Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site umcp-cs.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!umcp-cs!mangoe From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: America's role in world hunger & red spread Message-ID: <1208@umcp-cs.UUCP> Date: Tue, 13-Aug-85 10:44:49 EDT Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1208 Posted: Tue Aug 13 10:44:49 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 15-Aug-85 00:44:06 EDT References: <1653@dciem.UUCP> Distribution: net Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD Lines: 21 In article <1653@dciem.UUCP> mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) writes: >That's precisely the point Jones was presumably trying to make. The >agribusinesses ensure that plenty of export crops are grown where otherwise >staples might be grown. To provide us with luxuries (and themselves with >a little foreign currency) these countries deny themselves adequate >locally grown food supplies. Paying back debts at usurious interest >rates doesn't help them, either. (Or the lenders, when they default.) Actually, field work has shown that a important factor is the lack of lateral flow between the lowest level markets. Crops are generally not exchanged outside of the most local markets, flowing instead into the upper class market structure, where they remain. The farmers therefore have to raise what they need, rather than what is most profitable. The export crops would not pose a problem if this exploitative structure did not exist. These crops would still be in demand, but they would be accompanied by an internal flow of food crops, and even by competing export crops. I have a reference for this, but it will take a little while to dig it up. C Wingate