This section looks at the five principal dimensions of food security outlined in the introduction in order to bring out several issues encountered in attempting to achieve food security. The discussion draws on a wide range of sources which are listed in the references and bibliography, including the documentation prepared for the World Food Summit.
As has been seen, global food supplies are more than ample to provide everyone with an adequate basic diet if these could be distributed on the basis of nutritional need rather than effective demand. Moreover, average per capita supplies in the early 1990s were apparently above 2,500 calories per day for all developing countries taken together. This was possibly 18 per cent higher than in 1970 and theoretically adequate to meet their needs. One should, however, keep in mind the serious limitations of these data that were mentioned in the Introduction. At best, they are very rough estimates and occasionally they can be misleading.
Regional divergence: According to FAO estimates, in all but two of the world's major regions, there were more than 2,500 calories per person per day available in the early 1990s. The two exceptions were South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In South Asia, at 2,300 calories daily per person, food supplies were barely adequate even if equally shared. They were, however, about 12 per cent higher than only two decades earlier. In sub-Saharan Africa food availability was apparently only about 2,040 calories, which may have been a little below the region's 1969-1971 level (FAO-Tech 7, 1996). These estimates for Africa, however, are especially debatable.7 Many local sources of food are unrecognized in the statistics. National food production estimates of most poor countries are extremely sketchy and incomplete, as are the estimates of post-harvest losses, human consumption, food imports and exports as well as those of populations.
FAO's national level data suggest that 45 countries had less than 2,300 calories available per person per day in the early 1990s. Six were in Latin America, seven in South Asia and the remaining 34 in sub-Saharan Africa. Food sufficiency at sub-national and household levels varies greatly among countries. Frequently, serious and widespread undernutrition at sub-national levels is associated with more than ample availability of food at the national level, such as in Brazil and Mexico.
Sources of increased food supplies: Since 1970, in developing countries total food availability per capita has apparently increased from a little over 2,100 calories per person per day to over 2,500 in 1990. This is still less than three fourths of average food supplies per capita in the so-called developed countries. This improvement in food availability per person came about principally through greater average yields per hectare. World food production increased by one fourth between 1983 and 1993 but the area in arable land and permanent crops expanded by only 1 per cent (FAO, 1995). Moreover, these aggregate global data hide a number of different processes. In many places good agricultural lands were being appropriated for urban, infrastructural or industrial uses and degraded crop lands were being abandoned while other lands were being brought into farms, often at the expense of forests.
In a few developing countries with abundant natural resources, expansion of the cultivated area continued to play a significant role in providing increased food supplies. In most food deficit countries, however, growing food imports were the principal factor accounting for improved national level food supplies. In the Caribbean region, for example, most countries in 1990 were importing over half their food supplies. Food imports had been the principal source of their greater availability of food per capita in the early 1990s in comparison with 1970. Similarly, in sub-Saharan Africa the food consumption of nearly the whole of the fourfold increase in its rapidly growing urban population was met by higher food imports. This urban population had grown from 15 per cent of total population in 1960 to 30 per cent of over twice as large a total population in 1990. Several southern African countries in the early 1990s were importing from half to two thirds of their cereals. This was partly due to droughts and wars, but food import dependency for the region as a whole has been growing at an alarming rate.
If one considers 2,300 calories per capita per day to be the cut-off line for determining national food sufficiency, FAO's data indicate that four fifths of the population in developing countries lived in food deficient countries in 1970, while only about one fifth did in 1990. Most of this decrease in the numbers of people living in countries with insufficient food available nationally, however, was due to improved food supplies in just three countries -- China, India and Indonesia. These account for over 40 per cent of the total population in all developing countries. For these three countries, net food imports and the expansion of their cultivated areas were rather negligible factors in increasing food supplies. Most of their improvement in food availability came from increasing yields.
The undernourished proportion of their populations has also diminished significantly since the 1960s, especially in China. In each country the state actively intervened through trade, investment and macro-economic policies.8 Their political systems differed sharply, but all adopted policies to promote selective and rapid industrialization as well as to increase food production. Agrarian reform and rural development programmes had been crucial, especially in the early stages of industrialization, although they were of a different nature in each. The state also made or promoted large investments in health, education, research and rural infrastructure, as well as in programmes to provide better direct access to food for those with insufficient entitlements. Increased output by peasant farmers has been the main source of increased food supplies. The means of stimulating peasant production, however, differed greatly in response to unique historical circumstances, ideologies and the evolving capacities of the broader economy to provide needed goods and services in exchange for food.
As elsewhere in the world, these countries face increasingly obvious and obdurate problems of long-term sustainability of their food systems. Their relative success in increasing food supplies since the 1960s has to be explained primarily by interventionist policies by states, which also made skilful use of market incentives where feasible and consistent with their development goals. The state, in turn, had perceived the need for ongoing broad based popular support in order to maintain legitimacy.
A societal problem: Achieving and maintaining national level food sufficiency through domestic production, imports or a combination of both is a complex challenge in the modern world. All societies have been profoundly affected by trade, technologies and political relationships emanating from urban industrial centres at home and abroad. Increasing food sufficiency has to be an integral part of a country's overall development strategy and style. It cannot be successfully dealt with by treating it as if it were principally an agricultural or a rural development issue.
