Hunger: A Polemical Review*

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229498114

Hunger: A Polemical Review* ARTICLE in ANTIPODE · MAY 2006 Impact Factor: 1.89 · DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.1982.tb00034.x

CITATIONS

READS

6

46

3 AUTHORS, INCLUDING: Ben Wisner

Phil o'keefe

University College London

Northumbria University

104 PUBLICATIONS 2,560 CITATIONS

124 PUBLICATIONS 963 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All in-text references underlined in blue are linked to publications on ResearchGate, letting you access and read them immediately.

SEE PROFILE

Available from: Phil o'keefe Retrieved on: 04 February 2016

Hunger: A Polemical Review* Ben Wisner, Beijer Institute Dan Weiner, Clark University Phil O’Keefe, Beijer Institute

Introduction and the resurgence of such nutritionally debilitating diseases as malaria. However, we deny the analytical and political primacy of “food crisis” per se and look for underlying causes. One of the key explanations advanced in the 1970s was that poor countries are becoming increasingly reliant on imported food, and hence are extremely vulnerable to international grain market price fluctuations. Therefore, we begin this review by examining recent attempts to explain the 1970s food crisis through changing conditions of international trade in staple food crops. Although we welcome the “internationalization” of the food debate, we reject seeking causes for hunger in changing exchange relations.

The global food crisis of the early 1970s led to intensified research and writing on the hunger problem. Coming on the heels of a major international attempt to revolutionize food crop production in certain regions of the Third World the food crisis j o l t 4 both scientists and development planners. The optimism of the 1960s cvaporated and new ideas were put forward in an attempt to explain why 15 to 25 percent of the world’s population remained chronically malnourished. This paper critically reviews some recent attempts to understand the world food situation. We believe that such a thing as “food scarcity” or “hunger” must be investigated historically and materially, that is, concretely in terms of the dynamics of power and control in the production and reproduction cycles at the local level. We reject the crisis orientation common in attemps to understand various Third World problems. In the periphery, the crisis presents itself as “the environmental crisis,” “the urban crisis,” “the population crisis.” Each of these so called “crises” has had its U.N. Conference (in Stockholm, Vancouver, Budapest, Rome and Nairobi respectively). At each, a group of dissenters has tried to focus attention on the need to contextualize the “crisis” in question. The message has been consistent: issues of people’s power and control over productive resources underlie all manifestations of “crisis” in the periphery (Rome Declaration Group, 1979). On occasions, national delegations to such “crisis” conferences have made the same point, beginning with China’s well-known assertion in Stockholm in 1972 that issues of economic development were primary, those of “environment” secondary (Peking Review, 1972). We recognize that in some ways the food situation in [he 1980s is more critical than in any year since the “crisis” of the early 1970s. This is because of the necessity of feeding large numbers of refugees and displaced persons in addition to the burden of poor harvests, continued high costs of petroleum-based farm inputs, accelerating urbanization, continued population growth,

The ‘‘Food-Gap9’and the Growing Awareness of “Dependency” The post-World War I1 period has witnessed a marked decrease in the number of grain-exporting countries and a rise in the number of nations importing supplies. By 1979, 97 percent of global wheat exports came from five countries: U.S.A. (45%), Canada (200/0), Australia (14070), France (14%), and Argentina (4%) (National Association of Wheat Growers, 1979). This concentration has generated a great deal of concern. Many food analysts argue that the world food system is undergoing a fundamental change, involving an increasingly interdependent international division of labor and interlocking of national food systems. Much of the debate in the recent food literature stems from differing interpretations of the future consequences of such “interdependence.” The early 1970s witnessed changes in the grain trade. During the 1960s, surpluses of grain had become so large as to prompt the major exporting countries to idle 30 percent of their acreage in an effort to bolster prices (Burbank and Flynn, 1980). However, between 1972 and 1974, prices for the major food grains, wheat and rice, went up by as much as 300 percent. It is generally believed that this steep price rise was at the heart of the 1972-1974 “world food crisis.” One common interpretation of the crisis is that drought-induced production

*First submitted to Anlipode, March, 1981, revised September, 1982.

1

consumed (1 5 % ) than for the “underdeveloped” nations as a whole (34%). Vulnerability to international grain price fluctuations would therefore seem highest in the “middle income” underdeveloped countries, * where rapid urbanization and some development of effective demand result in significantly higher percentages of imported grain, especially wheat. While the LDCs may suffer many food problems, these often do not include the much publicized vulnerability to fluctuating global grain prices. In most cases the LDCs are too Door to import a significant proportion of their grain needs. Their 93 percent self-sufficiency in grains, as indicated by Table 2 , should not be interpreted as a sign of less precarious food systems, but rather of higher degrees of hunger. National consumption levels for LDCs are from ten to twenty percent below WHO/FAO minimum standards in the first place (Council on Environmental Quality, 1980: 17). Focusing attention on the “trade gap” and “import dependency” misdiagnoses the different kind of vulnerability suffered by the LDCs. It may well be the case, in the words of the International Food Policy Research Institute (1977: 17) that “the core of the food problem is in the Iow income, food deficit countries in which the per capita GNP in 1973 was less than U.S. $300.” However, the reason is not that these countries have become hopelessly “hooked” on grain imports originating in a few industrialized nations. Moreover, even in relation to the “middle income” underdeveloped countries, the price-vulnerability argument is overstated. Some countries (for instance, Venezuela and Mexico) have engaged in sweeping policy changes attempting to refocus their agricultural production on their rapidly growing urban markets (Vergopolous, 1981). Since there is little evidence that such changes are likely to improve the food security and dietary level of the rural poor, they demonstrate the inadequacy of the fashionable pricevulnerability argument in pinpointing the major contradictions in Third World food systems. It would seem, therefore, that “the food gap” is an overgeneralization which has prevented authors from looking at individual nation’s vulnerabilities as the consequence of particular histories, roles in the international division of labor, internal distributions of income, and control over resources. These overgeneralized studies have not asked how families in specific countries actually go about getting the food they eat. There are three primary food pathways. The market is only one. This feeds the proletariat and the upper classes. Secondly, there is subsistence farming. This feeds the peasantry. Thirdly, there is some combination of market and subsistence production. This feeds a semi-proletariat. We will return to these classes in detail, but for now it suffices to observe that those who rely primarily on the market will be the most vulnerable to food price instabilities. Subsistence farmers are less so. It is the very large (and growing) class of semi-proletarian producers who also sell their labor power whose vulnerability remains most ambiguous. In conclusion, the food crisis of the early 1970s crystallized the notion of food dependency. However,

shortfalls in the major grain producing regions (USSR and Australia in 1982, and USA in 1974), coupled with droughts in the Sahel, East Africa, and portions of South Asia, reduced stocks available for export while increasing demand. Supplies were quickly depleted, food aid was suddenly less available, and many countries could not afford to buy enough grain on the international market. For many observers this experience exemplified growing interdependence in agricultural trade. The growing “food gap” bet ween the developed nations (producers) and the dependent underdeveloped nations (consumers) was thought to be a critical component of the world food system. The concept of a food gap now dominates the literature. Many influential studies of the global agricultural sector have projected the food gap into the future. Ten of these are summarized in Table 1, as are their major assumptions. T w o features of these studies are important to I. ”c First, they define deficit by calculating net imports (total imports minus total exports) for underdeveloped countries as a whole. Such global aggregation tends to underestimate the food problems of many food deficit countries, especially those least developed (LDC’s). Secondly, their results vary greatly. The projected total cereal deficit in 1985 ranges from 32 million metric tons (MMT) in the Global 2000 study to 113 MMT in the CARD study conducted by Iowa State University. The University of California study projects a global wheat deficit of 1 1 MMT in 1985, while the USDA assuming higher economic growth rates, puts the gap at 55 MMT. Projections for the year 2000 are similarly diverse. I t is possible, despite these studies’ widely differing assumptions and results, to identify common elements. First, there exists broad agreement among all studies that without an increase in domestic agricultural productivity, underdeveloped country grain imports will increase significantly by the year 2000. Second, it is agreed that poor and hungry are becoming increasingly vulnerable to international price instabilities in the major grain commodities, in particular, wheat. Production declines caused by drought or disease in any of the major grain-producing regions are therefore often viewed as having potentially harmful global repercussions. Similarly, any other major perturbation if the supply/demand balance (e.g., major grain deals) is seen as having potentially disastrous global consequences (CIA, 1974; Sterling Forest Conference, 1974; Rockefeller Foundation, 1974; Brown, 1975; Schneider, 1977; Roberts and Landsford, 1979; Hopkins and Puchala, 1980). Attention to the international grain market signifies a welcome recognition by conventional scientists of deteriorating food crop production in many Third World countries, but the notion of dependency has been overemphasized and confused. In Table 2, the import needs o f t he 29 U. N.-designated least developed countries (LDCs) are compared to those of the entire group of underdeveloped countries. Assuming that consumption can be no higher than total production plus imports, underdeveloped countries currently rely on imports for 42 percent of their grain consumption and 66 percent of their wheat ‘consumption. For the LDCs, however, imports provide only 7 percent of total grain consumption and 46 percent of total wheat consumed. For these poorer countries wheat represents a lower share of total grain

* Countries

such as Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria.

2

TABLE I PROJECTED NET CEREAL AND WHEAT IMPORT REQUIREMENTS FOR UNDERDEVELOPED COUNTRIES, 1985 and 2000 (MILLIONS OF METRIC TONS) 1985 Major Global Agricultural Studies USDA (1978) FAO* (1979) BLAKESLEE et al. (1973) “CARD” CROSSEN & FREDERICK (1977) UNIV. O F CALIFORNIA (1974) OECD (1976) RIDKER & WATSON (1980) RFF IFPRI (1976) US COUNCIL ON ENV. QUALITY (1980) “GLOBAL 2000” SEWELL (1977) “ODC”

Net Cereal 34=-71 52‘-91 66e- 113f 728 37h 100‘

2000 Wheat

Net Cereal

Wheat

24=55 43 ‘

88C-153d

65

1719

4R

19g Ilh

47’- 105 66‘-83“‘ 32”- 54O

32n-550

85

* F A 0 Figures for 1990 not 1985.

