The companies producing genetically engineered crops, for example, have spent billions of dollars on buying up seed banks, altering their contents, then advertising and distributing their new products. They did not spend those dollars to reap rupees. The cultivation of these crops must attract hard currencies to be viable.
This is why, despite all their bombast about feeding the world, the biotech companies have put so much of their effort into developing animal feed. The feed market in the rich world is enormous, and expected to grow by between 30 and 50% in the next 20 years. Millions of acres in the poor world, in other words, are now dedicated to helping the fat to become fatter, with the result that the thin become thinner. Clare Short herself has observed that "those who focus their efforts simply on increasing agricultural production must be under no illusions that they will therefore help the poor to obtain food."
The government of Andra Pradesh would counter that by selling crops for hard currency, it can obtain the money necessary to raise living standards and feed the starving. But this vision relies on a "trickle-down" theory of economics which even the World Bank has stopped promoting. It is particularly inappropriate where new agricultural technologies are concerned. The biotech companies, for example, have gone to great lengths to ensure that the profits stay in their own hands, patenting crops and the technologies associated with them, designing seeds which cannot reproduce. Food, land and the wealth arising from them are all removed from circulation in the local economy, and shifted instead between the foreign corporations and the new landlords, who in some cases are one and the same.
This is why, despite all their bombast about feeding the world, the biotech companies have put so much of their effort into developing animal feed. The feed market in the rich world is enormous, and expected to grow by between 30 and 50% in the next 20 years. Millions of acres in the poor world, in other words, are now dedicated to helping the fat to become fatter, with the result that the thin become thinner. Clare Short herself has observed that "those who focus their efforts simply on increasing agricultural production must be under no illusions that they will therefore help the poor to obtain food."
The government of Andra Pradesh would counter that by selling crops for hard currency, it can obtain the money necessary to raise living standards and feed the starving. But this vision relies on a "trickle-down" theory of economics which even the World Bank has stopped promoting. It is particularly inappropriate where new agricultural technologies are concerned. The biotech companies, for example, have gone to great lengths to ensure that the profits stay in their own hands, patenting crops and the technologies associated with them, designing seeds which cannot reproduce. Food, land and the wealth arising from them are all removed from circulation in the local economy, and shifted instead between the foreign corporations and the new landlords, who in some cases are one and the same.