MOBILIZATION TO DOUBLE FOOD PRODUCTION
IS IN FULL SWING!
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, April 18, 2008
{Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche is the founder of the Schiller Institute and
the chairwoman of the Civil Rights Solidarity Movement (BüSo) in
Germany. Her article has been translated from German, and
subheads added. This is a pre-publication copy.}
In a worldwide mobilization, with literally life-or-death
consequences, an increasing number of governments are taking
their own urgent measures to increase agricultural production, so
that, as soon as possible, they can regain the food security
which the enforcers of free trade have been denying them for so
many years now. Because when hundreds of millions, or even up to
2 billion human beings, are struggling just to stay alive, and
when revolts, wars of starvation, and revolutions loom, any
government which wants to remain in office, has no recourse but
to attend to its citizens' general welfare.
Meanwhile, the increasingly obvious bankruptcy of the
globalized system and of unregulated free-market economics,
hasn't prevented its propagandists from continuing to hawk their
poison as a cure for the ailing world economy. So, for example,
the World Trade Organization's director-general Pascal Lamy, and
Peter Mandelson, British Commissioner of the European Union for
Trade, in charge of negotiations with the World Trade
Organization (WTO), are currently attempting to bring the
so-called Doha Round to a conclusion by late May or early June,
seeking to eliminate the last remnants of Europe's Common
Agricultural Policy (CAP). If they succeed, this will result in
dramatic losses of up to 20% for Europe's farmers.
The beneficiaries of this policy--a policy which is all the
more repulsive in light of the starvation afflicting so many
around the world--would be the big food cartels, as well as the
hedge funds and other speculators, all of whom have an interest
in curtailing production. Faced with the collapse of the ``New
Economy'' market bubble and of the U.S. mortgage market, they
have either hurled themselves into speculation on foodstuffs, or
else have convinced themselves that, in the biofuels market, they
have found a new, magical source of profit maximization. Lurking
behind them, first and foremost, is the British oligarchy and its
co-thinkers worldwide, who want to expand the power of
supranational bureaucracies such as the WTO, the International
Monetary Fund, the European Union, etc., in order to rule the
entire world as their empire. The losers in this game are the
billions of people in the developing countries who face
starvation, along with the European farmers who are increasingly
deprived of the means to survive--and all the rest of us, the
consumers who have to pay ever higher prices for food.
This week in Geneva, Crawford Falconer, the WTO agricultural
negotiations chairperson, is expected to present a paper which
proposes that all agricultural questions should not be dealt with
separately, but rather should be lumped together with all other
commodities--i.e., that food should be an object of speculation,
just like any other commodity. This neoliberal free-trader is
determined to push the Doha Round agreement through by late May,
so that by six months from now--before the Bush Administration
leaves office--all governments will have signed off on it.
             - Resistance Grows to WTO Policy -
Fortunately, resistance to this is mounting in France,
Germany, and Italy. French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier
has released his own paper, which not only defends Europe's CAP,
but recommends it as a model for Africa, Latin America, and other
regions. He excoriates the WTO's practice of forcing developing
countries to give up agricultural production for domestic
consumption, in favor of so-called ``cash crops,'' i.e.,
harvesting for export, so that the debt which has piled up
because of IMF conditionalities, can be paid. As an alternative,
Barnier calls for increasing agricultural production everywhere,
not just where it might be profitable. He is being supported in
this by Horst Seehofer, Germany's Minister for Food, Agriculture,
and Consumer Protection, and by Italy's Agriculture Minister. In
all likelihood, it will come to a direct confrontation between
these three on the one side, and the opposing position of the
British and of EU Agriculture and Rural Development Minister
Mariann Fischer Boel--at which point it will become clear once
again, that the EU's policies are diametrically opposed to the
interests of Europe's nations.
Meanwhile, an international mobilization of the Schiller
Institute and of the LaRouche Youth Movement on five continents,
calling for a doubling of food production, has coincided with
many countries' efforts to supply their people with adequate
food, to increase domestic production, and thus to release them
from the WTO regime's death-grip. The mobilization aims to put
the need to double food production onto the agenda of the
conference of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, which
takes place in Rome on June 3-6.
Taking only two of dozens of examples:
* In Argentina, the chairman of the Chamber of Deputies'
Agricultural Committee, Alberto Cantero, organized a hearing, at
which he spoke out in favor of a doubling of domestic food
production and for the creation of a state agency for overseeing
the marketing of foodstuffs; and in an exclusive interview
[published in this issue of {EIR}], he expressed support for the
Schiller Institute's call for putting a doubling of food
production worldwide onto the FAO's conference agenda.
* In the United States, Democratic Presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton, speaking at an election rally in South Dakota,
was enthusiastically applauded when she answered a question from
a representative of Lyndon LaRouche's ``Food for Peace''
initiative, saying that food production must, of course, be
massively increased, and that American farmers must be enabled to
help conquer hunger, and to help other countries such as Haiti to
become self-sufficient.
