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Toward innovation in the global food regime

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Donald J. Puchala  and
Raymond F. Hopkins
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Abstract

The market-oriented focus of the global food regime, as it functioned from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, has proved inadequate. Preoccupation with perfecting markets led food policy makers to underemphasize the need for increased production in the Third World. It also led them to exaggerated attention to short-term surplus disposal and too little concern about scarcity. The regime emerged from a context in which unilateral actions and domestic considerations prevailed. This resulted in regime pathologies in which mutually beneficial international food solutions were not reached and multilateral coordination to analyze and solve food problems was discouraged. Such regime inadequacies cumulated over time; while they did not cause the food “crisis” of 1973–74, they blunted international responses to it. Reform of the global food regime is needed to (1) raise priorities accorded to rural modernization in Third World countries, (2) increase attention to malnutrition and chronic hunger, (3) provide resources for development, and (4) structure and stabilize the market so as to provide security of supply and income. The legitimacy of multilateral forums and processes also must be enhanced.

Type
Section IV Considerations for Future Policy
Information
International Organization , Volume 32 , Issue 3: Special Issue: THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY OF FOOD , Summer 1978 , pp. 855 - 868
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1978

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References

1 The “Conference on Global Food Interdependence” was held at Airlie House in Virginia, April 7–9, 1977, with help from the Rockefeller Foundation grant that partially supported this volume, and with principal sponsorship by the Department of State's Office of External Research. For a synopsis of the conference, see, “Global Food Interdependence: Issues and Answers,” External Research Study, INR/XRS-15, July 27, 1977.

2 Recall that the norms of the regime are myriad, ranging from fairly universal mutual expectations as to which countries and groups stood ready to provide food in disasters in particular regions, to fairly narrow understandings among officials in major grain exporting states as to what constituted “unfair” competition. American archival records document a number of such expectations and norms, as do interviews of current officials. For an account of the 1950s and 1960s, see Peterson, Trudy, “Sales, Surpluses and the Soviets,” paper read at the Agricultural Policy Symposium, Washington, D.C., 07 25, 1977Google Scholar, and for the 1970s see the article by Destler in this volume.

3 Some countries such as the Soviet Union and China, by placing minimal demands on the system, reduced the need for international adjustment. Others, particularly the United States, bore much of the adjustment costs of stability by holding large reserves available for use in international trade. Both those most committed and those least committed to the postwar regime acted to support it principally in pursuing domestic policy objectives.

4 Saleh, Abdullah A., “Disincentives to Agricultural Production in Developing Countries: A Policy Survey,” Foreign Agricultural Supplement (Washington: GAO, 03, 1975)Google Scholar.

5 See Eckholm, Eric P., Losing Ground (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976)Google Scholar.

6 This dilemma requiring collaboration for resolution is roughly equivalent to the structural paradox in the “Prisoner's Dilemma” of game theory. Without communication (at least implicitly) and trust, the prisoners are doomed to worse outcomes or higher costs than they could achieve through cooperation. A good statement of this mathematically formulated paradox may be found in Rapoport, Anatol, Fights, Games and Debates (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960), pp. 173–179Google Scholar.

7 Malmgren, H. B. and Schelchty, D. L., “Rationalizing World Agricultural Trade,” Journal of World Trade Law, # 4 (07–08, 1970), pp. 515–537Google Scholar.

8 United States Senate, Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, “The United States, FAO and World Food Politics: U.S. Relations With An International Food Organization,” Staff Report (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 06, 1976)Google Scholar. For a more sympathetic view of international organization in the food area, see, Jones, Joseph M., The United Nations at Work: Developing Land, Forests, Oceans and People (Oxford, England: Pergamon Press, 1965)Google Scholar.

9 These barriers, argues economist Griffin, Keith, lead to lower productivity and the large inequalities perpetuated by production patterns that produce “low output and inefficiency,” in Land Concentration and Rural Poverty (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1976), p. 5Google Scholar.

10 The arguments for land reform and for an employment strategy in planning investment are complex, and require adjustment to the specific conditions of each country. The Ethiopian “national” land reform of 1975–76 for instance made sense in one region and was counter-productive elsewhere. Such failures do not vitiate the overall analysis. See International Labor Office, Employmnet, Growth and Basic Needs: A One-World Problem (New York: Praeger 1977)Google Scholar; Chenery, Hollis et al., Redistribution with Growth (London: Oxford University Press, 1974)Google Scholar, and Lehman, David, ed., Peasants, Landlords and Governments (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1974)Google Scholar.

11 See Iseman, Paul J. and Singer, H. W., “Food Aid: Disincentive Effects and Their Policy Implications,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 25, # 2 (01, 1977), pp. 205–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 For an analysis and critique of international programs of disaster relief, see, United Nations Association of the United States of America, Acts of Nature, Acts of Man: The Global Response to Natural Disasters (UNA, New York, 1977)Google Scholar. This report proposes several new rules to expedite relief efforts.

13 See, for instance, Hansen, Roger, “Major U.S. Options on North-South Relations: A Letter to President Carter,” in Sewell, John W., ed., The United Nations and World Development (New York: Praeger, 1977), pp. 21–84Google Scholar. Debate and reformulation of United States food policy in the Carter administration has been explicitly addressed to many of the issues we have raised in the summary.

14 See International Food Policy Research Institute, Potentials of Agricultural Exports to Finance Increased Food Imports in Selected Developing Countries, Occasional Paper # 2 (Washington: IFPRI, 08, 1977)Google Scholar.

15 According to CGFPI figures, however, international public investment in agriculture hit a plateau in 1976, after rapid rises after 1973.

16 Kriesberg, Martin, International Organization and Agricultural Development, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Foreign Agricultural Economic Report # 131 (Washington: USDA, 05, 1977)Google Scholar.

17 See United Nations, World Food Council, Report of the World Food Council on the Work of the Third Session, WFC/5-, 06 28, 1977Google Scholar, supplement No. 19 to Official Records of the General Assembly, 33rd Session, A/32/19.