The Hardest Case - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 138

Pathways of Escape
The best policy path to escape Africa's current food and farming crisis is also a matter
of considerable debate. The pathways of escape favored by the political Right differ dra-
matically from those advanced by the political Left. Scholars on the Right (led by neo-
classical economists) predictably favor additional market-oriented economic reforms
in Africa to attract private investment, political reforms to restore the rule of law, and
a greater openness to international trade, including trade in agricultural products
even when this means importing food staples while producing cash crops for export.
Endorsements for this strategy can be found, for example, in the World Bank's (2007)
study World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development. According to the
Bank, “The private sector drives the organization of value chains that bring the market
to smallholders and commercial farms.” The subordinate role of the state is to “correct
market failures, regulate competition, and engage in strategically in public-private part-
nerships” (9).
In the view of the World Bank, the structural adjustment efforts of the 1980s and 1990s
were a considerable success: Between 1980 and 1984 and 2000 and 2004, net agricultural
taxation was reduced in Africa from 28 percent down to 10 percent, and this is seen as one
reason agricultural growth in Africa recovered slightly, from negative growth per capita
in the 1980s to 1.5 percent per capita between 2000 and 2005. More growth will now be
possible, according to the Bank, if markets—including international markets—are given
more room to operate. This means an opening to more imports of food staples, despite
the problems this could cause when world prices fluctuate. This recommendation for
greater reliance on international food markets was inconveniently published in 2007, just
before a sudden 2008 spike in international food prices punished those who had allowed
themselves to rely on the world market. In 2008 the export price of maize doubled from
two years earlier, the price of rice tripled in just three months, and wheat available for
export reached its highest price in twenty-eight years. Street demonstrations and rioting
broke out in Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Ethiopia (Paarlberg 2010).
The World Bank vision included greater investment in smallholder agriculture,
primarily in Africa's medium- and higher-potential areas. Subsistence farmers in
lower-potential areas need food security and safety nets to ensure livelihoods. Some
World Bank economists go farther than this, arguing that smallholder farmers in Africa
will never be an adequate source of either food production or income growth. Paul
Collier, Professor of Economics at Oxford and a former director of research at the Bank,
concluded in 2008 that a better solution would be to move agriculture in Africa toward
the “Brazilian model” built around larger-scale commercial farms. Smallholder peas-
ant farmers, he argued, will never be able to keep up with the fast-evolving technologies
seen in modern farming, and will never be able to connect to high value consumer food
chains, given poor rural infrastructure. In the Brazilian model, private companies con-
struct their own transportation infrastructure (Collier 2008). Smallholders can partici-
pate as subcontractors.