FAO's analyses suggest that constraints imposed by scarcity of suitable land and water for increased food production can be surmounted at reasonable costs, at least during the next few decades. This is true even taking into account population growth and higher average consumption per person. Achieving food sufficiency in these circumstances requires significant additional high quality investments together with policies and institutions supportive of sustainable development at all levels. More investment9 in the generation and transfer of improved sustainable technologies is particularly urgent. So, too, is investment in irrigation and other infrastructure, food processing, and in industries and services required to provide agricultural inputs as well as in research (FAO-Tech 3, 1995). Equally important are investments in social services and increased capacities to produce needed consumer goods locally or nationally. Land reforms are essential prerequisites in many countries, as are reforms in macro-economic and trade and pricing policies. In other words, the whole economy will have to become more productive, socially oriented and sustainable.
International discussions of the role of agriculture in sustainable development have to concentrate on those issues most directly related to the food sector; they cannot deal with all development problems in equal depth. Nonetheless, there should always be explicit recognition that achieving food security is not merely, or even principally, an agricultural problem. It is primarily one of social goals and organization in the broadest sense.
The autonomy or self-reliance dimension of food security tends to be downplayed in international discussions. Like love and liberty, autonomy and self-reliance are primarily qualitative concepts, which does not make them any the less important. These concepts deal basically with power relationships between countries and among social groups. (This is also true of the reliability and equity criteria with which they are closely interrelated. Access to food, however, can be both equitable and reliable in a prison colony or an army for example, without implying autonomy for its participants.) At national levels, autonomy means that nation states are not subject to the dictates of other nations, or of transnational organizations, in which they have no effective voice in determining the policies and rules affecting their food systems. Greater national food self-sufficiency can often contribute to increased autonomy, but it is only one factor among many.10
Food import dependency: Self-reliant autonomy implies considerable scope for deciding among meaningful alternative courses of action. Some countries highly dependent on food imports enjoy relative autonomy, such as the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Singapore, Japan or South Korea. This food system autonomy becomes precarious, however, in case of war or other collapse of dominant international financial and political norms. Others that are not very dependent on food imports, such as Guyana which was a net cereal exporter in the early 1990s, may have very little scope for autonomous policies. Their economies are very dependent on a few powerful countries and transnational corporations for finance, markets, capital goods, inputs, technology and consumer goods. The costs of adopting autonomous policies strongly opposed by these outside interests would be prohibitively high. Other countries, such as Cuba, Gambia and Côte d'Ivoire, export on average a far higher value of agricultural product than they import. They are still very import-dependent for food. Their exports of sugar, groundnuts, coffee, cocoa, cotton and other crops require the use of most of their good arable land and generate most of their import revenues. They do not assure food security because export markets and prices are volatile, while they have to import a high proportion of their population's food needs.
Many developing countries have very little scope for implementing autonomous self-reliant food policies, in part because they are heavily dependent on food imports. These imports are often financed by credits from developed exporting countries that add to their already burdensome foreign indebtedness. Such credits are frequently designed to open markets for continued high levels of commercial agricultural imports from the credit granting country.
Food aid: Many food imports, especially of cereals, arrive as official food aid, comprising loans and grants. To qualify as food aid, the grant component must comprise at least 25 per cent of the total. This component may, however, be greatly overestimated, as the food so given is valued at world prices which, in the case of many agricultural commodities, would decline if the surpluses disposed of through food aid were in fact to be placed on world markets. Food aid for genuine emergencies is often very necessary for humanitarian purposes. Also, food aid for well designed and implemented participatory initiatives, such as some food for work and similar programmes, can have a positive role stimulating more sustainable and self-reliant development. A few governments, such as that of India in the 1960s, were able to use food aid to build up more autonomous national food systems.
All too often, however, food aid increases dependency. Unless carefully administered by donors and recipients to increase longer-term food security, it can depress food prices in the receiving country, thus diminishing incentives for domestic producers. More importantly, it can dampen political pressures on recipient states to adopt the reforms and policies required to strengthen domestic food systems. Some multilateral donors, such as the World Food Programme (WFP), try to be very careful to minimize these dangers. To the extent possible, WFP purchases its food aid in the recipient and neighbouring developing countries. The WFP, however, has accounted for less than 10 per cent of all official food aid in recent years. Many donors have been much less careful, but the European Union has recently announced that it plans to adopt developmental norms similar to those of WFP for its food aid in the future.
Debt burdens and structural adjustment: The burden of large foreign debts has reduced the food system autonomy of many developing countries. This situation has been accentuated by very unfavourable terms-of-trade since the late 1970s for most commodity exporting countries. Both of these factors have deprived developing countries of much needed resources which otherwise could have been devoted to agricultural development. This has harmed the food autonomy of many countries where there was genuine political will to improve their food systems.
Dependency has been further increased by the kinds of structural adjustment programmes imposed on heavily indebted developing countries by many bilateral donors together with the World Bank and the IMF. These adjustment programmes have frequently had a deflationary impact leading to diminished output and rising unemployment. Theoretically, structural adjustment could contribute to long-term food security by diminishing hidden taxes on agriculture. The results in practice, however, have often been extremely harmful for small food producers and for low-income consumers. In reality, the burden of adjustment to unfavourable terms-of-trade and debt burdens has to be borne disproportionately by the urban and rural poor in developing countries. To improve food security would frequently require the cancellation of a major part of their foreign debts together with compensatory structural adjustments in creditor countries as well as in indebted ones.
