How deregulation destroyed African agriculture

And changed Africa into a food importer

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com while the diversion of corn from food to biofuel feedstock has been a factor in the meteoric rise in food prices, the more basic problem has been the conversion of economies that are largely food-self-sufficient into chronic food importers. Here the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) figure as much more important villains African agriculture is a case study of how doctrinaire economics serving corporate interests can destroy a whole continent’s productive base. in the 1960s, Africa was not just self-sufficient in food but was actually a net food exporter Today almost every country a net food importer the explanation was the phasing out of government controls to which most African countries were subjected as the price for getting IMF and World Bank assistance reality refused to conform to the doctrinal expectation that the withdrawal of the state would pave the way for the market and private sector to dynamize agriculture

Why Haiti starves: USA wiped out its farms

Forced to accept competition from subsidized American rice, Haitian farmers could not survive.

This, of course, is in part the problem of Zimbabwe, though far more damage was done to Zimbabwe's agriculture and economy by its own government.

Hat-tip to Monte Asbury.

clipped from www.democracynow.org the United States and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, all of which we, the United States, dominate, have for the last twenty-five, thirty years have insisted that in order to get the loans, which Haiti and these other countries, agricultural countries, need, Haiti had to change their economic system so that their country was open to competition from other countries on agriculture thirty years ago, Haiti imported almost no rice, was an exporter of sugar and other things. Today, Haiti imports nearly all of its rice. rice from the United States at low or below cost— and destroyed the ability of farmers in Haiti to be able to grow rice. And as a consequence, the country now depends totally on imported rice. Cost of import—cost of rice around the world has gone up over 100 percent since January. the people of the United States have no idea that our government has destroyed not just Haiti, but the agricultural bases of lots and lots of very poor countries

More on neoliberalism, from The Antidote

A few days ago I wrote about neoliberalism, and the bad effects it was having on South African education. Now The Antidote tells more about the bad effects it is having on water supplies.

In 2000, a cholera outbreak around Ngwelezane in rural KZN killed nearly 200 people and infected more than 80 000 others. Why the outbreak? The government had recently terminated a 17-year-long, apartheid-era supply of free water. Those too poor to buy their water found themselves forced to gather it from wherever they could find it, storm drains, dirty rivers, stagnant pools…. hence the cholera.

and

(Then) Wits academic Patrick Bond is just one of the critics blaming our government for adopting neoliberal economic policies that put profit before people. Government is turning basic services like water and electricity into commodities, and then selling them off to the highest bidder. From there, it’s a quick step to insist upon a 100% cost recovery model from ‘customers’, regardless of how poor these individuals may be. No money, no water.

What prompted our government to take such a step? For a lot of reasons, but not least of which the fact that the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have made no bones about the fact that they will be plenty cheesed off if SA doesn’t go this route. In the words of writer-activist Ashwin Desai, ‘our transition to democracy… was trumped by the transition to neoliberalism’.

I will never forget Nelson Mandela saying, when it had become clear that the ANC had won the election in 1994, that one thing was not negotiable -- the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). And within a year it had been negotiated away.