MAJOR ASSUMPTIONS (Compiled by Weiner (1981)) a. Higher productivity with high income growth. b. High income growth with high demand. c. High income growth. d. Continuation of present trends. e. ‘‘Y with restricted trade. g. Medium population and income growth rates, historical (1961-73) productivity growth rates. h. Historical population and productivity growth rates, low economic growth. i. Continuation of present policies and “most likely” trends. j. Low population and economic growth rates, some increase in productivity. k. High population and economic growth rates, some increase in productivity. 1. Historical trends with low economic growth. m. Historical trends with high economic growth. n. Continuation of present trends with major increase in energy prices. 0. Continuation of present trends with no major increase in energy prices. TABLE 2 UNDERDEVELOPED COUNTRY GRAIN AND WHEAT IMPORT DEPENDENCY, 1977/78 AVERAGE All Underdeveloped

070 Total Consumption

LDCs*

Yo Total Consumption

Total Grain Production (MT) Imports (MT) Total Grain Consumption (MT)

73.8 52.9 126.7

58% 42 Vo 100%

40.25 3.18 43.82

93 90 7 vo 100%

Total Wheat Production (MT) Imports (MT) Total Wheat Consumption (MT)

14.7 14.7 43.5

34% 66% 100%

3.57 3.06 6.63

54% 46% 100%

*United Nations Designated Least Developed Countries Data Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (1980) as compiled by Weiner (1981).

3

misinterpretation of evidence of a growing food gap has led to the incorrect assertion that internatonal grain market instabilities cause hunger. The fact that a handful of countries (mostly industrialized) have become major grain exporters, while the low and middle income countries must import increasing quantities of basic food grains is, of course, important in understanding the world food porblem. However, changes in conditions of international exchange cannot explain the stagnation of Third World domestic food crop production. We must, therefore, conclude that recent attempts to explain world food hunger as a function of growing food dependency are ill-conceived. In the remainder of this paper we review current literature focusing on production and the reasons why it has been inadequate for meeting consumption needs. Following de Janvry (1977), whose typology we modify, five types of explanations are identified. These are: (1) neo-Malthusian; (2) possibilist; (3) developmentalist; (4) liberal anti-Malthusian; and ( 5 ) Marxist.

their populations since fewer mouths to feed would mean better and more food for the rest. This simple and appealing logic is demonstrably false. Evidence from Western Europe and Japan indicates that only when a level of material security is guaranteed to most of the population will the birth rate decline (Clark, 1967; Wrigley, 1969; Cippola, 1964). Population is neither historically nor theoretically determinant since changes in demography cannot be explained by reference only to demographic variables (Caldwell, 1978 and 1980). Even authors who give population significant (though not determining) importance in, for instance, the history of land use (Boserup, 1965; Clark, 1967), ground their analysis of population in the production process. The Malthusians have misunderstood another clear historical message. Technology is capable of exponential expansion and has “exploded,” in many cases faster even than population (Coontz, 1957; Boserup, 1965; Wilkinson, 1974; Kleinman, 1980). If underdeveloped countries have not achieved sufficient material security to complete what historians of population call a “demographic transition,” and if they have not enjoyed an explosion of locally-based technology, the causes must be sought outside the realm of population. There have been significant external checks on the accumulation of surplus (hence material security) and development of local technology in precisely those countries most affected by the “population bomb” (Blaut, 1975 and 1976; Frank, 1978). In failing to look more critically at the vicious circle they comhunger and monly acknowledge (overpopulation low productivity lack of security overdisease population), neo-Malthusians remain “trapped in a narrow vicious theoretical circle of their own making” (Frank, 1979: 1).

.

Neo-Malthusian Perspectives Demographic determinism has had a particularly important and persistent place in popular ideology. The “population bomb” metaphor of neo-Malthusian’s Ehrlich (1968) and Borgstrom (1973) gave new life to a popular form of Malthus’ 18th century view that population’s geometrical growth, if unchecked, will necessarily outstrip the arithmetical increase of food production. The neo-Malthusian view has received considerable support from two Club of Rome efforts to model global resource use. Meadows et al. (1972) projected a system collapse sometime in the first half of the 21st century if historical rates of resource use were allowed to continue. The study was widely criticized for its methods and assumptions (Cole et al., 1973; Cottrell, 1973; Clark and Cole, 1975). In a second attempt, incorporating some, but not the most fundamental, of the criticisms, Mesarovic and Pestel (1974) came up with much the same results: eco-catastrophic triggered by uncontrolled demographic expansion. In a somewhat more sophisticated but basically still neo-Malthusian study, Brown (1974) interprets the tightening grain markets of the early 1970s as the sign of new era of global food insecurity. Brown begins his book by stating (p. 3) that “in the early Seventies the soaring demand for food, spurred by both continuing population growth and rising affluence, has begun to “outrun the capcity of the world’s farmers and fishermen.” The inclusion of effective demand as an important component of consumption represents an improvement in the neoMalthusian literature, but the central message, that too many people inhabit a world of finite resources, remains Malthusian. Even in the more sophisticated analyses of this genre, population growth plays a determinant role. If fertility is held at the 1968 level (unlikely because of the greater number of fecund women) world population will exceed 7.5 billion by 2000 A.D. (Mesarovic and Pestel, 1974). Moreover, underdeveloped countries will account for a higher proportion of the world‘s population growing from the present 70 percent to 80 percent by the end of the century. With malnutrition already a problem, developing countries, it is argued, should strictly limit

-

-

-

-

One can also ask whether the micro model of the Third World family implied by neo-Malthusianism is true to the material realities of these families’ everyday lives. A large number of recent field studies have shattered the image of the family reflected in Malthusian-inspired studies of reproductive sociology, namely, that of a family that does not plan, seeks immediate gratification, and does not respond to economic incentives. In place of this image, a view is emerging of families who do plan, try to save, and defer gratification, and who do respond to incentives (Mamdani, 1972; White 1973 and 1976; Kleinman, 1980; Michaelson, 1981). This alternative view emphasizes the way in which capitalist penetration of the countryside has upset labor use patterns, after actually producing increases in growth rates (White 1973 and 1976; Teitelbaum, 1975), and how socioeconomic programs focused on equity have been accompanied by reductions in growth rates (Radcliffe, 1978). Conventional authors who identify population growth as a main cause of hunger, build their analysis on historically unsound foundations, as well as upon inaccurate micro models of family processes. At most, one might grant that hunger and population growth are two (among other) effects of as yet unspecified causes. The neo-Malthusian is blind to the existence of such causes. Other schools of thought admit their existence, but often misconceive their nature. 4

~~

~

exports and that its role was almost certain to grow over the next several decades. The world’s increasing dependence on American surpluses was seen to portend an increase in United States power and influence, especially vis-a-vis the food deficit poor countries. Indeed, the C.I.A. report argues that in times of shortage the United States would face difficult choices about how to allocate its surplus between affluent purchasers and the hungry world. The report goes on to state that some climatologists believe that a global cooling is imminent and that impacts on food production will be most severe in the high latitudes and monsoon regions. United States production would be affected very little. If such a situation occurs, the report suggests that the potential risks to the United States would also rise. There would be increasingly desperate attempts on the part of powerful, but hungry nations to obtain grain any way they could. Furthermore, if another Plains-wide drought occurred while world grain stocks were at 1974’s low levels, there would be a severe drop in world food supplies even if all the other main producing areas had average to good weather. These ideas quickly filtered into the popular periodical media (Bowden and Weiner, 1980). An example is the article “Back to Dust Bowl Days” in Time, 12 August, 1974, in which this causal link is clearly expressed (p. 69): “. . . a continuing siege of crop-killing weather in the American heartland this year could very well mean a rising death rate from Calcutta to Africa’s famine-ridden Sahel.” The ideological function of such statements is clear: climate becomes a cause of‘ famine. The recent food crisis has elevated the classic drought link to an international level. While there may be a caSe for food dependency/ market vulnerability in Calcutta, this would be hard to justify for all of lndia or Bangladesh on export-import statistics alone. As for the Sahel, the dependency/ vulnerability link is manifestly absent. In the 1977-78 crop year Mali produced 98.5 percent of all the grain consumed and Chad produced 98 percent of its grain consumption (F.A.O., 1980a). There is high and increasing famine vulnerability in these Sahelian countries, but not because they are dependent on the international grain market. The causes have to be sought in the historical processes that have distorted patterns of rural production and consumption in the Sahel, especially the spread of petty commodity production and large-sale cotton, peanut, and beef production (Franke and Chasin, 1980). Dando (1981) reviews 6,000 famines over 8,000 years and concludes (p. 11) that

Possibilist Perspectives If people cannot be blamed for their own misfortune, then blame nature. The possiblist orientation focuses on th e environmental li mit a t ions t o agricultural development. Biswas (1979: 257) has argued that: Climate is an important parameter that should be considered in any theory of economic development, especially in the tropics and subtropics. The physical, social, economic, cultural and institutional conditions are very different in the tropics compared to the temperate zones.. . It is important that strategies developed are compatible with the laws of nature, not against it [sic].

According to this view, agricultural failure in the underdeveloped countries results from environmental constraints, compounded with failure to recognize these constraints. Possibilism can be detected in the international halls of power. Mustafa Tolba, excutive director of UNEP, writes (1979, xi and xiv): . . .the new forms of development in the developing world should be based on practices environmentally sound in relation to each country’s natural resources of soil, water, and plant and animal life, with care taken to avoid the destruction of the resource base.. . 1 have tried to clarify what I mean by development without destruction. I mean sustained development which takes due regard of environmental constraints. Nowhere is that more in evidence than in the provision of food.

“Development without destruction” is also the ideology diffused by an influential study recently completed by the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality (1980). This forecasts pessimistic study, entitled Global 2000, intensification of some existing world characteristics (p. 1):

-

If present trends continue, the world in 2000 will be crowded, more polluted, less stable ecologically, and more vulnerable t o disruption than the world we live in now. Serious stresses involving population, resources, and the environment are clearly visible ahead. Despite greater material output, the world‘s people will be poorer in many ways than they are today.. . . For hundreds of millions of the desperately poor, the outlook for food and other necessities of life will be no better. For many it will be worse.

