The greatest myth of American agriculture is based back in the 1950s and arouse from what was a noble morality that we could and should feed the world. It is what is driving the insanity of the global market today. If our plans for feeding the world had gone in a simple, linear fashion, and if our plans for giving the world the same kind of production technology had followed the same narrow track as our simplistic vision, perhaps our noble morality would be intact and John Lennon s imaginary world would be real today. But in a very simplified condensation of facts, here is the one core problem with the global market. People do not buy food.
Dollars buy food.
It means that the world s food production, as it is globalized, shifts from domestic use and flows to where the greatest monetary base exists and not where the greatest need exists. Their fastest development potential is usually in agricultural commodities, fueled by foreign investors. The small cadre of wealthy in developing nations tend to horde what wealth they accumulate, often with generations of an entrenched mentality that see people with a monetary and social value far less than the commodity they produce. I ll never forget sitting at a table with a group of wealthy ranchers from a developing nation in a hotel in Manila in the Phillippines two years ago at another IFAP meeting. I listened to them joke about their labor.