The Spectre of ‘Globalisation Famines’

On October 11, in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi advised Indian farmers to grow more “export-oriented crops”. This amounted to saying that Indian farmers should move away from growing foodgrains, and the country should import foodgrains instead. This is precisely the advice that institutions like the World Bank, and Indian economists who generally echo its positions, have been giving for some time; and it is what the imperialist countries have been demanding.

Owing to the massive subsidies they give to their farmers, amounting in the US, for example, in many years to as much as half the total value of agricultural output, these farmers grow an amount of foodgrains that leaves them with a surplus which needs to be offloaded in countries like India. Hence, they would like these countries to shift land-use from growing foodgrains to producing those export crops that they need but cannot produce. Modi’s advice to farmers is thus in conformity with the demands of imperialism.

It is this shift of acreage from foodgrains that was sought to be imposed on the farmers through the Modi government’s three infamous farm laws. A government-administered regime of minimum-supply-prices which had existed earlier, had been removed from cash crops but still remained in the case of foodgrains. Such a regime was sought to be removed from foodgrains as well, which would have reduced the attractiveness of foodgrain production leading to a shift of acreage away from it.

The farmers went on a successful year-long agitation against these laws, which led to a re-instatement of the MSP (minimum support price)-regime for foodgrains, much to the chagrin of imperialism and the Modi government. But neither imperialists nor the government have given up their agenda; and Modi’s latest exhortation to farmers to grow export crops is a confirmation of this.

During the farmers’ agitation, official economists, and those toeing the World Bank line, had argued that a shift of acreage from foodgrains to cash crops was in the interest of the farmers themselves, and that such a shift was being prevented because of the existence of the MSP regime for foodgrains.

The farmers, however, knew better: removal of the MSP regime for cash crops had exposed the farmers to the wild fluctuations in the world market prices that such crops typically experience. Farmers growing cash crops had been exposed to greater risk for this reason and this risk was further magnified by the fact that cash crop production requires larger credit.

In years of price crash, therefore, they could not pay back the loans they had taken to grow such crops, and many died by suicide. More than four lakh farmers, mainly (though not exclusively) cash-crop growing farmers, have died by suicide over the past three decades.

When the government removed the MSP regime even from foodgrains, the farmers opposed the move as it would have removed the only remaining protective barrier they had. They were keenly aware of the destiny that awaited them in the event of a complete removal of the MSP regime than their supposedly well-wishing Prime Minister and the economists toeing the World Bank line.

There is, however, an additional danger inherent in a shift of acreage from food to cash crops, apart from the failure to pay back the loans incurred for growing such crops during price-crashes -- and that is the loss of food security both for the country as a whole and also for the farming population, which can manifest itself, and has indeed manifested itself, in the form of famines.

Such famines have occurred in many African countries where there has been a shift of acreage from food to cash crops under a regime of globalisation. Economist Amiya Kumar Bagchi in his book, The Perilous Passage, terms such famines very aptly as “globalisation famines”.

The reason why such famines occur is the following. When a country produces cash crops and imports foodgrains, then, in a year of price-crash for the crop it produces and exports, it would not be earning the foreign exchange required to pay for its foodgrain imports. This is because foodgrain prices generally fluctuate less than cash crop prices anyway; and in the year in question foodgrain prices would not have fallen as much as the price of the particular crop that the country exports. It would, therefore, not be able to prevent a fall in its per capita foodgrain availability, thereby creating the conditions for a famine.

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Even assuming, however, that somehow the country manages to get adequate foodgrain supplies from the international market, through for instance “food aid” from some donor countries being made available in such a difficult year, there is a further problem. Farmers who grow the cash crop whose price has crashed will not be having enough purchasing power to buy foodgrains on the market, despite foodgrains being available owing to the inflow of “food aid”.

Arranging “food aid”, therefore, will have to be supplemented by a food subsidy being given to the distressed agricultural population. If the government does not give this subsidy (or does not distribute a sufficient amount of foodgrains gratis to the affected population) then again the prospects of a famine cannot be avoided.

Similar prospects of a famine or at least increase in undernutrition arise if the shift from the food crop is to a cash crop that is less employment-intensive, in the sense that for every acre shifted the number of people who can be employed in crop production drops. The unemployed then lack the purchasing power to buy foodgrains on the market, even though the country may have enough foreign exchange to import foodgrains to meet whatever amount is demanded.

A famine-like situation would arise in this case too, though for a different reason from the one discussed earlier. Using a distinction made by economist Amartya Sen, this case would be one of “Failure of Exchange Entitlement” or FEE (since the unemployed would be lacking the wherewithal, or “entitlement”, to buy food), in contrast to the earlier case which was one of “Food Availability Decline” or FAD. But FEE may happen (if the cash crop is less employment-intensive, which for instance is true of orchard crops), while FAD would certainly happen.

It follows that any undermining of the food security of a country by reducing domestic foodgrain production through a shift of acreage from food to cash crops, as occurs under a neo-liberal regime and as has happened in several parts of the Global South, notably in Africa, creates conditions propitious for the occurrence of famines.

India, which has avoided this possibility until now because of not moving away from foodgrain production, will be exposing itself to this possibility if its farmers listen to the advice of its Prime Minister who is himself buckling under imperialist pressure.

Quite apart from the prospect of “globalisation famines” however, there is an additional reason why reliance on foodgrain imports would be utterly inadvisable. The US has systematically used unilateral economic sanctions against countries that do not bow before its dictates. Cuba, Iran, Russia, North Korea and Venezuela are currently among a host of countries against which the US, with the support of other imperialist countries, has imposed unilateral sanctions. The coverage of the sanctions of course varies, but it takes quintessentially the form of the US itself not trading, and also preventing other countries from trading with the sanctioned country. If a country is dependent on foodgrain imports, then the imposition of sanctions against it by the US and other imperialist countries, would create a human catastrophe for it; and if the sanctions take additionally the form of impounding the foreign exchange assets of the sanctioned country held abroad, then its ability to purchase foodgrains gets further eroded, and the human catastrophe then gets further aggravated.

With the implicit endorsement of the genocide in Gaza by the ruling circles in the entire imperialist world, the threat of such a catastrophe, if a country takes a position in defiance of imperialism, is very real today.

Indeed, with US President Donald Trump blatantly using trade as a political weapon, for a country to become food import-dependent is the surest way to lose its autonomy in policy making. Food import-dependence today has thus become an instrument through which a country gets reduced to the status of a client state of imperialism.

For the Prime Minister of India to advise farmers to grow export crops, which means to shift away from foodgrains towards growing cash crops demanded in the metropolis, betrays a lack of awareness on his part of the issues involved, and hence a degree of vulnerability to imperialist pressure, that is quite amazing.

Prabhat Patnaik is Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The views are personal.