With wide media coverage, this study has served to reinforce the belief that population growth, environmental constraints, and environmental degradation are the causes of the world food problem. Possibilist themes can also be detected in a current literature concerned with the international grain market and the food gap (discussed above). A remarkably large number of studies have tried to correlate climatic perturbation in the major grain exporting countries with world hunger (Bryson, 1973; Brown, 1974; CIA, 1974; Sterling Forest Conference, 1974; Rockefeller Foundation, 1974; Schneider, 1974, 1976 and 1977; Science Council of Canada, 1976; Hopkins and Puchala, 1978; Roberts and Lansford, 1979). For example, in August of 1974, the C.I.A. released a report on the Potenrial tmplications of Trends in World Population, Food Production and Cliniate (C.I.A., 1974). One of the report’s major conclusions was that the United States provided nearly three-fourths of the world’s net grain

“. . .droughts

do not lie at the bottom of most famines. Droughts can cause a crop failure, but man, by withholding life-supporting food from his fellow man, causes famine.. . . Famine is a cultural hazard - not a physical hazard. There exist definite physical parameters for food production, but there are also many more insidious cultural factors in all famine occurrences.

Other authors are even clearer about the multiple ways in which the vulnerability to droughts has been increased among the poorest classes in agrarian societies. In case after case, from Ethiopia to Brazil, China to Nigeria, this literature documents the role of land expropriation, labor conscription, forced-cash-cropping and systems of feudal 5

ground rent in the production of vulnerability to drought (Buchanan, 1970; Bondestan, 1974; de Castro, 1977). Possibilist authors (especially the climatic determinists) commit more than simply an error of statistical overgeneralization. They engage in a systematic (ideologically grounded) misreading of history. Possiblism’s historical inaccuracy has its mirror image in its ignorance of micro level realities. There is growing evidence of the existence of complex family-level strategies for coping with drought (Wisner et al., 1977) as for a wide range of other environmental hazards (White, 1974; Burton, Kates and White, 1978). What might be debated is why such micro level strategies are becoming less effective. Nevertheless, there is growing consensus that they were quite effective in the past and that in various ways their decline is associated with the expansion of the capitalist world system (Brookfield, 1973; Kjekshus, 1976). The possibilist is not troubled by these historical or contemporary material details. Nature causes poverty, food shortage, and famine just as for the neoMalthusian, population growth causes hunger. But is not the inability of a particular nation or group of farmers to deal with adverse soil or pest or climatic conditions as much an effecr of continuing underdevelopment and distortion of family-based production? The possiblist analysis of hunger is forced to accept Gourou’s (1953: 141 ff.) famous doctrine - the tropics are naturally poorer than the European temperate zone.

Developmentalist Perspectives Developmentalists convey a message strikingly different from that of the neo-Malthusians and possibilists. Developmentalists believe that the earth has the physical potential to feed an increasing population, and, moreover, they are not overly concerned with environmental constraints in the process of increasing production. For developmentalists the constraint is a combination of political, cultural, socioeconomic, and technological obstacles that might collectively be called agricultural stagnation. Developmentalists are a large and heterogeneous group. Many put a heavy emphasis on technology. For instance, Wortman and Cummings (1978) are sanguine about enormous new technological potentials. They look forward to a “third agricultural revolution” (the first having been the neolithic and second that associated with the industrial revolution). To tap this potential a process is called for which (p. 3): must involve concerted efforts to move into the countryside more aggressively and systematically with roads and power stations, with supply of inputs and arrangements for the marketing of agricultural products. Moreover, scientists must work directly in rural areas to create the more highly productive, more profitable farming systems which will contribute to the primary ingredient for rural development: increased income for large numbers of families.

Not all developmentalist writers are as ignorant or dismissive of the negative results of such programs as the Green Revolution, and most lay heavier stress on institutional changes as prerequisites for technological revolution (Johnson, 1975; Poleman, 1975; Waiters, 1975; Sanderson, 1975; Crosson, 1975, Leontiev et al., 1977; National Academy of Sciences, 1977; Enzer et al., 1978; F.A.O., 1979; Scrimshaw and Taylor, 1980). For instance, Leontiev et al. (1977) conclude that (pp. 4-5: It is clear. . ., at least with respect to the major staples, that doubling and trebling of land productivity is a realistic

technical and organizational possibility. . . . This task clearly involves substantial investment. . . and the success of the new technological revolution will depend to a large extent on land reform and other social and institutional changes.. . [I]f these conditions are met, then the formidable task of feeding the rapidly increasing population of the planet, and of improving diets in all regions of the world would be fulfilled.

A l o n g w i t h i n s t i t u t i o n a l r e f o r m , many developmentalists stress the distorting effects of national agricultural policies. Low food prices, it is claimed, have favored the urban elite and cash crop producers, while effectively constraining local food crop produciton. Letting the free market reign, it is often suggested, would increase agricultural prices, enhancing incentives for production of food crops among farmers (Hopper, 1976: 142; Tinbergen, 1976: 33). Developmentalists also differ in their perception of the role of the United States in solving food problems. The USDA feels that the U.S. can feed part of the world at reasonable prices, but also sees the need to increase indigenous production for the poorer groups who cannot afford imported food (USDA, 1974 and 1978). Walters (1975) and Dando (1981) agree. Sanderson (1975: 509) sees an immediate role for U.S. grain since “it takes time to overcome the enormous technical, educational, 6

and institutional obstacles t o agricultural development .” The National Academy of Sciences (1977) feels that the major role of the U.S. should be in research and development and in technology transfer. On the other hand, several other authorities (Scrimshaw and Taylor, 1980; F.A.O., 1979; Enzer et al., 1978) believe that while technological development is necessary, it must be local to ensure its appropriateness to a particular country or region. Some authors go even further to suggest that part of the cause of agricultural stagnation in the Third World is the diffusion of western technology inappropriate to these cultures and environments. Regardless of these differences, the developmentalists all feel that the food problem can be solved or substantially improved. Most recognize that poverty and malnutrition are correlated. The major strategy, therefore, becomes “rural development.”* Such a strategy usually embraces social a nd physical infrastructural investment, rural industrialization and income policy as well as programs specifically focused on food production such as land reform, small farmer credit, and marketing (Mosher, 1966: 63-181; Hewes, 1974: 34-57, 82-93; Lele, 1975: 22-126; Aziz, 1978: 89- 149; Oyugi, I98 1: 1-26). The developmentalist perspective incorporates the radical critique up to a point. Contrary t o the beliefs of many critical scholars, a large segment of existing food research is not neo-Malthusian. Interconnections between income, malnutrition, population growth, and rural development are understood. Solutions, however, are seen to be compatible with the capitalist system. The problem with developmentalist contributions is their commitment t o the use of existing social allocation systems (e.g., prices, private property, the civil service, and the urban hierarchy) for the implementation of reforms and acceleration of economic development. Even most proponents of “appropriate technology” implicity accept the urban-biased framework of the “diffusion of innovation” as well as class-biased access to education and raw materials used in even the most “local” (hence “appropriate”) technological change, not t o mention the unequal distribution in most societies of the leisure and security to experiment with precarious subsistence systems in the first place. In short, developmentalists have some useful insights into the problem, but frame their solutions in the unquestioned continuity and diffusion of capitalism as a social and economic system. However; a growing body of scholars now reject the idea that rural development through enhanced integration of capitalist social and spatial relations will accelerate economic development. Furthermore, capitalism is seen as having produced underdevelopment through the draining of Third World surplus and the effective blocking of economic development (Amin, 1974 and 1977; Frank, 1979). Also, through the alliance of ruling classes inside and outside the underdeveloped countries, peripheral capitalism is produced; this serves the needs of local elites while it reproduces hunger, poverty, and famine vulnerability among the masses (Rey, 1973; Amin, 1977). Thus the “rural development” advocated by the developmentalists can only serve to

aggravate the problems generated by dependent capitalism. Repeatedly land reform, marketing, road building, well digging and similar “rural development” investments have enhanced the rate of growth of bigger farmers, accelerating the small farmer’s slide toward landlessness. The landless are not quickly absorbed by industry since dependent capitalism has severe disadvantages in world trade and a small internal market. Hence, the landless swell the ranks of the unemployed. Others cling to the land, but on such small plots that they are progressively pushed into reliance on the market for some food purchases and thus increasingly sell a portion of their family labor power. These are the semiproletarians. Even the most “enlightened” of developmentalist perspectives do not adequately incorporate an analysis of local level processes at work which intensify the processes of marginaliztion and semi-proletarianization. Critics of the Green Revolution have shown repeatedly how “technological revolutions” reinforce the interests of small capitalist and landlord classes in the Third World, while adding to the burden on poor households, increasing landlessness, and indebtedness. Evidence of such class bias is available for a very wide range of innovations, including irrigation and tractorization at one extreme of capital intensity, to the use of improved seeds and agricultural chemicals at the other (de Alcantara, 1973; Griffin, 1974 and 1976; Sen, 1974; Havens and Flinn, 1975; de Janvry and Garramon, 1977; Michie, 1978; Hobbs, 1980; Yapa, 1981). Where capital inputs are very low and the returns immediate (e.g., annual crops as opposed to perennials), a debate continues concerning the existence of class bias. Recent field evidence suggesting a wide spread of benefits (Hayami and Herdt, 1977; Shingi et al., 1981) must be juxtaposed to continuing field studies of highly skewed income distribution effects (Scott, 1979; Griffin and Khan, 1979; Griffin and Chose, 1979; Harriss, 1980). Unless one defines “appropriate technology” tautologically as that which necessarily benefits the poorest in a rural area,” one must face the reality that some, indeed much, wellmeant “appropriate” technology (i.e., cheap, easy to maintain or reproduce, based on locally available material and energy, consistent with household division of labor and other elements of local culture) has ended up increasing the gap between rich and poor farmers.

Liberal Anti-Malthusian Perspectives These authors feel our intellectual problem is Malthusianism and that our practical problem is capitalism. They want to de-bunk the former and reform the latter (de Castro, 1952a, 1952b, 1957 and 1977; Herrera, 1976; Robbins and Ansari, 1976; George, 1976; Lappe and Collins, 1977; Linnemann et al., 1977; Morgan, 1979). For instance, de Castro’s influential book The Geopolitics of Hunger analyzes hunger as “the biological manifestation of underdevelopment” (Berlan, 1977: 21). Underdevelopment is viewed as a social, rather than a physical phenomenon, where colonial capitalist penetration destroyed the livelihood systems of the subjugated populations. Hunger is therefore viewed as man-induced. Furthermore, for de Castro this hunger produced by the ravages of colonialism in turn causes

* For an excellent introduction to this slippery term, see Harriss, 1982.

