Scrap the CAP!

by urban seperatist Fri Dec 16, 2005 17:59

I totally agree that the CAP should be scrapped. But how should this be given effect. What else should Irish farmers do and how could such a change be something that they would welcome rather than resist?

Otherwise I think it's only the power of french farmers and the centrality of france within the political make-up of the EU that has kept the CAP alive. It is obviously unustainable and given the economic problems elswhere in Europe the value of its currency may be diminishing.

But still, it's like the closures of industrial plants in the 80s and 90s - communities have built up around these economies, are dependent on them, operated principally by people who just want to earn a living and are not interested in 'life-long education' and a career-change every 5 years. Removing their means of substistence without planning alternatives would be cataclysmic.

by doubts Fri Dec 16, 2005 18:52

Hi,

I haven't looked into this to any great degree, but I've a lurking doubt about these sort of articles, as they seem to make huge and gross simplifactions and do not seem to tell the whole story. These articles always assume that there is an immediate benefit to producers in the global south with the scarping of CAPs. But, who are the producers in the global south? Is the sugar industry in some of these regions not dominated by huge multinationals many of whom it has been reported indulge in the exploitation of child labour. Will the real boost from the end of CAP not go these chancers rather than trickle down to their workers to use free market logic? Maybe the gross simplifaction in articles like this is that they have an awful tendency to conflate the interests of farmers in the south and north with their respective multinationals...

http://www.hrw.org/children/labor/elsalvador/

by doubts Fri Dec 16, 2005 19:18

"the EU must permit poorer countries to be self-sufficient, and allow them unrestricted access to our markets"

From this it appears that you are saying the central problem in this whole shebang is that an excess of food in Africa can't make its way into European markets, you then confuse this with deterring self-sufficeny. You are mistaking an economic culture of Imperial exploitatation, where cash crops are grown to feed consumer markets in the west with self sufficeny? Now I'd have thought that the problem here was that food grown in the global south was not being distributed to the people in the global south, thats self sufficency. But that'd be pretty pointless if it was just sugar that was being distributed. So f course any solution requires a whole rethink on the nature of agricutlure, a move away from cash crops to self sufficent growth to feed peoples direct need. The argument you make is that the free market will lift all boats, with a few immature digs at IPods and god for bid those of us sick of being stuck in traffic and paying shit rents to rich landlords.

by Mike Fri Dec 16, 2005 20:56

This should not be a discussion based upon ideology but reality.

Now please don't mistake this for an apology for the multinationals, etc. Nor assume that you will agree about the numbers (though I am asking to look at numbers and make your own mind up).

The colonial period and its aftermath resulted in these areas growing cash crops (for export) and importing cheap foodstuffs from elsewhere. That made these people dependent upon trade and their population grew to much higher levels than back when they were a subsistence economy. ASK! What do the numbers suggest? Assuming that they went back to subsistence, would enough be produced to sustain the CURRENT population? Please, do not simply repeat a mantra like "always enough for need" or imaigne that it HAS to be enough because the alternative is unthinkable.

Now ask the same questions about your own island. And if you have very nearby populous neighbors, better ask the question about them too >

by bobcat Sat Dec 17, 2005 03:51

Nobody is suggesting that developing nations stop producing cash crops and go back to subsistence agriculture the point is that they should be free to trade fairly in other agricultural products as well. E.U. and U.S. subsidies keep developing countries out of valuable markets and hence stunt their development.
When a farmer in the developing world cannot sell their produce the farm suffers, production and quality drop because they cannot afford fertilizers, few efforts are made to protect the environment and social development comes to a halt. The people also suffer, child labour actually increases because everything that can be done to get food on the table must be done. People flock to the cities after their farms have been seized by the banks, crime and other social diseases increase.
If people in the developing world are allowed to trade fairly they will be able to send their kids to school, they will be able to stay in their homes and they will become more aware of and better at protecting their environment.
We in the 'developed' world must accept our part in this and we have to be ready to accept a drop in the richness of our lifestyles. Climate change and poverty are showing us over and over that we can't keep going on like this.

