A Man-Made Famine

There are many causes behind the world food crisis, but
one chief villain: World Bank head, Robert Zoellick

By Raj Patel
The Guardian (UK)
April 16, 2008

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/raj_patel/2008/04/a_manmade_famine.html

For anyone who understands the current food crisis, it
is hard to listen to the head of the World Bank, Robert
Zoellick, without gagging.

Earlier this week, Zoellick waxed apocalyptic about the
consequences of the global surge in prices, arguing
that free trade had become a humanitarian necessity, to
ensure that poor people had enough to eat. The current
wave of food riots has already claimed the prime
minister of Haiti, and there have been protests around
the world, from Mexico, to Egypt, to India.

The reason for the price rise is perfect storm of high
oil prices, an increasing demand for meat in developing
countries, poor harvests, population growth, financial
speculation and biofuels. But prices have fluctuated
before. The reason we're seeing such misery as a result
of this particular spike has everything to do with
Zoellick and his friends.

Before he replaced Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank,
Zoellick was the US trade representative, their man at
the World Trade Organisation. While there, he won a
reputation as a tough and guileful negotiator, savvy
with details and pushy with the neoconservative
economic agenda: a technocrat with a knuckleduster.

His mission was to accelerate two decades of trade
liberalisation in key strategic commodities for the
United States, among them agriculture. Practically,
this meant the removal of developing countries' ability
to stockpile grain (food mountains interfere with the
market), to create tariff barriers (ditto), and to
support farmers (they ought to be able to compete on
their own). This Zoellick did often, and
enthusiastically.

Without agricultural support policies, though, there's
no buffer between the price shocks and the bellies of
the poorest people on earth. No option to support
sustainable smaller-scale farmers, because they've been
driven off their land by cheap EU and US imports. No
option to dip into grain reserves because they've been
sold off to service debt. No way of increasing the
income of the poorest, because social programmes have
been cut to the bone.

The reason that today's price increases hurt the poor
so much is that all protection from price shocks has
been flayed away, by organisations such as the
International Monetary Fund, the World Trade
Organisation and the World Bank.

Even the World Bank's own Independent Evaluation
Groupadmits (pdf) that the bank has been doing a poor
job in agriculture. Part of the bank's vision was to
clear away the government agricultural clutter so that
the private sector could come in to make agriculture
efficient. But, as the Independent Evaluation Group
delicately puts it, "in most reforming countries, the
private sector did not step in to fill the vacuum when
the public sector withdrew." After the liberalisation
of agriculture, the invisible hand was nowhere to be
seen.

But governments weren't allowed to return to the
business of supporting agriculture. Trade
liberalisation agreements and World Bank loan
conditions, such as those promoted by Zoellick, have
made food sovereignty impossible.

This is why, when we see Dominique Strauss-Kahn of the
IMF wailing about food prices, or Zoellick using the
crisis to argue with breathless urgency for more
liberalisation, the only reasonable response is nausea.
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Raj Patel is a visiting scholar in the Center for
African Studies at the University of California at
Berkeley, a Fellow at the Institute of Food and
Development Policy and a Research Associate at the
School of Development Studies at the University of
KwaZulu-Natal. He has worked for the World Bank,
interned at the WTO, and consulted for the UN

He is the author of Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power
and the Hidden Battle for the World's Food System.

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