Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
3
LET US EAT CAKE? HISTORICALLY REFRAMING
THE PROBLEM OF WORLD HUNGER AND ITS
PURPORTED SOLUTIONS
Hugh Campbell
Introduction
In this hapter I address one of the core deceits of post-Second World War agricultural
policy in the Developed World: namely, that seeking solutions to world hunger would
be a central focus of international political efforts in the post-Second World War peri-
od. I argue for an alternative understanding of these political efforts: that is, that the
central political concern in Developed World agricultural policy has not been to solve
world hunger, but to solve the problem of how to secure Developed World incomes for
Developed World farmers. While there is considerable rhetoric mobilized to suggest
that these two goals are one and the same, this hapter will use the theoretical device
of Food Regimes to explore some key dynamics in the longer term history of global
agriculture that demonstrate that this is anything but the case. Starting with exam-
ination of the dynamic power of the 'food scarcity' problem of the industrial nations
in the nineteenth century, this hapter will introduce the century-long evolution of a
global solution to food scarcity in the core industrializing countries in what would be-
come known as the Developed World. It will then go on to demonstrate how this long
pattern of stable food arrangements was completely overturned in the period after the
Second World War, resulting in three historically and geographically contingent agri-
cultural, trade and wider economic policy regimes in the Developed World; regimes
that have atempted to seek a solution to how to secure incomes for Developed World
farmers. These are: 1) the post-Second World War aid-based regime encouraging the
expansion of the US model of export-commodity platforms within the US and abroad;
2) the European model of direct subsidization of farmers, first through direct price
supports, and then through 'green box' subsidies providing indirect income to farmers