In view of the enormous extent of the world hunger crisis--a
crisis made still worse by the recent catastrophes in Myanmar and
China--more and more people are summoning up the courage to speak
out and name the true culprits. At a hearing held by the
Financial Services Committee of the U.S. House of
Representatives, experts spoke out in favor of a revolution in
agriculture, and stressed the necessity to prevent the IMF and
World Bank from forcing ``conditionalities'' on the developing
countries, with destructive consequences, for which those
institutions are never held responsible. A number of experts,
including Dr. Raj Patel of the University of California,
Berkeley, backed the analysis set forth by UN Special Rapporteur
Olivier de Schutter, that the world must now pay the price for
its 20 years of mistakes, and that the World Bank and IMF are
chiefly to blame. Dr. Patel also attacked former U.S. Secretary
of Agriculture John Block, who, in an infamous speech at a GATT
meeting in 1986, claimed that the idea that developing countries
could become self-sufficient, was an anachronism. And so, even
though, so far, this has been only talk, and Congress has not yet
passed any effective legislation on it, these discussions about
the causes of the catastrophe are still useful.
                - No `Triage' Is Necessary -
There's also more discussion about ways to solve the crisis.
At a seminar in Ottawa by the International Development Research
Center, many speakers, including Robert Zeigler, director general
of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), stressed
that supplying the world with sufficient affordable food would
not be a problem: All that would be required, would be to equip
farmers with the best currently existing technologies and
cultivation methods. A forecast issued by the International Food
Policy Research Institute points out that a termination of the
swindle of subsidies for biofuels production would result in
immediate 20% price reductions for corn, 14% for manioc, and 11%
for wheat.
But, at a press conference in Lima, Peru held in connection
with the EU and Latin America summit meeting, EU Commissioner
Mandelson responded to a question from a Schiller Institute
representative, by claiming that no such connection exists
between food prices and biofuels! Someone ought to bring a tape
measure to determine how much longer Mr. Mandelson's nose grew
with that one! Because the fact is, that a person could live {for
six months} on the food required to produce a single tankful of
ethanol for a mid-sized automobile! And the misanthropes who fill
their tanks with ethanol in order to soothe their
eco-consciences, can use that as a measure of how many peoples'
lives they're destroying each year.
Meanwhile, the UN World Food Program is experiencing ever
more triage against the 82 Low Income Food Deficit Nations
(LIFDN)--a program of triage by which some receive assistance,
and some not, with the poorest nations having simply no chance,
since they cannot pay the higher prices. Some countries, however,
are attacking the root of the problem.
President Abdoulaye Wade in Senegal, for example, has
initiated a program which not only covers the total consumption
of grains, rice, manioc, milk, meat, etc., but which is also
aimed at keeping the corn cribs full. President Bingu wa
Mutharika of Malawi has likewise overridden the ``laws of the
free market,'' and has issued coupons for seed, and is granting
subsidies for fertilizers, so that a 283% increase in grain
production can be achieved. In the Philippines, which formerly
had been self-sufficient in rice, but which was turned into one
of the world's biggest rice importers under the IMF and WTO
regime, is about to launch a massive ramping-up of production.
Malaysia is likewise determined to become self-sufficient in
food. And many other countries are about to draw the same
conclusions from the collapse of neoliberal free trade.
Yet another confirmation of the free-traders' incompetence,
was revealed recently by Yves Mersch, governor of the Central
Bank of Luxembourg and member of the European Central Bank
governing council. He has expressed great concern over the rapid
collapse in the value of structured securities which the ECB has
been accepting from various Spanish, Dutch, and British banks, as
collateral in exchange for ECB credits. The scandal is that it
had been clear from the very outset, that this so-called
collateral in fact consists of unsalable financial ``toxic
waste,'' and that even non-banks such as Lehmann Brothers and
Acquire Leasing, an Australian-based firm specializing in
automobile leasing, have gotten into the act. A big question mark
should be placed over whether these practices are even in
compliance with the ECB's own statutes.
One thing, at any rate, is certain: The majority of
humankind is not prepared to go down with what even German
President Horst Köhler has admitted is a collapse of the
globalized financial system. And the voices speaking out in favor
of doubling of food production, are going to crescendo into a din
which is impossible to ignore.
Moreover, the foreign ministers of Russia, China, and India
met in Yekaterinburg, Russia, and agreed on close collaboration
on the international and regional level. One aspect of this, is
the demand that India immediately become a permanent member of
the UN Security Council; another is that India will refuse to
back Kosovo's independence. The intensification of these three
nations' strategic partnership--which will also be the subject of
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev's upcoming visit to India--is
not only the predictable answer to the Bush Administration's
unilateralism and to NATO's and the EU's imperial plans for
eastward expansion; it also portends a new center of gravity,
which is already fast becoming a gathering-point for many
developing countries.
We in Europe have a choice: Either we stick, on ideological
grounds, with the WTO, IMF, and World Bank's failed model of
globalization, {Ã la} the Lisbon Treaty, thereby making ourselves
into an enemy of the strategic partnership among the
Russia-China-India-allied nations and the developing countries;
or, the nations of Europe become a true partner and friend of
those nations. The latter course, however, requires that we enact
effective laws against speculation, and for promoting physical
production in agriculture and industry, and that here at home, we
once again put human beings at the center of our economic policy.
And no matter what happens, the LaRouche Movement is now
setting the agenda for the future: doubling of food production, a
New Bretton Woods System, and a New Deal for the whole world!