7

the world into interdependent regions and defined a range of social welfare and growth policies that would allow their alternative model to generate an adequate standard of living (adequate food, housing, health, aQd education) within one generation in each defined region. Their conclusion was that obstacles to such a “plan” were political, not physical, thus refuting possibilists and neoMalthusians. Around the same time, an interdisciplinary group based at the Free University in Amsterdam developed a Model of the International Relations in Agriculture (MOIRA). The model is an economic simulation of food production, consumption and trade for 106 countries or country groups, where each country (or group) is represented by a submodel (Linnemann et al., 1979). This study also tested the impact of various social and economic policy measures and concluded that increased income in the Third World was possible and would lead to better food distribution and a consequent reduction in malnutrition. These liberal* approaches provide considerable clarity and have been influential in mobilizing popular energy for political reforms in North America and Europe, but the difficulty with all of them is that they locate the problem in a set of malfunctioning capitaIist subsystems rather than in the normal functioning of the capitalist system as a whole. Thus they criticize institutions such as the international grain market (Morgan, 1979), the use of food in geopolitical struggle (Spitz, 1978), or the international aid establishment (George, 1976: 192-264; Lappe et al., 1981) or they criticize such national institutions as the usurious rural money market (Lapp6 and Collins, 1978: 185-187), an inadequate “entitlement” system (Sen, 1981), landed oligarchy (George, 1976: 69-88) or national planning ministries insensitive to basic needs (Herrera, 1976; Linnemann et al., 1977). Even when they identify numerous, interacting institutions at both international and national levels, their approach is to view the problem as a malfunction of a system that can be put right. For instance, Tinbergen (1976: 32) begins a summary of the world food problem with the remark that “part of the problem is to be found in the operation of many of the world’s international systems which deprive Third World countries of the opportunities to develop the resources required to meet their own food needs.” There follow (pp. 155-158, and 173-197) dozens of carefully researched proposals for setting international trade, aid, and investment right. The underlying idea seems to be giving Third World countries and their small farmers ‘‘a

overpopulation, and not the other way around. Although de Castro’s search for evidence of a physiological link between hunger (in particular protein deficiency) and rapid population growth turned out to be a blind alley; his intuitive grasp of the direction of causality has been borne out by later sociological research. For instance, Berg (1970) summarizes a number of studies that suggest that Indian parents continue to bear children until reasonably sure of the survival of at least one son. Since the link between malnutrition and infant mortality is strongly established in the community health literature (Grounds, 1964; Kahn, 1966; May, 1970; Morley, 1973) de Castro’s belief that hunger can cause high birth rates seems at least indirectly vindicated. Lappe and Collins (1977) and George (1976) present more recent versions of the same view. These authors focus on the role of transnational corporations in perpetuating the process of underdevelopment that colonialism began. The development of cash crops for export is shown to be accelerating at the expense of locally produced food crops. These three authors also devote considerable space to dispelling the myth of scarcity. In their view neo-Malthusianism is a smokescreen hiding the real causes of world hunger: the rising power of transnational corporations in disrupting local food systems; maldistribution of income within Third World countries; and, ultimately, maldistribution of productive resources, particularly land. Dinham and Hines (1983) dispense with the antiMalthusian preliminaries and launch directly into an extremely detailed study of the various forms in which colonial capital and present-day transnational capital have distorted rural production and overall development in Africa. Although they reveal some important trends (e.g., massive joint ventures in the late 1970s and early 1980s involving African states such as Nigeria, Sudan, and Zambia with a wide variety of foreign firms with the goal of achieving national food self-reliance*) and compile a useful overview of foreign penetration, the analysis uses transnational capital as first cause. The reasons why transnationals should be increasingly involved in Africa in the 1980s (i.e., the preconditions for this penetration) are unquestioned. This is commonly the point at which the liberal critiqe stops short of the systematic study demanded by Marxism. Furthermore, since the origins of transnational penetration are not understood, the strategies for countering it receive only superficial treatment. Dinham and Hines conclude weakly that “governments could avoid many of the more wasteful agricultural schemes.. . by being more active and forceful in their demands and rigorous in defining their objectives” (p. 161). Linnemann et al. (1979) and Herrera (1976) turn the tables on the Club of Rome Malthusians. Supported by the Bariloche Foundation, Herrera led a Latin American team in !he development of an alternative world model. They argue that the Club of Rome had overemphasized environmental and demographic variables at the expense of political and economic factors. Herrera’s team divided

* The term “liberal” and our account here should not be taken as unaware of the seriouus challenge such views pose to existing power structures nor of their political importance. Readers interested in the kinds of consumer campaigns and other kinds of political activity implied by the theoretical positions being discussed should consult the lists of organizations at the back of both Lappe and Collins (1977) and the more recent (1980) “What Can We Do?” a publication of the lnstitute for Food and Development Policy, with which Lappe and Collins and associated, 2588 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 941 10. Readers in Europe might contact Earth Resources, 258 Pentonville Road, London N.I. England, or the lPRA Food Policy Study Group, Krokusweg 7,8057 Zurich, Switerland, for information about regional activities surrounding such issues as the marketing of infant formula, use of pesticides banned in the U.S.A. and Europe in plantations in the Third World, etc.

* African nations which have recently opted for large-scale, highly capitalized, mechanized schemes are Nigeria, Zambia, Kenya, Sudan, Ghana, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Mozambique, Togo, and Benin (Dinham and Hines, 1983: 143). 8

historical and integrative view begins with a detailed overview chapter called “Crisis and Change in U.S. Agriculture,” separately authored by MacLennan and Walker (1980) and finishes with an excellent thirty-page appendix giving details of the date and mode of penetration into Latin America by all operations of the sixty-six top U.S. agribusiness corporations (pp. 253-283). Unfortunately some of this Marxist literature suffers from overgeneralization. For instance, Omvedt (1975) asserts “the absolute interdependence of the world food supply” (p. 2) and goes on to assert that “[tlhe major form of the world food crisis today is the growing dependence of the subsistence population of the Third World countries upon the affluent imperialist nations, primarily the United States, for their basic food supply.” As we have shown above, this is simply not true. There are some Third World countries with characteristics which make them highly dependent and vulnerable, while others are vulnerable for reasons other than import dependency. Burbach and Flynn (1980: 43-61) express similar opinions, seriously oversimplifying the several ways in which different sorts of Third World socioeconomic formations are being integrated into the capitalist world system. This group of Marxist authors follows Marx and Engels closely in focusing on the separation of the farmers from their means of production (Marx, 1970: 167-176 and 717-733) and in emphasizing the inevitability of poverty (and hunger) under capitalism. Marx had written (1970: 631-632 or Meek, 1971: 94) that:

fair deal” and eliminating “unfair advantages” enjoyed by such juggernauts as the transnational corporations investing in agriculture. All of this is strikingly similar to the essentially reformist appeal in the United States for “agribusiness accountability” (Greene, 1976). Such appeals, while not to be dismissed, are rooted in a fundamental difference between a liberal and a Marxist view of politics. As Milliband (1977: 17) defines the difference: In the liberal view of politics, conflict exists in terms of ‘problems’ which need to be ‘solved.’ The hidden assumption is that conflict does not, or need not, run very deep; that it can be ‘managed’ by the exercise of reason and good will, and a readiness to compromise and agree.

. . .The Marxist approach to conflict is very different. It is not a matter of ‘problems’ to be ‘solved’ but of a state of domination and subjection to be ended by a total transformation of the conditions which give rise to it. This central weakness of the liberal position is revealed in the acknowledged failure to “reform” institutions during three “disappointing decades” of development since the last World War.

Marxist Perspectives Marxist views continue where the liberal anti-Malthusians leave off. The causes of pwerty and agriculture stagnation are sought by examining the motion of capital in both the national framework and the framework of a global capitalist system. Marxists argue that a solution to world food problems is impossible within a national framework of capitalist relations of production nor within the framework of trade, aid, and investment of a capitalist world system. Within the broad agreement on these two propositions lie a considerable variety of opinions. A large group of Marxist authors focus their attention on the ongoing and accelerating subordination of Third World land and labor to agricultural production for export which profits foreign capital and harms indigenous food supply (Perelman, 1977; Franke and Chasin, 1980; Burbach and Flynn, 1980; Berlan, 1980; Payer, 1981). Thus far they resemble the liberal antiMalthusians discussed earlier. The Marxists, however, differentiate themselves, firstly, by a more precise and emphasized discussion of the historical roots of the food crisis in the development of capitalism on a world scale; and secondly by focusing on the process of separating Third World farmers from their means of production (proletarianization and semi-proletarianization). For instance, Franke and Chasin (1980: 63-108) explore in detail the earliest roots of the Sahelian food crisis in the establishment of peanut cultivation by French capital aided by the French colonial state, and trace the many ways in which indigenous patterns of cultivation and herding were affected. Perelman (1977: 124-130) argues that the case of Ireland under British colonial rule foreshadows present-day processes at work to remake Third World agriculture. Burbach and Flynn (1980) emphasize the unity of the historical process encompassing the capitalization and corporatization of domestic U.S. agriculture on the one hand, and the penetration of Latin America by U.S. agribusiness corporations on the other. Burbach and Flynn’s deeply

[tlhe labouring population therefore produces, along with the accumulation of capital produced by it, the means by which itself is made relatively superfluous, is turned into a relative surplus population; and it does this to an always increasing extent. This is a law of population peculiar to the capitalist mode of production; and in fact every special historic mode of production has its own special laws of population, historically valid within its limits alone.

The task for these authors is to think through the contemporary food crisis in the light of these key insights and their corresponding concepts: alienation of the worker from the means of production and the reserve army of the unemployed. The key to applying such insights to the current situation is to be found in the classics. In discussing the Irish situation, Marx and Engels wrote (1971: 57, cited in History Task Force, 1979: 33): But with modern compulsory emigration, the case stands quite opposite. Here, it is not the want of productive power which creates a surplus population; it is the increase of productive power which demands a diminution of population and drives away the surplus by famine or emigration. It is not population that presses on productive power; it is productive power that presses on population.