by Doubts Sat Dec 17, 2005 05:05

As I said in an earlier post, I'm no expert in any of this shit, but I remember being particularly struck by an article I read by Majid Rahnema (former Iranian Education Minister in the 60s, edited a good development reader with Ivan Illich) who described the impact of development and its desire for economic growth using AIDs as a metaphor. He described vernacular societies, which exhibit the same sort of pre-capitalist structures of a moral economy envisaged in the west prior to primitive capital accumulation: “they have a certain organic consistency in other words their structures are a living tissue of social and cultural relations defining the activities of their members and protecting them against possible dangers…it is the tissue of human solidarities that preserves the communities immune system. ”

Vandana Shiva has become the best known critic of the effects of this form of capitalist development in western circles given her affinity to Indian social movements. Her critique of Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights and the manner in which development has foisted an industrial model of agriculture on populations cuts to the contradictions in the idea that economic growth equates with social progress: “The rich diversity and sustainable systems of food production have been destroyed in the name of increasing food production. However, with the destruction of diversity, rich sources of nutrition disappear. When measured in terms of nutrition per acre, and from the perspective of biodiversity, the so-called “high yields” of industrial agriculture do not imply more production of food and nutrition. ” This point of view would suggest that the cash crop is the problem, after all it is tied into an imperial model of exploiting the natural resources of a particular area against the benefit of the people living in that area. All famines are artificial, you only have to think of the effect of cash crops in Ireland in the 19c, which was peppered with not one famine, but many that contributed to a colloquial memory of starvation being "frequent, local and recent" despite the exportation of other food stuffs.

I have huge problems with how these discussions are framed because terms and rethoric are being flung around without any real thought process behind them. Development is being confused with improving the social conditions and quality of life of people in the global south, and if the development project has left any legacy it has been the opposite of that, operating along the lines of a logic that some have equated with the primitive accumulation that displaced communities, uprooted traditional modes of solidarity and survival in the west centuries ago. Now no one is glamourising the peasant life here - but its worth remembering who the influential partners in the development discourse were and what the end results of it are. I don't think its enough for a left-wing critique of trade policy to scream "Scrap the cap" - thats a very limited apporach, its reliant on the sort of faith in the invisible hand of the market that reigns over at the Freedom Inst and limits the solutions to the issues at stake within a capitalistic framework.

The worst part about such critiques is that they level economic and social power relations within the north, and within the south - which is plainly stupid. It equates to a "black people good, white man bad" argument which is generally very disempowering on both sides. The person who raised the point about job displacement over the closing of the sugar factories is making a rather astute point, there is no point simply dismissing their concerns as the greedy Irish farmers intent on being able to afford a few more tunes on their Ipod as you seem to do. The issue of being able to afford fertilizers, and seeds for farmers in the west trapped within the frame of industrial agriculture is very much rooted within the same power imbalance faced by farmers in the global south. Its pretty much the same multinationals running the show across the board. Other things need mentioning as well, such as the effect of trade related intellectual property rights, which represent a huge colonisation of the farming process in the south by corporations.

If Vandana Shiva, her of the Corporation fame and one of the most salient critics of trade relations, is correct the real beneficary in CAP reform is going to be Cargill and other fucking massive agribusiness corporations which it would seem have played on not unsubstantial part in these restructurings of CAP. She describes how "CAP reform is a reform to rip off the peasants and farmers and the small family farmers even more. It's a pro agri-business reform it is not a pro-environment reform, it is not a pro small family farmer reform."

So maybe the problem isn't how the system is being run, but the system of industrial agriculture itself, eh? Now I'm no bloody hippy, but increasingly it seems that organic agriculture represents a much more efficent model of food provision.

In short, there's little point arguing within an economics framework, they have us every which way but lose on that one - its wiser to talk about societal effects of systems. You can dress any old shite up in figures and present it to suit all ideological persuasions.

For some thoughts from Shiva on this see:

http://www.euractiv.com/Article?tcmuri=tcm:29-117411-16&type=Interview
http://www.navdanya.org/articles/dumping.htm