Intellectual property rights: Food system autonomy in developing countries is in danger of being further eroded by the new protection given to intellectual property rights under the TRIPs Agreement negotiated as an integral part of the 1995 Uruguay Round and administered by the World Trade Organization (WTO). Among other things, the TRIPs agreement is likely to reinforce the trend towards reliance on patented seeds purchased from large seed companies, adding considerably to the costs of small farmers, who traditionally have relied on exchange of seeds within the local farming community. The TRIPs agreement is therefore likely to improve the prospects for profits of large corporations but can be detrimental for some small peasant producers as also for local diversity.11
Corporate bodies can now legally patent new technologies they develop involving living organisms and biotechnology is playing an ever greater role in agriculture in developed countries. Certain biotechnologies could potentially contribute to food security of the poor in developing countries. However, most research in biotechnology with applications for agriculture is carried out or financed by large corporations and primarily to the benefit of transnationals, other big commercial producers and high-income consumers. This is inimical both for autonomy and equity in access to food.
Agricultural science and related research: Most agricultural research in developing countries is carried out through national agricultural research systems. These vary greatly in their capacities for high quality research. Most are very under-equipped and underfunded. Agricultural research efforts in the South are inadequate for meeting developing countries' needs for improved innovative research in quest of greater food security.
Their efforts are, however, supplemented by the International Agricultural Research Centres that receive funding through the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) system amounting in the early 1990s to about US$ 270 million annually.12 The funding is primarily from the North and the agendas of these Centres may therefore reflect the perceptions and concerns of Northern donors and scientists. They are now faced with the prospect of declining funds even though they have recently embarked on an ambitious expanded programme.
How research priorities pertaining to food security issues are determined can be of crucial importance. They are frequently guided by the perceptions of funders and of research scientists. There are seldom effective participatory mechanisms enabling the concerns of self-provisioning small producers, landless labourers and low-income consumers to be taken into account. But their participation would be essential for research to realize its potential for improving food security.
The research situation in developing countries is particularly dramatic in respect to the new biotechnologies. Over 90 per cent of all research and development in this area is done in Northern rich countries. Some of the large private entities in the North involved in such research employ more highly specialized scientists, many of them from the South, than are employed in the entire developing world. Moreover, being privately owned, the results of their work are outside the public domain.
Nevertheless, a few developing countries have substantial and dynamic modern agricultural research systems, such as Argentina, Brazil, China, Cuba, India, Mexico and Thailand, although some have suffered from severe financial constraints in the 1980s. China, Cuba and India, where political decisions were made to devote substantial public resources to scientific research, have established impressive advanced research capacities in the field of biotechnology. Most poor countries have developed little research capacity.
Taken together, these factors suggest the need, and also important opportunities, for greater South-South co-operation in the generation and diffusion of food-security enhancing technologies. However, co-operation among developing countries in scientific research is frequently recommended, but it is difficult to achieve in practice. One reason is financial. Good research is often expensive, especially if it involves laboratories, modern scientific equipment and highly trained professionals. Moreover, even when laboratories and other equipment are available, there is often no infrastructure to service them or funds to operate them. There is a scarcity of trained scientists in most poor countries, yet many of the South's scientists go to seek employment and to improve their skills in the North. A scientist from the South seeking professional recognition must often publish in prestigious Northern journals. Also, there is a great deal of rivalry and mutual suspicion among researchers from different countries of the South, especially when they are competing for funds from the same Northern donors.
In the social sciences, research co-operation on issues related to food security shows a similar pattern. Here, however, greater co-operation among developing countries should be more feasible financially as most social science research can be relatively inexpensive. Universities, NGOs and other groups could direct more of their efforts towards analysing the institutional and policy obstacles that the poor face in attempting to improve their access to food. Social scientists in countries that have at least partially solved some of these problems could analyse how and why this happened and make their findings available in suitable forms for colleagues and others in countries facing similar problems.
Again, it will not be easy. Such social issues are often politically sensitive. This poses problems for co-operation among individuals and institutions. Land reform is a good example. Structural adjustment is another with its controversial recipes for trade liberalization, privatization, devaluation and the like. Politically sensitive environmental issues also deserve much more research attention by the South. As of now, much of such policy research is done or financed by institutions such as the World Bank, allowing the North to influence heavily the agenda and orientation of the research being done.
The need for greater South-South co-operation in agricultural research is obvious. How to achieve it is more problematic. It would require firm long-term political commitments and the dedication of substantial public resources to pursuing mutually agreed research priorities. In some cases, nation states would also have to overcome political rivalries that now inhibit close co-operation among their scientists.
In addition to directly strengthening the South's institutions such as the Third World Academy of Sciences, a complementary possibility would be for the countries of the South to use existing international organizations more effectively. A principal task of FAO, for example, should be to promote better co-operation among all countries, especially developing ones, in agricultural research of all kinds. UNESCO, UNIDO, UNCTAD, UNDP, the UNU, the regional commissions and other organizations in the United Nations system have similar missions. The South has an overwhelming voting majority in the policy-making bodies of all of these organizations. The Bretton Woods Institutions and the WTO are exceptions, as their governing bodies are clearly dominated by the North. If the South could work together effectively, it could shape the research agendas of the United Nations, its specialized agencies and even those of the agricultural research institutes under the CGIAR umbrella. This might imply sacrificing some of the already declining financial support from several rich countries, at least in the short run.
In any case, agricultural research provides no magic panacea to end poverty and hunger. At best, it can open up more opportunities for dealing with these issues. To realize the potentials provided by research, results would have to be suitably adapted to diverse users and situations and widely diffused. This would require policy and institutional contexts that encourage their adoption. Even then, the research findings would do little to diminish hunger unless the policy and institutional environment ensured that increased food production would primarily benefit the poor and hungry. As was seen earlier, there is already enough food available to assure food security for all and there is the potential for producing a great deal more using existing technologies only. That there is still widespread malnutrition and hunger is convincing evidence that the root problems are not merely technical but are primarily institutional and political.