Yapa (1979 and 1981) describes precisely this process in present-day India where, as a result of the introduction of increased “productive power” in the form of Green Revolution input packages, landlords accumulate land with consequent effect on landlessness and hunger. In much of Latin America the transition from large scale, semi-feudal land monopoly to foreign-owned corporate farming has been rapid. In, this context Burbach and 9

Flynn (1980) are able to demonstrate a direct link between loss of access to land and malnutrition, as former tenants of the semi-feudal monopolists lose their conventional rights and become a rural proletariat under corporate control. Franke and Chasin note the beginning of such a “latin-americanization” of Sahelian Africa in the recent post-famine “recovery schemes involving largescale, capital-intensive production of winter vegetables for export t o Europe by foreign agri-capital (Franke and Chasin, 1980: 184-202). Some authors explore a variation on the theme of proletarianization or full alienation and production of a surplus population. For instance, Payer (1977) argues that current World Bank “rural development” plans and projects are intended t o draw self-provisioning peasantries into export commodity production “in fairly wide regions of Africa and Oceania, with smaller pockets in relatively remote parts of Latin America and Asia peopled mainly by cultural minorities” (p. 285) without alienating them from their land and tools. She quotes a World Bank rural development official to the effect that “the traditional, small-farm sector would have to become the producer of an agricultural surplus rather than the provider of surplus labor, as it had been in the past” (Payer, 1979: 297). These policy developments underline the contemporary importance of identifying in a significant number of Third World countries, or regions of these countries, a hybrid and probably transitional class fragment: the semiproletariat. A number of authors have noted how peasant families pursue multiple livelihood strategies including the provision of cheap (usually male) seasonal/periodic migrant workers for capitalist farm and factory, production of export crops for the market, and confinuing reliance on production for home consumption (Bugnicourt, 1974; Young, 1977; de Janvry, 1977; Deere, 1979). As de Janvry (1977: 20) puts the case: “On the demand side of the labor market, labor is “free” and fully proletarianized; but on the supply side it is only semi-proletarianized since part of the subsistence needs of the work force is derived from production for home consumption.” De Janvry (1977, also de Janvry and Garramon, 1979; Crouch and de Janvry, 1980; de Janvry, 1980) goes somewhat beyond many other Marxist authors in working out rigorously why in the period from the end of the Second World War capitalism would export agroindustrial capital in the way it has (with hunger as the consequence). The analysis is rooted in the study of metropolitan capitalist agriculture (a point of departure de Janvry shares with others such as Perelman) In summary, de Janvry’s argument (cf. Amin, 1974) is as follows (1977: 24): In the center, accumulation under social articulation and the consequent contradiction between capitalists and capital creates a tendencey toward under-consumption. Due to government intervention, the overproduction crisis in agriculture is not resolved by deflation but by exporting it on the world market. The international price of wage goods thus becomes extremely low and blocks the modernization of peripheral agriculture. It provides the external possiblity of sustaining cheap labor in the periphery. Accumulation under dependent disarticulation creates, in the periphery, the objective need for cheap labor and hence cheap food. The internal possiblity of satisfying

10

this need is provided by functional dualism whereby precapitalist subsistence agriculture sustains primitive accumulation in the modern sector. The mass of humanity is relegated to poverty in subsistence agriculture thus creating the most dramatic contradictions of accumulation on a world scale: rational strategies for individual survival necessitate the demographic explosion and ecological destruction. World food crisis is thus seen to be one of many consequences of t h e dialectical movement of contradicitons at the heart of capitalism. Very much in the spirit of this analysis, Berlan (1980: 31) asks rhetorically: Is there any tendency within the new international economic order to foster the development not only of labor-intensive crops in underdeveloped countries but also of capital-intensive, mechanized crops? Isn’t the new and explosive Brazilian soybean industry - as well as Brazil’s emphasis on agricultural development in general - an illustration of this trend? Aren’t the Japanese investing heavily in agricultural production, not only in Southeast Asia but in Brazil as well? . . .Don’t Japan and Germany, the two major importers of food and at the same time among the three largest suppliers of equipment goods and agricultural inputs on world markets, have much more leeway to take over promising underdeveloped agricultural areas? And hasn’t even France recently decided to develop soybean production in its own African sphere of influence? Finally, couldn’t all this lead to a situation in which this planet would be struck simultaneously by a global overproduction crisis and by massive starvation in the countries of the Third World? Despite the way they vary in degree of rigor, manner of conceptualizing proletarianization and unemployment, and the relative weight they give to foreign versus domestic capital, all marxists discussed so far focus on a continuing, rapidly changing interrelation between capitalists, workers and peasants on a world scale. From a somewhat different Marxist perspective, other writers place heavier emphasis on the historical gap between imperialist and colonized countries. For instance, Caldwell (1977) argues that the industrial revolution and agricultural changes accompanying it were historically unique in the precise sense that the physical resources necessary for European “take off” were imported (by primitive accumulation) from the underdeveloped world and that this massive accumulation process can never be repeated. The present world food crisis is therefore just one of many subsequent results of a massive historical transfer of resources. Many Soviet authors fall into this second group. Kovalevsky and Pulyarkin (1975: 264) attribute the failure to achieve food self-sufficiency of most countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America to “their colonial and semi-colonial past, as well as their continued economic exploitation by monopoly capital of the imperialist countries.” Written in 1933, Forced Labour in Colonial Africa (Nzula et al., 1981) is a classic in this genre, emphasizing the destruction of African human and natural productive power as opposed to their distortion, redirection, or misuse as in the literature just discussed above. However, there are other themes in the Soviet literature, all of which is clearly anti-Malthusian. Pokshishevskii (1970) emphasizes socioeconomic

determinants of fertility on the one hand (pp. 50-52) and the capacity of technology to expand the resource base (pp. 43-46) on the other. New land for farming in much of the world was still seen by Soviet authors to be available in the 1970s, although these authors emphasized intensification as well as areal extension of food production (Kovalevsky and Pulyarkin, 1975; Kovda, 1977). Much of the Soviet literature expresses great confidence in modern technology. This theme emerges strongly when one looks at the Soviet evaluation of the Green Revolution. Tyagueneko et al. (1’976: 178-180) approvingly cite increases in grain production in Asia in the period 1966-1972, arguing that this particular episode indicates a much wider and deeper potential for Third World technological revolution (p. 181): In the West one often hears that the Green Revolution is the offspring of the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, which have financed research on the improvement of grain, carried out in international research centres in Mexico and the Philippines. In reality it is not quite so simple. Rather it is an example of collaboration between scientists of developed and developing countries, of the combined effort of international and national research centres, of the application of fundamental scientific discoveries made in some countries (in this case, in the field of biology) to the solution of practical problems in other countries, e.g. the development of agriculture in the tropics. The authors are more than a little concerned with the tendency for highly trained local scientists t o emigrate to Europe and North America, and substantially discuss this somewhat more indirect factor in the “food problem’’ in an earlier section of their book (pp. 92-102). The Soviet authors are technological optimists (at some points strikingly reminiscent of certain of Western “developmentalists”) but they do take note of social and environmental consequences of the Green Revolution (pp. 182-195). They briefly mention increased susceptibility to virus disease, the taste of some high yielding varieties (HYVs) which it seems have not suited local preferences, the incompatibility of local seeding, cultivation, harvesting, and storing techniques with an intensified agricultural rhythm of three harvests a year, and also the much increased demand for chemical fertilizer and irrigation which accompanies use of the HYVs. These authors also are well aware of the Western literature documenting ways in which the Green Revolution has increased the disparity between rich and poor farmers, contributing t o landlessness. Not all Soviet authors are so well informed and thoughtful. Kovalevsky and Pulyarkin (1975: 277-278) discuss only narrowly technical problems of the new varieties, emphasizing the gap between developing and advanced capitalist countries in size of tractor fleet (1: 10.5) and in quantity of fertilizers applied (1:22), concluding that “[tlhese crops are intended for modern agriculture, not for poorly equipped and fragmented semi-patriarchal farms” (p. 278). Kovda (1977: 115-116) oversimplifies even more grossly, remarking that “[tlhe experience of Mexico and India shows that if new varieties of cereals are used and agrarian reforms carried out, it is possible to increase the rate of growth of productivity of cultivated lands.” This author makes no mention of environmental or social problems with the

HYVs and, on the technical or agronomic side, shows a common tendency toward overgeneralization evident in Soviet literature, asserting that “[iln planning the growth of agricultural crop harvests this empirical proportion must be borne in mind; in relative magnitudes it can be represented in the following form: 1:2:10, where 1 is the growth of agricultural production, and 2, 5 , and 10 represent the necessary average increase of investment in tractors, fertilizers and pesticides respectively” (pp. 115-116). Much of the Soviet literature on world food, land, and population is remarkably like that of the Western development schools emphasizing institutional prerequisites for unleashing massive technological potentials. Tyagunenko et al. (1976: 188-192) recognize two main “conditions for progress” which would liberate the true potential only fractionally realized to date by the Green Revolution. The first condition for the spread of the Green Revolution and of long-term progress in the agriculture of developing countries is the fundamental transformation of the social structure of agriculture. Its goal is to do away with the remnants of feudal and semi-feudal relationships and to bring about a radical solution. . . .Another condition for the successful development of the Green Revolution is heavy public investment in agriculture. This is particularly important, considering the degree of peasant poverty in developing countries. Throughout this literature the vision of the “radical solution” is, understandably, that of Soviet Central Asia, Kazakstan, and Siberia, all common “case studies” in standard Soviet development studies texts for use overseas. One of the most disturbing features common in Soviet writings is their silence on the profound environmental costs of their Central Asian, Kazakstani, and Siberian “miracles.” Ananichev (1976: 90-1 14) is clear enough about some of these problems in the European and North American context, but only Komarov (1980) has made public the tremendous domestic debate involving leading academicians, focusing on the destruction of Soviet land, forest, and water resources (cf. Pryde, 1972: 24-44, 92- 160).

