The Subprime Food Industry

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This decade has been marked by a growing awareness of and appreciation for organic foods. Rising obesity rates have prompted many Americans to review their eating habits and adopt regimens featuring fewer processed foods. America's healthy eating renaissance corresponds with what everyone freely refers to as a green movement that addresses everything from what people eat to what they drive, and take out their trash. Tragically, this newfound commitment to leading healthier lives in the United States has very little to put Americans on equal footing with the rest of the world -- especially when it comes to food production and consumption, a fact that has become exceptionally evident this week.

As a subprime mortgage crisis continues unraveling this country's economy, Haiti's fragile democracy is once again being challenged; this time by a subprime food crisis. Americans can immediately point to an unregulated recalcitrant banking industry as the culprits in the mortgage crisis spurring this latest recession, but the causes behind Haiti's subprime food crisis are harder to pin down--not the least of which because Haiti is not the only country grappling with a subprime food industry. The World Bank and its penchant for debilitating debt-repayment conditions deserves part of the blame as Stephanie Black vividly showed in her film Life and Debt, but even something like this can not be pinned on the shoulders of The World Bank alone.

In a recent conversation with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman, activist and writer Raj Patel declares:

For a start, there were just bad harvests last year. Some people say that this is a sign that climate change is biting in agricultural economies...But on top of that, there are a few other factors. One of them, one of the issues, is that governments, particularly the US government, is very keen on biofuels...On top of that, you've got an increasing demand for meat in developing countries. And as people get richer in those countries and they shift to something that looks more like an American diet, you have a situation where the grains are being diverted away from poor people and into livestock. So, again, that's driving up the price of grains.

Haiti, the Philippines, Thailand, and a number of other countries in the global south are now facing the wrath of a three-headed-hydra: (1) climate change (2) instability cause by increased demand for biofuels and (3) shifting dietary habits. Combating one of these situations is tough enough for Haiti and its counterparts, but addressing all three at once is an incredibly harrowing task.

Comments

[JScott]

I guess I was correct about the Phillipines as well-after being a ex colony of the US it followed the agribiz-commodity corporate ag model and this is what they get.

[dgscol]

Haiti should worry about its own food production first, and foremost. Then they should worry about export of agricultural products. Population should be brought to sustainable levels given average harvests. There is a tendency to go with cash crops, and overplant into areas that are marginal. In good years the population swells supported by these marginal regions and in bad years, there are unsupported people.

A good population level is determined by full domestic support in agriculture, and allows a surplus commodity that can be traded for foreign goods that are needed and desired.

What is needed is leadership. Without it, there is disease, civil strife, and forced migration.

[demockracy]

What's laughable about this post is the extraordinary ignorance of what's been going on in Haiti. When the Haitians opt for "leadership" (i.e. elect leaders they want to lead them) France or the U.S. meddles to nullify the elections. This has included everything from bribery ("Papa Doc" Duvalier) to kidnapping (Jean Bertrand Aristide).

And this is *not* a metaphor. Aristide (plurality winner of Haitis' elections) was literally kidnapped by the Bush administration and dumped in Central Africa. I couldn't make it up.

From its inception, Haiti has been systematically looted by their barbaric "betters" -- from the French to the U.S. *That* (not their unwillingness to be lead) is why they are poor.

Paul Farmer, a guy who should know, calls U.S. policy toward Haiti "yelling at poor people." Farmer runs a clinic in Haiti which, because international aid is so scarce, literally has a bigger budget than the Haitian government. Remember that the next time you condemn Haitian democracy as corrupt, or "rudderless."

Listen to Farmer and Noam Chomsky give the essential history of Haiti in "The Uses of Haiti." Student Pugwash Northeast Regional Conference. February 22, 2002. This is available on Chomsky's site at http://chomsky.info/audionvideo.htm.

And let's stop yelling at poor people, shall we?

[cindysundancer]

And so it begins. Our oceans are dying with 90% of "table fish" gone, Smithsonian scientists are predicting mass extinctions over the next century, immigrants are streaming in from poor nations to the soon overloaded "lifeboats" of the rich ones, and millions of people are still in denial that the age of cheap and abundant energy is drawing to a close.
Wake up people! The planet is groaning under the strain of sustaining 6 billion plus people. We have to reduce world population or there will be ugly, massive die-offs. Every human on the planet should seriously consider having only one child, at best. I love children, but this seems the most humane solution by far.

[Paul]

Growing biofuels is immoral because it decreases land available to grow food in a starving world. There are food riots in Egypt and India has cut off all exports of rice in an attempt to stabilize the price.

Biofuels are a dead end - they will never provide enough energy to replace gasoline or even a small percent of our energy needs.

Stop subsidies for biofuel and develop mass transit.

[kittyma]

And La Tourture told the French that Haiti did not need the money that they have refused to pay them. The French continue to make Haiti pay for having had the temerity to declare independence from France. French Colonialism and post colonialism stinks