLA, "US Grain Arsenal"
 "US Food Power: Ultimate Weapon in World
Politics"
Food as Feast
 Food as staff of life, fundamental necessity
 gathering, production always social act
 Food as social medium
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family meals
religious rituals
collective rituals, holidays, festivals
sharing of food = sharing of self  bonding
Food as Power
 Control over food  power over life
 control over land - food  autonomy
 power to live independently
 control over land - food  Power over others
 Power to make others lives dependent
 e.g., sharecropping
 e.g., wage labor
 e.g., soviet family plots
Power over Others
 Families
 control over children
 no work, no supper, primogeniture
 Local community
 control over land fundamental to structure of power
 Nation States
 internally: role in food distribution function of
pressures, top down, bottom up
 externally: food as weapon in diplomacy
Food in Capitalism
 Control over land - food  control over work
 Without autonomous sources of food, people
are forced into labor market
 Monopoly of control gives capitalists Power to
impose work
 History of capitalism is history of business
efforts to achieve monopoly control of land food
 enclosure, Wakefield, etc.
Food & Resistance
 Conversely, access to land - food gives power to
resist, material basis for autonomous life
 Historical resistance to enclosure, from
England in 18th Century to Zapatistas at
beginning of 21st Century
 Those who have lost access to land fight for
"access" to food, e.g., welfare, food stamps
 greater the access, greater ability to resist low wages
Development &
Underdevelopment
 Development & underdevelopment
 as states-of-being
 developed = industrial, rich
 underdeveloped = agrarian, poor
 as processes
 development = investment, growth, industrializing, rising
real income per capita
 underdevelopment = disinvestment, decline, falling Y/cap
 as strategies
 development: giving food to get work
 underdevelopment: witholding food to get work
Giving Food (& Land) - I
 Lack of food seen as source of revolution
 30s - 40s private foundations developed "food
politics" for Third World
 land reform, community development, new ag technology
 especially Rockefeller Foundation in China
 even earlier in US South
 "development" strategies, give to get
 state took over private policies and integrated into
foreign policy thru foreign aid programs, diplo.
 state also subsidized increased food production,
increased real wages in US & Europe, welfare
Giving Food - II
 1960s: "Development Decade"
 "Green Revolution" technologies from IRRI,
CYMMIT,
 high yielding rice & wheat varieties
 replaced land reform & com. dev.
 promise of food in exchange for acceptance of
capitalist rules of the game, integration into global
economy
 Development = Keynesianism in 3rd & 2nd worlds
 Soviet Keynesianism in countryside, cities
Withholding Food - I
 After World War I, Herbert Hoover &
American foreign aid in Eastern Europe
 food aid given to those who followed the American
line, vis a vis Germany & USSR, US investment
 food aid withheld from those who didn't go along
with US policies
Withholding Food - II
 1950s - 1960s: PL 480
 subsidies to US agriculture food surpluses
 Hubert Humphrey saw surpluses as leverage
 food for starving if and only if governments
accepted American directives
 e.g., Indian famine 1965-66
 Orville Freeman, Sec of Agriculture tells Indian Min of Ag
Subramaniam food aid if:
 population control
 opening of Indian fertilizer industry to US firms
Contradictions of Green
Revolution Technologies
 Unforeseen consequences of Green Revolution
 uneven application across regions
 accessible to rich farmers, not poor, aggravated
inequalities
 rich farmer investment in labor saving capital
equipment caused unemployment for landless
 environmental problems due to:
 monocropping
 increased use of inorganic fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides
From Green to Red Revolution
 Regional Disparities aggravated Pakistan
Conflict as West benefited and East didn't
 Increased intra-peasant conflicts in India btwn
those who benefited and those who didn't
 Naxalite Rebellion in W.Bengal, Bihar
Welfare State & Rebellion
 Food subsidies to poor:
 school lunches, food stamps, etc
 Viewed as inadequate, part of cause of
rebellions:
 central city uprisings
 Black Panther Party extortion for breakfasts
 State response: dramatic spread of Food Stamp
program to meet demands, quiet rebellion
Food & Rebellion in East
 Circa 1960: food riots in Russia
 chronic peasant resistance
 results in Krushchev's opening steppe production
 later Keynesian policies for peasants
 1970: Polish govt increases food prices
 widespread rebellion in Poland, food prices dropped
 sympathy strikes in USSR, 5-yr plan revised,
increased food imports (1972 grain deal), efforts to
industrialize food production
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