Some Important Unresolved Issues in Marxist Perspectives

11

Firstly, there is a set of questions surrounding the nature of class and class struggle. Some views of world hunger imply that solutions are possible only when the metropolitan working class revolts (Cleaver, 1977). Others seek solutions in a view of class struggle that grants the Third World peasantry a great deal of independent revolutionary potential (Omvedt, 1975; Caldwell, 1977). Many authors writing about class in the Third World are less interested in the stark dichotomy “worker” vs. “peasant,” but rather in the complex set of class alliances emerging in the process of articulation of pre-capitalist and capitalist modes of production (Rey, 1973) and specifically in the phenomenon of semiproletarianization (Blaut et al., 1977; de Janvry, 1977). All of this is also related to the long-standing debate about the dialectic of conservation/dissolution of precapitalist (family-based) modes of production in Third

World formations dominated by the capitalist mode (Szentes, 1971). Finally, t o highlight the practical political importance of this set of issues, one need only recall Lenin’s views of the complex interdependence of metropolitan and colonial revolutionary movements (Rodriguez, n.d.). In a world characterized by even partial food system interdependence, the political interdepencence of progressive movements would seem of paramount importance (e.g., attempts by U.S. progressives to forestall the use of the “food weapon”). Secondly, different views of world food relations imply different views of the genesis, reproduction, behavior, and foreign alliances of Third World middle and ruling classes. At one extreme there are Marxist authors emphasizing “dependency” and external influences on these classes (Frank, 1979); at the other extreme Marxists who dispute the importance of “external” influences on autonomous capitalist development in many parts of the Third World (Warren, 1981). Whatever their origins, clearly Third World elites determine to a large extent the life chances of rural families. One would have t o study this aspect of family food security in depth.

ultimate usefulness is a function of the way in which local workers and peasants use such “reforms” (e.g., Third World urban workers in the case of the Campaign against Nestlts; the more conscious rural workers and peasants in the case of land issues). The issues of land and food call forth ultimately complex issues such as the relation between reform and revolution. In what turned out to be a pre-revolutionary period, Lenin is supposed to have replied (in 1907) in the following way to the remark that millions of acres awaited irrigation in Turkestan (cited in Tyagunenko et al., 1976: 188): All these millions of dessiantins in Turkestan, as well as in many other parts of Russia are ‘awaiting’ not only irrigation and reclamation of every kind. They are also ‘awaiting’ the emancipation of the Russian agricultural population from the survivals of serfdom, from the yoke of the nobility’s latifundia and from the ‘Black-Hundred’ dictatorship in the state.

From the point of view of events after 1917, Lenin was actually writing about a modest reform.

Summary

Thirdly, a set of issues concern the extent to which dependency on U.S. grain will be an important “external” political condition within which the class struggle in certain Third World countries will unfold in the 1980s. Although we have tried to deflate an overgeneralized view of this problem in our initial discussion of the food “gap,” there is no doubt that for countries like Egypt, Nigeria, Chile, and Sri Lanka that are actually food deficit and dependent on U.S. grain, the ‘food weapon” is a reality. The issues arising here, however, concern the relative importance of a number of economic weapons in a number of arsenals: the “oil weapon,” “fertilizer weapon,” and “tractor weapon,” not to mention the “debt trap” as well us the “food weapon.”* Here one must ask about the relation between national economic (and food) security and family economic (and food) security.** Also of importance is the way in which regional food selfreliance can be established, for instance in the case of the nine central, eastern and southern African states presently trying t o break multiple bonds of dependency on minority-ruled South Africa (Kgarebe, 1981: 220-252). Finally, there is a set of issues concerning “solutions” to world hunger. What food system reforms should be demanded as most likely to create conditions within which class struggle can advance revolutionary change? Although campaigns for multinational accountability in baby milk advertising, or peasant demands for agrarian reform are sometimes dismissed by the ultra-left, their

* In his first six months in office, Reagan used the food weapon three times (against Mozambique, Vietnam, and Nicaragua). We d o not dispute the importance of this kind of diplomatically sanctioned coersion (see Spitz, 1974; Wisner, 1981), but rather would argue that such manipulation must be seenin the context of the use of many socioeconomic weapons (Hayter, 1971) and socio-political weapons including, of course, the continuing use of threats by the U.S. Administration to employ the ultimate weapon (Elsberg, 1981). ** Kenya, for instance, could achieve food self-reliance by 2000 while fully 18 percent of the people remain malnourished (McCarthy and Mwangi, 1982).

12

The world food crisis of the early 1970s generated new ideas and has revived some old ones regarding the hunger problem. An important new addition to the food literature centers around the notion of heightened market vulnerability due to the growing “food gap.” We welcome the recognition of an international dimension to the food problem as an improvement over the interpretation of hunger as an exclusively internal phenomenon. Unfortunately, by focusing on exchange relations, this new perspective is really identifying an effect, not a cause. Furthermore, the evidence does not support a heightened market vulnerability/dependence situation for many of the poorest nations, nor their hungry rural inhabitants. We then identify five theoretical perspectives that do focus on the food crisis in relation to production relations. We argue that the first of these, the neoMalthusian perspective is historically incorrect, inaccurately characterizes peasant decision-making processes, and ideologically blames hunger on the hungry. Possibilists argue that the environment constrains food production and is the primary cause of hunger. In blaming nature instead of people, the ideological function is to cite physical causes which are often beyond human control. Hunger becomes “natural.” We must ask the possibilitst: Why have cash crops grown more rapidly than food crops throughout the Third World? As explanations based on population and environment decline in popularity, developmentalist theories and strategies for rural and agricultural change increasingly take their place. The solution to the food crisis is rural development, and the solution to hunger is to increase small farmer productivity. We argue that a rural development strategy stressing small farm development in the context of small farmer exploitation is contradictory. Furthermore, developmentalism, stripped of its seemingly caring and concerned tone, is nothing more than an effort to enhance the spread of capitalism into agriculture, maintain supplies of cheap food, raw materials, and labor, and create new markets. We

conclude, therefore, that developmentalism is part of the problem. Liberal anti-Malthusians perform an important service in trying to dispel the myth of scarcity. Their focus on local, national, and international inequalities begins to penetrate to the heart of the problem. But the liberal view fails because the root causes of inequalitites are not systematically analyzed, while their emphasis on malfunctioning capitalist institutions leads to reformist solutions. One of the primary contributions of Marxists to the food debate is to treat famine and malnutrition as symptoms of contradictions inherent in capitalism and

its articulation with pre-capitalist modes of production. For some hunger is viewed as a reflection of staple food stagnation, the overall political-economic marginalization accompanying the process of semiproletarianization. For others, hunger reflects spreading agrarian capitalism and the consequent increase in rural landlessness and a swelling urban lumpenproletariat. However, there is general agreement among Marxists that hunger is associated with the historical form of utilization and exploitation of Third World resources under capitalism. Thus the food “crisis” will not be resolved until capitalist production relations are transcended.

REFERENCES Stabilization of Prices, Oct. 18. Madison: University of Wisconsin Institute for Environmental Studies. Buchanan, K. (1970) The Transformation of the Chinese Earth. London: Bell and Sons. Buch-Hansen, M. and Marcussen, H.S. (1982) “Contract Framing and the Peasantry: Cases from Western Kenya.” Review of African Political Economy 23 (Jan.-April, 1982), pp. 9-36. Bugnicourt, J. (1974) “La migration contribue-t-elle developpement des zones retardees?” in S. Amin, ed., Modern Migrations rn Western Africa, pp. 191- 214. London: Oxford University Press. Burbach, R. and Flynn, P. (1980) Agribusiness in the Americas. New York: Monthly Review P r e d N A C L A . Burton, I., Kates, R., and White, (3. (1978) The Environment as Hazard. New York: Oxford University Press. Caldwell, M. (1977) The Wealth of Some Nations. Zed Press. Carr, C. (1977) Pastoralism in Crisis: The Dasanetch and Their Ethiopian Lands. Chicago: University of Chicago, Dept. of Geography. Research Paper No. 180. Castells, M. (1980) The Economic Crisis and American Society. London: Basil Blackwell. Council on Environmental Quality (C.E.Q.) (1980) See United States. Chang, K. (1977) Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives. New Haven: Yale University Press. C.I.A. See United States. Cippola, C. M. (1974) The Economic History of World Population. 6th Edition. London: Harmonds-Worth. Clark, C. (1976) Population Growth and Land Use. New York: St. Martin’s. Clark, J. and Cole, S. (1975) Global Simulation Models: A Comparative Study. London: John Wiley and Sons. Cleaver, H. (1977) “Food, Famine, and the International Crisis.” Zerowork-Political Materials 2 (Fall), 7-69. Cole, H . et al. (1973) Thinking about the Future. London: Chaho and Windus. Comite Information Sahel (1974) Qui se nourrit de la famine en Afrique? Paris: Maspero. Coontz, S. (1957) Population Theories and Their Economic Interpretation. London: Routledge and Regan Paul. Copans, J., ed. (1975) Famines et secheresses en Afrique. 2 Vols. Paris: Maspero. Cottrell, A. (1973) “Problems of Predicting Future World Trends.” Nature 245, October 12, 280-1. Council on Environmental Quality (C.E.Q.) See United States.