Investment for greater food system autonomy: A recent FAO document recommends that most new direct investment in agriculture should be "private". It suggests that public investments should be limited to "public goods and services" and to those that "bring multiple benefits that cannot be privately appropriated" (FAO-Tech 3, 1995). This implies that in poor countries many investment projects requiring large financial resources would have to be financed from foreign sources, mostly foreign direct investment (FDI). In the absence of careful regulation, this could be detrimental for food system autonomy. Moreover, there is no acknowledgement of the conceptual and semantic difficulties in distinguishing between "public" and "private" investments in many situations, or for that matter between "investments" and "subsidies".
For example, small peasant producers are frequently unable to compete successfully with importers of cheap food produced abroad under much more favourable conditions that often include large public subsidies. Nor are they able to compete successfully in markets that are open to rich foreign and domestic investors coveting their lands and water to produce luxury foods for sale to high-income consumers at home and abroad. The impact on food security of declining support for small- and medium-scale farmers in Mexico, accompanying policies leading to the adoption of NAFTA, is instructive. Food production declined sharply and unemployment increased in many rural areas. Meanwhile, real wages fell and dependency on food imports grew dramatically.
FDI that is not matched to a recipient country's food security and other goals can be very damaging for large groups of its population as well as for its prospects for sustainable development. This is not to deny the need for more foreign investment in poor countries provided that it is carefully selected and regulated. Unless such investment is supportive of the recipient countries' development goals, it almost inevitably erodes national autonomy and self-reliance. Developing countries should become capable of screening proposed foreign investments in order to ensure that they meet minimum developmental criteria. Powerful transnational investors, however, can promote competition among poor recipient countries that are in desperate need of foreign exchange by favouring those that will offer the most attractive terms irrespective of social and environmental consequences. As a result, national standards are often dangerously lenient or ineffective. There is a growing need for international codes requiring foreign investors to meet at least minimum standards in all countries. Such rules, however, should be openly and democratically negotiated in fora in which poor countries and poor people have an influential voice. International codes proposed by rich country governments and transnational corporations are not likely to be designed or implemented primarily to benefit the poor.
Proposals have been made recently by the European Commission and by the OECD for a Multilateral Investment Agreement (MIA) that would provide foreign investors with free access to all countries, as well as treatment as if they were nationals of the receiving country. Such an agreement would be extended to developing countries by inviting them to join an OECD treaty or through a treaty negotiated within the WTO. Moreover, it would be enforceable. This could have serious negative implications for developing countries. It could be particularly harmful for countries seeking to increase their food security, as it would further diminish their autonomy. It could also contribute to weakened labour unions and to the erosion of wages in developed countries. The mere threat of relocation abroad is a powerful weapon used by employers to secure a docile labour force and to urge a more flexible labour market.
The need for an active state: Food security has seldom, if ever, been approached by relying principally on "free market forces". An autonomous national food system requires some degree of judicious protection and encouragement by the state. State interventions need not be at the expense of agriculture or of the poor as has sometimes happened in the past. Popularly-based state policies and institutions can reinforce food security by supporting politically and economically weak producers and consumers while encouraging more autonomous national economies. This is unlikely to happen if foreign-based investors, such as large transnational grain dealers, chemical companies, agricultural equipment suppliers and fast food chains, are granted all the rights and privileges of small national companies or peasant co-operatives in poor countries where they find it profitable to invest.
Free access to developing countries by foreign investors who would be treated as if they were nationals makes no political, social or economic sense for the poor. Why should free access be granted for international investors without reciprocal free access to rich country markets for developing countries' goods and services, including migration of their workers? Multilateral investment agreements in the form that they are now being proposed by some developed country governments could imply the atrophy of a poor nation state's developmental and social functions when there are no credible alternatives to take their place. Nothing could be more inimical for food security or for participatory democratic governance than a global political and economic system designed and enforced principally for the benefit of a few big transnational corporations be they "public" or "private" ones. The underlying conflict of interests between a hierarchical corporate world order and a participatory democratic one is a principal issue facing societies everywhere as the twentieth century draws to a close. The achievement of greater food system autonomy is an integral component of this broader issue.
A reliable food system continues to supply adequate food during seasonal and cyclical variations of climatic and socio-economic conditions. It is resilient enough to withstand the impact of exogenous shocks such as natural disasters or socially induced ones. Reliable access to food may be jeopardized by natural disasters such as droughts, and also by man-made ones such as armed conflicts, a sharp fall in commodity prices, big fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, loss of a major market or imposition of an economic embargo. Reliability is distinguished from sustainability mainly by the shorter time horizon being considered. The former deals with seasons, years and decades, while the latter has to consider impacts over longer periods.
Sources of reliable food supplies: At regional and national levels reliable food supplies depend on domestic food production, imports and access to food stocks. The relative importance of these three sources of food will, of course, vary greatly from one place and time to another.
Domestic food production is sensitive to climatic variation, especially rainfed agricultural production in semi-arid and sub-humid regions. Droughts lasting several years frequently recur but their timing cannot be accurately predicted. Year to year variation in food output can range up to nearly 100 per cent at local levels and by somewhat less nationally. Much can be done to minimize such high food production variability, but it cannot be eliminated. It can be reduced by better soil and water conservation practices, more irrigation, improved drought resistant crops and livestock, and better management. Nonetheless, many countries will have to resort to additional imports and to food stocks to meet deficits during bad years.
