Let’s make this clear: you’re saying Westerners sell crops to Africa too cheaply. This undercuts African farmers, forcing them to sell just as cheaply. The other side of the coin is that African farmers with less money can now buy cheaper Western crops. They may have a harder time affording non-food-related goods: their profits have decreased, and only the price of food has decreased. But there is no good reason why cheap food would lead to starvation. Maybe less money for material goods, but not starvation.
If nothing else, African farmers who failed to sell their food can resort to eating it. It is the non-farmers who need to worry most about food prices.
At worst, the Western food influx will push African farmers into the city, where they can fully exploit the low food prices. This would induce industrialization, and ultimately solve the starvation problem.
this is not market forces at work, these are the forces of corrupt Western government literally paying farmers to produce more of a good than is necessary
If Western politicians were doing the bidding of Western farmers who voted for them, that would be democracy, not corruption.
But the real explanation for farming subsidies is that we don’t want to rely on other countries for food. Other countries produce food more cheaply than us, because they pay employees less, and have lower taxes and less health and safety regulation. If we let the market operate naturally, our farmers would fail, and we would import most of our food. If we ever displeased one of our food suppliers, the supplier could cease food sales to the U.S., causing mass starvation. We already face this dilemma with oil and the Middle East; food would be many times worse. Congress is not willing to leave the U.S. at the mercy of foreign food suppliers, so it subsidizes local farmers. This is good governance, not corruption.
Your argument reminds of what people keep saying about places like Wal-Mart. Sure, they pay their workers shit money, but they also provide goods at cheaper prices, allowing poorer people to live “better lives”. But does it really work that way? Sure, people might be able to buy jeans and cookies at 10% less the price, but what about the millions now stuck without healthcare, the municipalities robbed of their tax bases and forced to cut public services like education? Just because you can buy something cheaper is no justification for everyone to make less money. There are a number of benefits that come with high-salary, high-cost societies as well, such as a more robust public sector, universal healthcare, and so on.
I, too, oppose superstores, but your economics are confused. Nobody supports superstores because they pay employees less. In fact, superstores generally pay employees more than general stores, because they are more efficient and can afford to.
The argument for superstores boils down to economies of scale. For instance, a neighborhood deli pays $100 to have 50 Cokes shipped in a little truck. Wal-Mart pays $500 to have 5000 Cokes shipped in a big truck. The more being shipped, the less it costs per item, because there are less employees and less fuel per item. As another example, the deli is only big enough to have three employees, and each one individually makes one sandwich per minute. Wal-Mart has a sandwich factory with an assembly line and fifty workers, each of whom makes the equivalent of five sandwiches per minute. Wal-Mart’s workers are five times more efficient, so it needs to pay only 1/5 as many workers per sandwich. Wal-Mart can pass on these savings to consumers; hence their extremely low prices. This also frees up 4/5 of the employees to do other socially beneficial work. A final example: The deli owner is also the cashier, a chef, the inventory-counter, and the decorator. Wal-Mart owns thousands of stores. It can hire experts to spend all their time formulating efficient policies and procedures for the other stores. If this comes with even a 10% efficiency increase per store, that will easily pay for the cost of the experts.
The counterargument is that little independent stores have hidden benefits to society, or positive externalities, that are not reflected in their bottom line. Having thousands of little independent stores, each with its own experimental approach to business, allows a better competition of ideas, than when three to four superstores with homogenized procedures dominate the market. Consumers get pleasure from the diversity of unique goods and services, which is why tourists love quaint towns full of little stores. Independent stores entrust more citizens with real responsibility for their own lives, which produces a more entrepreneurial and responsible population, than superstores which reduce their workers to thoughtless laborers. Consumers are more likely to develop friendships with independent store employees, because employees can socialize more easily in little stores they control, without fear of retribution from distant managers. Consumers are more likely to bargain creatively with independent store employees, and more mutually beneficial exchanges will likely occur, because employees are not constrained by corporate policies.
So conclude what you will. I come out in favor of small, local stores. I wish our antitrust law still protected them.
Obviously corruption is endemic in many of these countries as well, but hideously corrupt nations (China, Thailand, India…) have nevertheless managed to achieve more-or-less food self-sufficiency despite the corrupt nature of their countries.
There is a difference in degree. China, Thailand and India are corrupt like the U.S. was in the 1920s: insider trading, bribery, securities fraud, and so forth. But they have more or less stable governments and rational legal regimes. Africa is more like a conglomeration of feudal monarchies equipped with modern weaponry. African countries are still subject to random military coups. Their police forces inflict nearly as much harm as they prevent. Violence is rampant. The prerequisites for a modern society are nowhere near being satisfied.
Finally, of course, I just have to ask, if these crops are so cheap, which you say will help the poor Africans buy them, then why are there still 400 million malnourished Africans?
Africa is a mostly non-industrialized, crime-ridden and war-torn continent with highly inefficient agricultural methods. Africa has not modernized, and just as in other pre-modern nations, starvation is a problem. This is not some unnatural state of affairs that can only be explained by external intervention. Africa has simply not implemented our mechanisms for dealing with starvation. For instance, African countries have created no convenient way for farmers to exit the non-profitable farming trade and enter the industrial workforce.
African governments should be fixing this. But instead, we read about African monarchs aggrandizing themselves with massive displays of wealth; inequitable taxation; careless land redistribution; nepotism; corruption and bribery among officials; police who inflict more brutality than they prevent; and generally, anything besides responsible government. Corruption and incompetence.
The better question is why African governments keep falling apart. Why have African governments mostly failed to modernize their countries, while other former subjects of colonial rule have thrived? Why is Africa stuck in this cycle of destruction? These are questions for a separate discussion, and go far beyond Western food subsidies.
I hadn’t read much on the subject. This wikipedia article suggests that a decrease in food subsidies contributed to the problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007-2008_world_food_price_crisis#Biofuel_subsidies_in_the_US_and_the_EU. It makes economic sense: using food as biofuel increased demand, so the government cut off subsidies that farmers no longer needed, leaving consumers to pay the much-increased food prices.
Look at him, sitting in the sand all day doing nothing. No wonder nobody would want to make a thread for him. Xept Hades, of course.