PART II NIEO: THE NEW IMPERIALIST ECONOMIC ORDER
I have tried to show some of the pitfalls of putting too much stress on cash crop, commercial commodities agriculture via UNCTAD negotiations and the like.1 But there are other, more immediate dangers for Third World rural societies and they, too, originate in the wealthy, industrialized nations. Some of these dangers are already manifest; others will soon become so; all have to do with food systems. It is not an exaggeration to say that the economic, social and political futures of UDCs will largely be determined by the kinds of food systems they adopt.
Please note here the use of the term "food system" as opposed to "agriculture." Social scientists have got us all into the habit of thinking in terms of the Primary, Secondary and Tertiary sectors, supposedly embodying agriculture, industry and services respectively. Such a classification may have been useful sometime before World War II but it has relatively little to do with today's realities, especially in rich countries like the United States. In order to understand what is meant by a food system, one may imagine a line divided into three segments. The first segment is labeled "inputs," the second "food production" and the third "post-harvest;" or, if one prefers, "storage, processing and distribution." These three abstract categories apply to every human community (including those that don't farm—like Eskimos—if one replaces "harvest" with "catch") but their food systems will naturally vary enormously in length and complexity. The chain will be shortest in self-provisioning farming communities that rely on "natural" inputs (rain, self-reproduced seeds, hard work) and that store the resulting harvest on the spot. In shortline food systems, processing is limited to grinding and cooking—mostly breads and porridges; the producers and the consumers are the same people. The line is without doubt longest in the United States where industry has taken over the provision of all the agricultural inputs (including rain, if one counts cloud-seeding); where the farming community itself is just a tiny segment of the line; where the storage, processing and distribution are immensely sophisticated operations and cost two-thirds of every dollar spent on food. Most academic research has focused on one or another of the divisions or subdivisions of the line (often on production alone) and has thus frequently not seen the forest for the trees.2 Unless one tries to place particular aspects of food systems in their total context (not an easy job precisely because of the lack of research) one is likely to miss what is actually taking place. And what is actually taking place has, in my opinion, sinister implications for underdeveloped countries. I do not myself claim X-Ray vision, nor can I present an absolutely air-tight case in defense of this viewpoint; still there seem to me to be discernible and threatening trends in the evolution of Third World food systems which are worth close attention.3
Here are some hypotheses concerning food systems we shall be dealing with from now on:
(1).There is a recognizable pattern in the evolution of the food systems of capitalist countries; among them the US system is the one that has progressed furthest towards a high-technology type. This US system is tantamount to a model or paradigm towards which other countries are moving. This model will therefore, over time, tend to become unique.
(2).There is a concentrated effort on the part of the agents of the capitalist world system ("agents" in the non-conspiratorial sense of those who act, produce an effect); largely though not exclusively multinational corporations, to introduce the food system model they have devised at home to the underdeveloped nations. This is not being done with the aim of making UDC food systems independent and viable but rather in order to dominate them more effectively, so that the "periphery" may better serve the needs of the "center."
(3).This model has no relevance, past or present, to the needs and realities of Third World societies, since it evolved in the developed world under radically different circumstances. Indeed, it will be (and already is) enormously harmful to them, in particular because it perpetuates and reinforces hunger and malnutrition; still it is being accepted and put into practice with enthusiasm.
The fact that this model is both offered and accepted with such enthusiasm is doubtless due to the class interests, both in the industrialized and the Third World countries, that the model serves. These are real interests, and they are not playing games. I entertain, however, the naive hope that there may be cases in which this model is being allowed to penetrate rural societies in the Third World simply because no one authority there really understands what is going on. There may also be a remote chance of changing the perceptions of part of the "development Establishment"; one might, in time and with a lot of help, contribute to making certain approaches at least unfashionable. This could be important to the extent that Third World leaders may sometimes adopt development theories and "solutions" which they perceive as being fashionable in the West and which they erroneously equate with the notions of "agricultural progress" or "modernization."