A country's capacity to import food when needed depends on its access to foreign exchange from exports, loans, grants, remittances and on foreign investments. Import capacity is also constrained by food prices and availability in world markets. For example, when cereals are plentiful globally, their prices tend to be low and reserves high. This usually facilitates access by deficit countries. When global grain reserves are low and prices high, as they were in 1972 and again in 1995, meeting national shortages through imports can become exceedingly difficult and expensive.
At the global level most food stocks disposable for export at short notice to meet emergencies are controlled by large private and public corporations. This gives major exporters such as the United States and the European Union the possibility of withholding food from particular countries and of subsidizing cheap exports to others. In other words, food can be used as a powerful weapon to advance political and commercial agendas.
The agreement on agricultural trade negotiated during the Uruguay Round of GATT is unlikely to change the situation very much for food deficit countries. The agreements in reality committed Northern countries only to rather minor reforms during the next five years and to promises for much deeper ones thereafter. To the extent that Northern exporters do reduce their agricultural subsidies and open their markets to agricultural imports from developing countries that compete with their own domestic producers, the prices of grain and some other products may increase slightly in world markets. This would make imports more costly for deficit countries. However, this may not be for long, as this trend could be counteracted by increased production in a few agricultural exporting countries in the South.
Both the IMF and the World Bank have "facilities" enabling countries whose food supplies are adversely affected for certain reasons beyond their control to draw on additional credits for food imports. Use of these facilities, however, implies many conditionalities and increased debt burdens. As a result, they tend to be little used.
FAO's recent document on food and international trade (FAO-Tech 8, 1996) presents rather optimistic scenarios on the implications of the Uruguay Round for food security. These are based on models presented at a World Bank conference. They indicate that the income effects of freer trade will be positive for most developing regions, although Africa and the Near East are negatively affected according to some scenarios. Higher incomes are assumed to result in greater food security. Pessimistic and possibly equally realistic analyses based on different assumptions were not seriously discussed.
The need for more co-operation on food reserves: All societies since the dawn of history have been preoccupied with maintaining sufficient food reserves to tide them over during bad periods when normal supplies diminished or were disrupted for some reason. Centrally controlled granaries helped bind ancient empires together, while small isolated communities in drought prone regions often held reserves to cover several years of consecutive shortfalls. FAO and the World Food Council have recommended that cereal stocks should be about 17 per cent of consumption. This figure is evidently based upon estimates of a worldwide pooling of risks and also the need for operational reserves. It apparently assumes that all countries would have access to global reserves in the case of serious emergencies. It says nothing about who controls the food reserves. In many countries, sizeable buffer stocks are accumulated not only for possible need in emergencies but also to stabilize prices for producers and consumers during relatively normal fluctuations in supply and demand. In any event, there is no a priori reason why the same proportion of consumption should be held in reserve in all countries regardless of the risks they face.
Dilemmas: Those responsible for articulating food policies in developing countries face several dilemmas with respect to holding food reserves. Most food stocks disposable at short notice to meet emergencies are controlled by large exporters in a few important food exporting countries of the North, especially in the United States and the European Union. The possibility of withholding food exports to particular countries that may need them urgently, and of subsidizing cheap exports to others, provides major food-exporting states with a powerful political weapon, as was mentioned earlier. They occasionally use it to advance their own political and trade agendas abroad, as well as to appease powerful support groups at home, such as their farm lobbies and agro-industries. Governments of developing countries have to take these political risks into account.
Moreover, world commodity prices including those of staple foods fluctuate widely. These world food price fluctuations are principally in response to the trade, fiscal and monetary policies of large exporting or importing countries, to recessions and booms affecting the world economy and to threats of war or political instability on a scale that could have serious impacts on food production, trade and consumption. As noted earlier, most international trade in food commodities is highly managed by governments and transnational corporations. Natural disasters such as droughts and floods affecting food supplies also present serious dangers for food availability in many countries, especially the small least developed ones. Climatic risks, however, tend to offset one another in large countries or regions that include several countries and especially on a global scale. These constitute major arguments for developing countries to supplement minimal local and national food reserves with regional and interregional ones that they can control themselves.
The reasons for supplementing local and national stocks with regional and interregional ones are multiple. One of the most important ones is that the costs of holding reserves in storage increase sharply according to the extent they represent a bigger share of annual consumption. This is because the likelihood of a major part of the stored food being needed decreases, the bigger the stock is in relation to annual consumption. Meanwhile, costs accrue for unused stocks due to spoilage, maintenance requirements and compound interest on the capital invested. For these reasons, the cumulative costs of storing the last ton of grain of a reserve that is 40 per cent of annual consumption may be six times higher than that for a stock of only 5 per cent of consumption (World Bank, 1986). This reinforces the argument for pooling risks as widely as possible in order to minimize the prudent reserves needed per capita.
The obstacles to such regional and international co-operation are mainly political. Developing countries face many difficulties in establishing and financing equitable regional and interregional institutions such as those required to enable all to have reliable access to available food through trade and storage. If it were not for the political, financial and other obstacles to secure access by poor countries to food stocks held by rich exporters, the global pooling of risks would be more attractive than would national or regional reserves. In practice, this seems beyond reach in a world where trade embargoes and ruthless competition for agricultural markets are common in international relations.
