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The Revenge of Agriculture
By Frédéric Lemaître
Le Monde
Tuesday 22 April 2008
For centuries, it was the center of attention. Then, attracted by city lights,
people turned away from it. In the twentieth century, agriculture was marginalized
and the farmer despised. The signs of this fall from grace are numberless. However
much France many venerate its soil, calling someone a "peasant" is
an insult here. Perhaps it's no accident that it was at the Agriculture Fair
that Nicolas Sarkozy, an elect of the city if ever there was one, pronounced
his famous "fuck-off, asshole." As an insult is never gratuitous,
the president, urban to the tips of his loafers, perhaps only said out loud
what a good number of city dwellers at one time or another want to say to the
people of the fields.
This contempt is global. While 75 percent of the world's poor live in rural
areas, agriculture receives only ... four percent of public investment and four
percent of development aid. Beyond the cyclical reasons put forward to explain
the present food crisis - increase in demand, climate change, competition from
biofuels and financial speculation - it's this absence of resources that constitutes
the principal grounds for the crisis.
Two rationales explain this unbelievable injustice in the allocation of public
spending. Unlike city dwellers, rural people rarely form pressure groups. Paradoxically,
it's in developed countries, where they are the least numerous, that farmers
have the most political weight (and receive the most aid). Above all, up until
just these last few months, the World Bank and most world leaders considered
agriculture a residual activity.
Since four percent of the population succeeds in feeding the 96 percent remaining
in developed countries, why help farmers in poor countries when their fate is
to leave for the city to work in industry and services? To hear World Bank President
Robert Zoellick worry today about agricultural scarcity leaves one perplexed.
The World Bank is among those the most responsible for the present situation.
It was the World Bank that for decades imposed the reduction of all financial
and administrative aid to this sector on poor countries, that forced them to
favor export crops. The results of this myopia - which some deem tainted with
bad faith, so well did it serve the interests of rich countries - are that farmers
in poor countries suffer cruelly from the absence of training and public investment,
and food self-sufficiency has long been considered obsolete.
Let us dare a politically incorrect observation: does anyone believe that if
the rich countries truly cared about agricultural development they would have
allowed an African - the Senegalese Jacques Diouf - to serve out three terms
(from 1994 to, in principle, 2012) at the head of the FAO, the UN agency charged
with food? Even the agency's location - in Italy - is significant. Against the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the FAO carries no weight. What
can Rome do against Washington?
The World Bank's turnabout proves that the present tensions, resulting from
twenty years of mistakes and passivity, are leading officials to once again
consider agriculture a strategic sector. If the media and politicians are focused
on the short term (quick, let's save Haiti ...), the FAO and two other UN organizations,
the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the United Nations
Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), have prepared the future by organizing
the first world agro-industries Forum in Delhi, from April 8 to 11. Over 500
people from 110 countries participated.
Berkeley professor Alain de Janvry reminded everyone that agriculture was a
key sector for growth. In China, India, and Vietnam, it was the development
of agriculture that allowed hundreds of millions of people to emerge from poverty
and the countries' economies to take off. Moreover, the creation of agribusinesses
often constitutes a first stage in the creation of a more industrialized economy.
If agriculture's share in the global economy is decreasing, agribusiness's share
is increasing. Even if the figures are extremely fragmented due to the importance
of the informal economy (60 percent of jobs in some countries); agribusiness
is undoubtedly the premier economic sector in the world.
Passable Roads and Refrigerators
Today, everyone agrees agriculture has a future. Because of the increase in
global population and the improvement in lifestyle it enjoys, demand for agricultural
commodities should double between now and 2050. But the future of agriculture
occurs through transformation of agricultural products, the importance of which
is growing, and consequently through a rapprochement with industry. In the absence
of infrastructure, a country like India loses around 30 percent of its harvest
and once again becomes a net importer of grains. More than biotechnologies,
above all farmers in poor countries need irrigation systems, passable roads
and refrigerators that allow them to access markets and to compete with industrialists.
The observations are the same in Asia, Africa, Latin America and central Europe:
farmers lack a sustaining environment, networked organizations such as production
and training cooperatives, and public infrastructure. Money is also cruelly
lacking. But the present crisis could lead investors to take an interest in
this sector. Already the Crédit agricole, which had up until now bet
on the globalization of its network to assure its development, has decided to
return to its rural roots by organizing an international forum on financing
the agricultural field. Less out of philanthropy than out of a well-conceived
self-interest.
Debates are no longer conducted over agriculture's progressive disappearance,
but about its development. But not all ambiguities have been revoked. The countries
of the South will have to simultaneously make their agriculture more competitive
and partially reorient it in order to satisfy the now-sacrosanct requirement
of food self-sufficiency - which will not be easy. At the same time, the countries
of the North will have to agree to lift their import barriers, since the aid
programs now being decided upon in the face of catastrophe seem to be in part
the consequence of the policies Western countries have conducted and imposed.
Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.
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