Amin, S. (1974) Accumulation at the World Scale. 2 Vols. New York: Monthly Review. Amin, S. (1974b) “Accumulation and Development: A Theoretical Model.” Review of African Political Economy 1, pp. 9-26. Amin, S. (1977) Unequal Development. New York: Monthly Review. Ananichev, K. (1976) Environment: International Aspect. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Aziz, S. (1978) Rural Development: Learning from China. London: Macmillan. Berg, A. (1973) The Nutrition Factor: Its Role in National Development. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution. Berlan, J. (1977) “Introduction.” In J. de Castro, The Geopolitics of Hunger, pp. 9-46. New York: Monthly Review, 1977. Berlan, J. (1980) “The World Food Problem: Malthus, Marx, and Their Epigones.” Monthly Review (March), 20-32. Biswas, A. K. (1979) “Climate, Agriculture and Economic Development.” In M. R. Biswas and A. K. Biswas, Food, Climate, and Man. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Blakeslee, L., Heady, E., and Framingham, C. (1973) World Food Production, Demand, and Trade.Ames: Iowa State University Press. Blaut, J. (1975) “Imperialism: The Marxist Theory and Its Evolution.” Antipode 7, 2, pp. 1-19. Blaut, J. (1976) “Where Was Capitalism Born?” Antipode 8, 2, pp. 1 - 1 1 . Blaut. J . M . , Johnson, K., O’Keefe, P. and Wisner, B. (1977) “Theses on Peasantry.” Antipode 9, 2, pp. 125-127. Bondestan, L. (1974) “People and Capitalism in the North Eastern Lowlands of Ethiopia.” Journal of Modern African Studies, 12, 3, pp. 423-439. Borgstrom, G. (1973) The Food and People Dilemma. North Scituate, MA: Duxbury Press. Boserup, E. (1965) The Conditions of Agricultural Growth. London: Oxford University Press. Bowden, M. and Weiner, D. (1980) “Misperception and Response to Great Plains Drought.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Louisville, April 13-16. Brookfield, H., ed. (1973) The Pacific in Transition. London: St. Martin’s. Brown, L. (1974) By Bread Alone. New York: Praeger. Bryson, R. (1973) “World Food Prospects and Climatic Change.” Testimony before Joint Meeting of Senate Subcommittee on Agricultural Production, Marketing, and

13

Griffin, K. and Chose, A. K. (1979) “Growth and Impoverishment of Rural Areas of Asia.” World Development 7, pp. 361-383. Grounds, J. (1964) “Mortality of Children under Six Years Old in Kenya with Reference to Contributory Causes, Especially M a l n u t r i t i o n . ” Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 67, pp. 257-259. Harriss, J. (1980) “Why Poor People Stay Poor in Rural South India.” Development and Change 11, pp. 33-64. Harriss, J. (1982) (Ed.) Rural Development. London: Hutchinson, 1982. Havens, E. and Flinn, W. L. (1975) “Green Revolution and Community Development: The Limits o f Action Programs.” Economic Development and Cultural Change 23 (April), pp.469-481. Hayami, Y. and Hedt, R. W. (1977) “Market Price Effects of Technological Change on Income Distribution in Semi-subsistence Agriculture.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 59 (May), pp. 245-256. Hayter, T. (1971) Aid as Imperialism. London: Penguin. Herrera, A. (1976) Catastrophe or New Society? A Latin American World M o d e l . O t t a w a : International Development Research Centre. Hewes, L. (1974) Rural Development: World Frontiers. Ames, Iowa: The Iowa State University Press. History Task Force, Centro De Estudios Puertorequefios. Labor

Crosson, P. (1975) “lnstitutional Obstacles to Expansion of World Food Production.” Science 188, 519-523. Crosson, P. and Frederick, K. (1977) The World Food

Situation: Resource Use and Environmental Issues in the Developing Countries and the United States. Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future. Crouch, L. and De Janvry, A. (1980) “The Class Basis of Agricultural Growth.” Food Policy (February), 3-13. Dando, W. (1981) The Geography of Famine. London: Arnold. De Alcantara, C. H. (1973) “The ‘Green Revolution’ as History: The Mexican Experience.” Development and Change 5 (1973-1974), pp. 25-44. De Castro, J. (1952a) Geopolitique de la faim. Paris: Editons Ouvieres. De Castro, J. (1952b) The Geography of Hunger. Boston: Little-Brown. De Castro, J. (1957) Livre Noire de la faim. Paris: Editions Ouvieres. De Castro, J. (1977) The Geopolitics of Hunger. New York: Monthly Review Press. Deere, C. D. (1979) “Rural Women’s Subsistence Production in the Capitalist Periphery.” In R. Cohen, P. Barzier, eds., Peasants and Proletarians, pp. 133-148. New York: Monthly Review. De Janvry, A. (1977) “The Material Determinants of the World Food Problem.” Berkeley Journal of Sociology 21, 3-26. De Janvry, A. (1980) “Agriculture in Crisis and Crisis in Agriculture.” Society, 17(6): 36-39. De Janvry, A. and Garramon, C. (1977) “The Dynamics of Rural Poverty in Latin America.” Journal of Peasant Studies 4, 3, 206-216. Dinham, B. and Hines, C. (1983) Agribusiness in Africa. London: Earth Resources. Ehrlich, P. (1968) The Population Bomb. New York: Ballantine Books. Ellsberg, D. (1981) “Call to Mutiny.” In E. P. Thompson and D. Smith, eds., Protest and Survive, pp. i-xxviii. New York: Monthly Review. Emmanuel, A. (1972) Unequal Exchange. New York: Monthly Review. Enzer, S. Drobnick, R., and Alter, S. (1978) Neither Feast nor Famine. Lexington: Lexington Books. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) (1977) The Fourth World Food Survey. Rome: FAO. F A 0 (1979) Agriculture: Toward 2000. Rome: FAO. F A 0 (1980) Monthly Bulletin of Statistics 3, 3. F A 0 (1981) The Peasants’ Charter. Rome: F.A.O. Frank, A. G. (1978) World Accumulation: 1492-1789. New

Migration under Capitalism: The Puerto Rican Experience. New York: Monthly Review. Hobbs, D. J. (1980) “Rural Development: Intentions and Consequences.” Rural Sociology 45 (Spring), pp. 7-25. Hopkins, R. and Puchala, D. (1980) Global Food Inter-

dependence:

Challenge to American Foreign Policy.

New York: Columbia University Press. International Food Policy Research lnstitute (IFPRI) (1976) Meeting Food Needs in the Developing World: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) (1976)

Meeting Food Needs in the Developing World: The Location and Magnitude of the Task in the Next Decade. Washington, D.C.: IFPRI. IFPRI (1977) Food Needs of Developing Countries: Projections of Production and Consumption to 1990. Research Report No. 3. Washington, D.C.: IFPRI. Johnson, D. G. (1975) World Food Problems and Prospects. Washington D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Johnson, D. G. (1976) “Food for the Future: A Perspective.” Population and Development Review 2, 1, 1-19. Johnson, K. (1977) “Do as the Land Bids: A Study of Otomi Resource-Use on the Eve of Irrigation.” Ph.D. dissertation, Clark University, Graduate School of Geography. Khan, A. (1966) “Review of a Year’s Pediatric Admissions to the Kenyatta National Hospital, Nairobi, Kenya.” Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 69, pp. 7-1 1. Kjekshus, H. (1976) Ecological Control and Economic Development in East African History. London: Heinemann. Kleinman, D. (1980) Human Adaptation and Population Growth. Montclair, N.J.: Allanheld, Osmun and Co. Komarov, B. (1980) The Destruction of Nature in the Soviet Union. London: Pluto Press. Kovalevsky, V. A. and Pulyarkin, V. A. (1975) “Population Growth, Food Demand and the Natural Environment.” In L. F. Kunitsyn and A. A. Mints, eds., Man, Society and the Environment, pp. 259-279. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Kvoda, V. (1977) “Land Resources and the Prospects for Their Use.” In Progress Publishers, eds., Society and the Environment: A Soviet View, pp. 1 1 1-125. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

York: Monthly Review. Frank, A.G. (1978) World Accumulation: 1492-1789. New York: Monthly Review. Frank, A.G. (1979) Dependent Accumulation. New York: London: Hutchinson University Library. Franke, R. and Chasin, B. (1980) Seeds of Famine. Montclair, J . J.: Allanheld, Osmun and Co. George, S . (1976) How the Other HalfDies. London: Penguin. Gourou, P. (1953) The Tropical World. London: Longmans, Green. Greene, S. L. (1976) “Corporate Accountability and the Family Farm.” In R. Merrill, ed., Radical Agriculture, pp. 52-63. New York: Harper Colophon Books. Griffin, K. (1974) The Political Economy of Agrarian Change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Griffin, K. (1976) Land and Concentration and Rural Poverty. New York: Holmes and Meier. Griffin, K . and Khan, A. R. (1979) “Poverty in the Third World: Ugly Facts and Fancy Models.” World Development, pp. 295-304.

14

Lappe, F. and Collins, J . (1977) Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity. New York: Houghton Mifflin. Lappt, F. and Collins, J. (1978) Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity. Revised edition. New York: Ballantine Books. Lappk, F. Collins, J., and Kinley D. (1981) Aid as Obstacle. San Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Poticy. Lele, U. (1975) Design f o r Rural Development. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Leontiev, W., Carter, A., and Petri, P. (1977) The Future of the World Economy: A Study of the Impact of Prospective Economic Issues and Policies on the International Development Strategy. New York: United Nations. Linnemann, H., Dehoogh, J., Keyser, M., and Van Heemst, H. (1979) MOIRA: Model of International Relations in Agriculture. Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company. MacLennan, C. and Walker, R. (1980) “Crisis and Change in U.S. Agriculture: An Overview.” In R. Burbach and P. Flynn, eds., Agribusiness in the Americas, pp.20-40. New York: Monthly Review. McCarthy, F. and Mwangi, W. (1982) Kenyan Agriculture: Toward 2000. Laxenburg, Austria: I.I.A.S.A. Mamdani, M. (1972) The Myth of Population Control. New York: Monthly Review. Mandel, E. (1975) Late Capital. London: New Left Books. Marx, K. (1970) Capital. Vol. 1 London: Lawrence and Wishart. Marx, K., and Engels, F. (1971) Forced Emigration in Ireland and the Irish Question. Moscow: Progress Publishers. May, J. (1970) Studies in Medical Geography, Vol. 9: The Ecology of Malnutr~t~on in Eastern Africa and Four Countries of West Africa. New York: Hafner. Meadows, D.H., Meadows, D.L., Randers, J., and Behrens, W.W. (1972) The Limits to Growth. new York: Universe Books. Meek, R.L., ed. (1971) Marx and Engels on the Population Bomb. Berkeley: Ramparts Press. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company. Point. New York: Signet. Michaelson, K. (1981) And the Poor Get Children. New York: Monthly Review. Michie, A. N. (1978) “Agricultural Mechanization and Economic Inequality: The lndian Experience.” Social Science Quarterly 59 (September), pp.311-323. Milliband, J., Stockton, C. and Meko, D. (1978) “Evidence of a 22-Year Cycle of Drought in the Western United States Related to the Hale Solar Cycle Since the 17th Century.” In Proceedings of Symposium/Workshop o n Solar Terrestrial Influences on Weather and Climate, July 24-28. Columbus: Ohio State University. Morgan, D. (1979) The Merchants of Grain. New York: Viking. Mosher, A. T. (1966) Getting Agriculture Moving. New York: Praeger. National Academy of Sciences. (1977) World Food and Nutrition Study: The Potential Contributions of Research. Washington, D.C.: N.A.S. National Association of Wheat Growers. (1979) Wheat Facts. Washington, D.C.: N.A.W.G. Nzula, A. T., Potekhin, I . I . , and Zusmanovich, A. Z. (1933) Forced Labour in Colonial Africa. Edited and introduced by R. Cohen (1979). London: Zed Press. Omvedt, G. (1975) “The Political Economy of Starvation: Imperialism and the World Food Crisis.’’ Scientific Socialist Education Trust, Publication No. 2. Published by Leela Bhosale, Shramik, Plot 31, Vincent Sq. Rd. 3, Dadai, Bombay 14. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (1976) Study of Trends in World Supply and