Reserves for those who need them: Those who have faith in the neoliberal approach to economic policies often suggest that the best course would be for governments not to intervene in agricultural markets, except perhaps for holding some minimal reserves to meet emergencies quickly. According to this view, market forces reinforced by trading in futures would be sufficient to assure adequate food reserves to cover most risks. They are particularly critical of publicly financed buffer stocks and other subsidies that "distort" prices by preventing them from reflecting the market's perceptions of "real" supply and demand prospects. Such views are utopian and ahistorical. Governments everywhere have found it imperative to intervene in agricultural markets in one way or another. Moreover, there is no way for market forces to express adequately the food security needs of low-income consumers and producers.
There is a strong case, therefore, for neighbouring poor countries to hold regional reserves jointly and to complement these regional stocks with interregional ones. The practical obstacles, however, are formidable. In many developing countries the state is weak, fragmented, deeply indebted and forced to reduce public expenditures drastically under structural adjustment policies. Many developing countries may be unable to obtain and administer effectively even small national reserves. There are often rivalries between neighbouring states that hinder co-operation. In addition, states may be competing with each other for export markets in the North and for subsidized imports or "food aid". For example, studies in connection with the nine SADCC (Southern African Development Coordination Conference) countries in the late 1980s suggested substantial potential gains could be made from co-operation in cereal market stabilization. Nonetheless, little progress was made along these lines during this regional organization's first decade. The same has happened with similar proposals in other regions. The creation of interregional stocks poses additional difficult issues.
The risks of serious crop failures due to climatic and other disasters are much less for multi-country regions than for individual small states. Prudent food reserves democratically controlled by the countries of the South, in addition to preferential access by those confronting shortages to food and the requisites for producing it, could contribute to their food security. The most difficult problem would be creating viable political structures for financing, administering and disposing of such reserves. Nevertheless, there are many compelling reasons why governments of developing countries wanting to improve the reliability of their food supplies should study seriously mechanisms for building up food reserves that they would mutually control and to which all have due access in times of need.
Other threats to reliable food supplies: Violent political conflict remains a principal threat to the reliability of food systems in several developing countries. Faced with the continual incapacity of individual national states and of the international community to prevent armed conflict both within and between countries, a second-best alternative is usually to try to relieve the hunger they provoke with emergency food aid. Increasing food reserves for this purpose is imperative. So too is the administration of emergency aid by competent and politically impartial institutions such as the WFP and some NGOs.
Other factors threatening food system reliability are emerging. Some of these, such as climate change, desertification, water scarcity and loss of biodiversity, primarily affect long-term sustainability. Others may be more immediate in their impact. Intensive and indiscriminate use in developing countries of certain hazardous herbicides, pesticides and the like, many of which are banned in their country of origin, frequently endangers those exposed directly or indirectly. It also may stimulate new resistant strains of insects and other pathogens that could drastically reduce food supplies in some circumstances. Moreover, foods often become contaminated in one way or another. Safety and sanitary standards applying to international trade of hazardous substances and of foodstuffs is another issue that should receive more attention nationally and internationally. The recent "mad cow" scare in Europe could be a harbinger of much worse to come. Rich countries can set and enforce rigorous sanitary and safety standards for food imports. Poor countries are seldom in a position to do so.
The reliability of food supplies globally and nationally seems well within reach if appropriate policies could be adopted. This would require several very contentious political decisions. Reliable access to food at the household level implies even more difficult policy and institutional reforms. In all of today's so-called developed countries the state has had to intervene actively to protect its food producers and consumers from big price fluctuations and from exploitation in very imperfect markets. It has also had to support small farmers through public investment in infrastructure, cheap credit, education, tax incentives, research and extension services. Low-income consumers have also required income support or other food entitlements provided by the state or with its help. Some of these issues are discussed further below when dealing with equity.
How to assure that every social group and individual has access to adequate food at all times is the central issue for any discussion of food security. As there are apparently ample food supplies available to meet this goal now and in the foreseeable future, the fundamental problem is clearly one of very inequitable distribution. Otherwise a billion people would not be suffering from hunger.
Diverse degrees of inequity: As noted in the introduction, the available data on the prevalence of hunger are very crude estimates at best. There are good reasons to suspect that FAO's estimates of the numbers of undernourished people in developing countries may understate the problem, especially in some regions such as Latin America and the Caribbean. Much depends on definitions and methodology. In its documentation for the 1996 Food Summit, FAO estimated 64 million undernourished in the Latin American and Caribbean region in 1990-1992, which would be about 14 per cent of its total population (FAO,1996c). FAO defines an undernourished person as one with access to fewer food calories than 1.55 times those required for his or her "basic metabolic rate" (BMR). The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), on the other hand, estimated that 22 per cent (94 million people) in the region's 19 larger countries were indigent in the sense that their household incomes from all sources were below the value of country specific minimum food budgets sufficient to nourish family members (Altimir, 1994). If the 10 small countries omitted from the ECLAC study were included, the number of indigent who, by definition, were undernourished would be almost double FAO's estimate. Of course, the concepts and methodologies are not the same, but they are similar. Anthropometric data can be found that would be consistent with either estimate. Similar uncertainties prevail for other regions as many developing countries have rather rudimentary statistical systems.
