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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>
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Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
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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