15

Demand of Major Agricultural Commodities. Report by the Secretary General. Paris: OECD. Oyugi, W. 0. (1981) Rural Development Administration: A Kenyan Experience. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House. Payer, C. (1979) “The World Bank and the Small Farmers.” Journal of Peace Studies 16, 4, pp. 293-312. Payer, C. (1981) “The World Bank and the Small Farmer.” Monthly Review 32, 6, 30-46. Peking Review. (1972) “China’s Ten Cardinal Principles on Amending the ‘Declaration on Human Environment .’” Peking Review, 23 June. Perelman, M. (1977) Farming f o r Profit in a Hungry World. Montclair, N.J.: Allanheld, Osmun and Co. Pokshishevskii, V. V. (1970) “World Population and Resources: The Larger Historical Context of the Problem.” In W. Zelinsky, L. A. Kosinski, and R. M. Prothero, eds., Geography and a Crowding World, pp. 40-54. New York: Oxford University Press. Poleman, T. T. (1975) “World Food: A Perspective.”Science 188, 510-518. Pryde, P. R. (1972) Conservation in the Soviet Union. London: Cambridge University Press. Radcliffe, J. (1968) “Social Justice and the Demographic Transition: Lessons from India’s Kerala State.” International Journal of Health Services 8, 1 , 123-144. Reutlinger, S. and Selowsky, M. (1976) Malnutrition and Poverty: Magnitude and Policy Options. World Bank Staff Occasional Paper No. 23. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Rey, P. P. (1973) Les Alliances de Classes, Paris: Maspero. Ridker, R. and Watson, W. (1980) To Choose a Future: Resource and Environment~fConsequences of Alternative Growth Paths. Published for Resources for the Future. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Robbins, C. and Ansari, C. (1976) “The Profits of Doom: A War on Want Investigation into the World Food Crisis.’’ London: War on Want (467 Caledonian Road, London N7 9BE). Roberts, W. 0. and Lansford, H. (1979) The ClimateMandate. Sun Francisco: W. H . Freeman and Company. Rockefeller Foundation. (1974) Weather and Climate Change, Food Production and Interstate Conflict. Report of a Conference held at the Rockefeller Foundation, Jan. 24-25. New York: Rockefeller Foundation. Rodriguez, C. R. (n.d.) Lenine e a Questcio Colonial. Lisbon: Iniciativas Editoriais. Rome Declaration Group. (1979) “The Rome Declaration on Agrarian Conflict.” Rome: Rome Declaration Group (c/o Erklarung von Bern, Gartenhof-Strasse 27, 8004 Ziirick). Sanderson, F. (1975) “The Great Food Fumble.” Science 188, 503-509. Schneider, S. (1974) “Climatic Variability and Food Production.” In World Food Supply and Changing Climate, Proceedings of a conference held in Sterling Forest, N.Y., December 2-5. Dayton: Charles F. Kettering Foundation. Schneider, S. (1976) The Genesis Strategy: Climate and Global Survival. New York: Plenum Press. Schneider, S. (1977) “Climate Change and the World Predicament: A Case Study for Interdisciplinary Research.” In J. Gribben, Climatic Change. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company. Science Council of Canada. (1976) Living with Climate Change. Proceedings of Toronto Conference, Nov. 17-22, 1975. Ottawa: Science Council of Canada. Scott, M. (1979) Aid to Bangladesh: For Better or Worse. San Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Policy. Scrimshaw, N. S. and Taylor, L. (1980) “Food.” Scientific American 243, 3 , 78-88. Sen, A. K. (1981) Poverty and Famines. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

nouvel ordre international: Reflexions sur la question des systkmes alimentaires nationaux.” Revue Tiers Monde 22, 85 (January-March), pp. 7-32. Walters, H. (1975) “Difficult Issues Underlying Food Problem.” Science 188, 524-530. Warren, W. (1981) Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism. London: Zed Press. Watts, M. (1979) “A Silent Revolution: The Changing Character of Food Production and the Nature of Famine in Northern Nigeria.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan. Weiner, D. (1981) “Exploring the Potential Global Consequences of Recurrence of a 1930s Magnitude Drought in the United States Great Plains.” Unpublished M.A. Thesis, Clark University, Worchester, MA. White, B. (1973) “Demand-for-Labor Analysis and Population Theory: Population Growth in Colonial Java.” Human Ecology 1, 3, 217-236. White, B. (1976)”The Economic Importance of Children in a Javanese Village.” In M. Nag, ed., Populalion and Social Organization. The Hague: Mouton. White, G. F., ed. (1974) National Hazards. New York: Oxford University Press. Wilkinson, R. G. (1973) Poverty and Progress: An Ecological Perspective on Economic Development. New York: Praeger. Wisner, B. (1978) “The Human Ecology of Drought in Eastern Kenya.” Ph.D. dissertation, Clark University, Graduate School of Geography. Wisner, B. (1981) “The ‘Food Weapon’” Commonweal 9 October, p. 575. Wisner, B., O’Keefe, P., and Westgate, K. (1977) “Global Systems and Local Hazards.” Disasters I , I , 47-57. Wortman, S. and Curnmings, R. (1978) To Feed This World: The Challenge and the Strategy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Wrigley, E. A. (1969) Population and History. London: University Library. Yapa, L, (1979) “Ecopolitical Economy of Agricultural Innovation.” Professional Geographer 3 1, 4, 371-376. Yapa, L. (1981) “Ecopolitical Economy of Agricultural Innovation.” In R. S. Ganapathy, ed., Agriculture, Rural Energy, and Development, pp. 118-137. Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan, Graduate School of Business Administration. Young, S. (1977) “Fertility and Famine: Women’s Agricultural History in Southern Mozambique.” In A. Parsons and N. Palmer, eds., The Root of Rural Poverty in Southern and Central Africa, pp. 66-81. London: Heinemann.

Sen, 0. (1974) The Green Revolution in India: A Perspective. New Delhi: Wiley Eastern. Sewell, 3. W. (1977) The United States and World Development Agenda, 1977. Overseas Development Council. New York: Praeger . Shingi, P. M., Fliegel, F. C. and Kivlin, J. E. (1981) “Agrigultural Technology and the Issue of Unequal Distribution of Rewards: An Indian Case Study.” Rural Sociology 46, 3, pp.430-445. Spitz, P. (1974) “L‘Arme de t’aide alimentaire: les annCes d’apprentissage, 1914-1 947.” Critiques de I’Economic Politique 15 (Jnuary-March) . Spitz, P. (1 978) “Violence Silencieuse: Famine et Inegalitb.” Revue Internationale de Science Sociale 30, 4, pp. 918-940. Sterling Forest Conference (1974) World Food Supply in Changing Climate. Proceedings of a Conference held in Sterling Forest, N.Y., December 25. Dayton: Charles F. Kettering Foundation. Teitelbaum, M. (1975) “Relevance of Demographic Transition Theory for Developing Countries.” Science 188, 420-425. Time (1974) “Back to Dust Bowl Days,” August 12, 68-9. Tinbergen, J., coordinator (1976) R .I.O.: Reshaping the World Order. New York: Signet Books. Tolba, M. K. (1979) “Introduction.” In M. R. Biswas and A. K. Biswas, Food Climate and Man. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Tyagunenko, V. L., et al. (1976) The Third World and Scientuic and Technical Progress. Moscow: Nauka Publishing House. United States Central lntelligence Agency (CIA) (1974) Potential Implications of Trends in World Population, Food Production and Climate. Washington, D.C.: CIA. United States Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) (1980) The Global 2000 Report to the President: Entering [he Twenty-First Century. Volume One. Washington, D.C.: CEQ. United Sates Department of Agriculture (1974) The World Food Situation and Prospects to 1985. Foreign Agricultural Economic Report No. 98, Washington, D.C.: USDA. United States Department of Agriculture (1978) Alternative Futures for World Food in 1985. Foreign Agricultural Economic Report No. 146. Washington, D.C.: USDA. University of California (1974) A Hungry World: The Challenge to Agriculture. Berkeley: University of California Press. Vergopoious, K. (1981) “L’Agriculture peripherique dans le Capital and Clam 1s the loumal of the Conference of Socialist Economlsts (CSE) and is published three tmes a year Recent issues have included !PENCENuclear Capital EISON The Brandt Report DE VROEY Value Theory BALZl Housing and Crlsls OPOWD/ROLWONfl’OMIJNSON N IreIand Containment Nuullw N Ireland Marxlst Interpretations BLACKBURN/GREEN/LIFF Technology and Restructuring CARTEIQR State and Wage Labour

“THE LAST EPIDEMIC should be seen b y evwy American who cares about the survival of him self, his descendants,his country or his species.It is especially Next issue has articles on Militansm, Women in Ireland, Decentrallsation, Restructuring in W Europe, Jamaican Politics recommendedto anyone who beliwes this nation or any naAnnual subscription rates are tlon could ‘bin” a nuclear war. UX €7 00 (full)€5 00 (studenNunemp1oy.d) €20 00 (supporting) It may be the most important Dpemeas€8 50 (full)€5 00 (studentlunexnployed) program you will see this yearInstitutional mb.niption: €23 00 o r any year.” Air Mail ~ p t i o a€20 : 00 -San Jose Mercury.

CSE,25 Homll Road, LondonN5.(01 601 9615) 16

or21 mlnuteverskwidee FORMAT: 16mm film-36 CQJSBtte(specm/ tvpe);

audiocassettaSpanWl v e n h also available

THE USI mmic

muy be putchcrreda rented Irom: RewufcmCenh~for NonvlolUtCO P.O. Bcoc 2324 Sania Cnu. CA 95063 408-423-1626