Ironically, several countries with relatively high levels of income and of food available per person nationally also have relatively high proportions of undernourished people. Mexico, Brazil and South Africa are good examples. On the other hand, a few countries with much lower incomes have relatively low levels of hunger and undernutrition. Examples include Cuba (where food availability and income fell by one third after 1990, but serious undernutrition has not greatly increased), Sri Lanka, China and the state of Kerala in India. This indicates that there are large inter-country differences in levels of equity with regard to access to available food, after controlling for income levels and national food availability. These differences have to be attributed principally to institutions and public policies that have given a high priority to an equitable distribution of available food in those low-income countries with little serious hunger, and that failed to do so in several richer countries where malnutrition was widespread.
Need for agrarian reform: Hundreds of millions of the rural poor have inadequate access to land and other resources required for self-provisioning and production for sale, nor do they have access to alternative sources of livelihood. Improved access to land and other agrarian resources and services or to alternative sources of livelihood by the rural poor is crucial for their food security. In predominantly agrarian countries the biggest determinant of rural poverty is the terms of access rural people have to land, water and other prerequisites for production.
Where land ownership is highly concentrated in the hands of a small élite, many rural residents who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, such as smallholders, tenants, squatters and landless workers, have inadequate food. The concentration of control of land and water in a few hands was usually accompanied historically by the use of forced labour on large estates dedicated to commercial production for export or domestic markets. Legal, social and economic institutions evolved in these societies to support repressive agrarian structures. Such "bi-modal" agrarian systems were most prevalent in Latin America, Southern Africa, a few other African regions, and in parts of some former European colonies in Asia such as the Philippines. Profound agrarian reforms to redistribute large estates to rural workers and small producers with insufficient land continue to be a prerequisite for greater equity in access to food by rural people in many countries. Guatemala, Brazil, South Africa and the Philippines are examples.
In much of sub-Saharan Africa customary land tenure systems are still vigorous and widespread. In many places there is a need for providing more secure and clear rights for customary users. Also, in some circumstances rural people will have to regain access to some of the land and water resources that have been alienated from customary users. Their land and other natural resources have often been appropriated with little or no compensation by large estate owners, business enterprises, speculators or the state. Their lands were taken to be used for commercial developments such as mines, agro-export production, reservoirs, urban uses, or for extensive game and environmental reserves. In situations where customary tenure systems are still prevalent, land reform often implies effective recognition of customary rights to land and water together with appropriate safeguards to prevent monopolization by élites or outsiders and to protect fragile ecosystems.
Clientelistic small cultivator agrarian systems predominated in most of South and East Asia. In many of these countries, such as China, Vietnam and the Koreas, large landlords were eliminated by agrarian reforms but in others they have persisted with many variations and modifications. In such countries agrarian reform has to be an on-going process by which small producers and landless rural workers gain increasing control over the resources and institutions upon which their livelihoods depend, thus leading to greater autonomy and equity.
In many Latin American, African and Asian countries, landless and nearly landless rural people comprise a vast majority of the rural population. They are also the social groups most vulnerable to hunger. Rural undernutrition in all regions, including Latin America and the Caribbean that is already highly urbanized, is greater than in urban areas both proportionally and in absolute numbers. FAO's estimate of 30 million landless rural people and 138 million "near landless" in developing countries is wide off the mark. (FAO-Tech 5, para. 5.11, 1995.) According to IFAD, in the mid-1980s, there were some 180 million rural landless in India alone, while Brazil had 8 million, Pakistan 24 million, the Philippines 12 million, and there were over 324 million in only 64 developing countries (Jazairy et al., 1992). These estimates exclude the "near landless" who in most countries far outnumber the landless. The IFAD data are also questionable, but they are much closer to reality as revealed by many careful studies including several by FAO itself.
Land reforms in some situations can result in adequate access to resources for self-provisioning and a marketable surplus for a large portion of the rural landless and near landless. In others they cannot because there are not enough land and water resources available, even if large holdings were to be redistributed. Moreover, to the extent that large estates have evolved to become highly capitalized, well integrated and profitable, their subdivision becomes increasingly difficult without leading to serious short- and medium-term losses in production. For rural poverty to be relieved in these situations, there has to be a better distribution of income and social services to the benefit of rural workers, tenants and smallholders. This implies that the large commercial estates have to be transformed into worker managed co-operatives or that incomes have to be much more widely distributed through progressive taxes, collective bargaining, higher wages, better social services and other means. Also, in labour surplus situations, there needs to be a shift towards more employment generating production systems, including rural industries and other non-farm activities. These initiatives would frequently have to be complemented by migration to urban jobs, assuming that they exist.
Agrarian reform implies much more than the redistribution of rights to land and water. Low-income rural people have to gain better access to credit, markets, appropriate technologies, productive employment, education and health services, as well as to other basic necessities. This means that the mobilization and autonomous organization of peasants, workers and other low-income groups with convergent interests are usually necessary. Otherwise, the rural poor are unlikely to be recognized by élites and by the state as important social actors whose support is crucial for legitimate governance. Without a broad based social consensus about the need to alleviate poverty and hunger, there is little prospect for bringing this about.
Recent FAO and World Bank documents suggest that where land reform is necessary it should be "market friendly".13 If this means recognizing the importance of market incentives, there is no problem. Reading carefully, however, it apparently is interpreted by FAO to mean providing "legal" land titles and stimulating rural land markets. This depends on the circumstances in each country. In many situations, especially where there are few alternative sources of livelihoods for rural people, granting individual land titles and making land marketable for investors and speculators can create situations in which peasants can be easily deprived of their land thus leading to worsening food security.14 Frequently peasants soon sell the land out of desperation to clear debts. Moreover, where land was previously used by many users for different purposes, such privatization through granting of individual land titles excludes them from many basic services or products.
Food for the urban poor: Equity issues are equally crucial for improving the food security of the urban poor whose numbers are growing rapidly. In cities there is usually far less possibility of direct redistribution of productive assets for improved self-provisioning by the poor than in rural ones. The problem usually has to be approached through better and more equitable access to remunerative employment, to social services and the like. Public resources in support of such goals have to be greatly increased.
This requires the autonomous organization and effective participation of those who do not have enough food in the design and implementation of such programmes. Frequently it will be necessary to provide direct food entitlements through state supported fair price shops, food stamps, food or income for work on public investment projects, special feeding programmes, food rationing and other such means.
Compensatory programmes to relieve hunger have often been more feasible administratively and politically in urban areas than in rural ones. The urban poor tend to be more vocal, to be better organized and to pose a greater threat to political stability if they lack food than do the poor in rural areas. Moreover, the urban poor are more easily reached by state programmes providing food or income supplements.
The need for state and international support: Such programmes providing food or income supplements in both rural and urban areas imply the need for supportive policies and institutions nationally. There have to be popularly-based national development strategies aimed at meeting the needs and legitimate aspirations of the poor. This is unlikely to happen unless the state depends crucially on these groups' support and participation. An effective progressive tax system and a high priority given to social programmes to improve health and education for low-income people are essential. So too are other policies encouraging broad based sustainable development.
As was seen above, many of the structural adjustment programmes promoted by international organizations since the early 1980s have been incompatible with food security goals. Instead, they have often led to economic contraction, increased inequality and worsening poverty. The same is true of several other international programmes carried out in poor countries in the name of development. National efforts to improve food security will often have to be encouraged by a more supportive international environment. This will be discussed in more detail later.
The notion that market forces can eliminate hunger with minimal state intervention, other than providing a stable legal framework together with macro-economic policies that encourage free trade and private investment, is utopian. The state has to play a leading role in economic and social development. To do this it has to count on the support of the social groups that face food insecurity. It also requires the support of other better-off groups who recognize that continued widespread hunger and other concomitants of serious poverty would be intolerable for minimally acceptable social cohesion and hence for their own longer-term self-interest. Support from those who simply find hunger to be morally repugnant is also important. International declarations on food security usually neglect these broader political economy issues that have to be faced in order for there to be any possibility of approaching their declared goals.
Economic growth supported by trade and investment is essential, especially for low-income countries. But such growth has to be directed towards social goals and the eventual strategic and self-reliant integration of national economies in world markets. If it is not, it can generate increased food insecurity for much of the population in developing countries, as it frequently has in the past. Moreover, such growth would not be sustainable.
Sustainable development implies that current generations should meet their own needs without compromising the capacity of future generations to do the same. Like other general principles accepted by groups with conflicting interests and perceptions, this one is subject to divergent interpretations. In any case, with one fifth of humanity now living in dire poverty and many more in situations of great physical insecurity, the needs of present generations are not now being met. The pattern of development that is taking place is not socially sustainable by definition. A high immediate priority for more sustainable development is to provide universal food security.
Growth versus development: In discussing sustainable food security, the distinction between economic growth, as conventionally measured, on the one hand, and development, on the other, is important to keep in mind. The former implies an ever increasing quantitative incorporation and throughput of physical resources as well as some qualitative changes in what is produced and how it is produced. The economy, however, is an open sub-system of the Earth's materially closed, finite and non-growing ecosystem with a limited throughput of solar energy. Unlimited quantitative economic growth forever is simply impossible. It is a contradiction in terms. To the extent quantitative growth proceeds beyond a certain scale it becomes malignant by definition. Development, on the other hand, implies a society reaching its full potential both quantitatively and qualitatively. Qualitative development can proceed parallel to quantitative growth, but it can also continue long after the optimum physical limits to growth have been reached.
Limits to growth: This has important implications for agricultural modernization and sustainable access to adequate food. According to some specialists, optimum physical throughput in agriculture and the rest of the economy may already have been surpassed in a few highly industrialized countries because of pollution and a variety of other environmental constraints. Continued quantitative growth in these countries is only possible because of their capacity to import large volumes of necessary inputs such as feed stuffs, raw materials and fossil fuels, and to export huge quantities of goods and services together with polluted water, air and solid wastes, so that the negative externalities are borne largely by residents of other countries. If negative externalities had to be internalized, based on the "polluter pays" principle, physical limits to growth may already have been reached in some industrial regions. Great uncertainties surround all speculation about long-term sustainability.
Even without population growth, world resource flows would have to increase tremendously, probably by well over seven times, for per capita world resource consumption to approach that in the United States. It is neither reasonable nor politically realistic to expect poor people in poor countries to sacrifice essential economic growth in order for the rich to continue to enjoy their wealth and to become richer. The meaning and content of development will have to change in practice, especially in "developed" countries, if worsening social chaos on a world scale is to be averted.
Root causes of non-sustainability: Much of the literature concerning sustainability suggests that the poor in developing countries are responsible for a large share of current environmental degradation such as desertification and deforestation. This is fallacious because it blames these victims of the style of development that is taking place for the environmental degradation processes generated by this same style of development. The problem is a systemic one associated with the widening income gap between the rich and the poor, as well as with the wasteful production and consumption patterns already dominant in the North and rapidly spreading in the South.
The rural poor do not destroy forests or overcultivate eroding hillsides out of ignorance, carelessness or malevolence but because they have no alternative. Their customary sources of livelihoods have for the most part been appropriated for commercial exploitation or enjoyment by other more powerful users. The urban poor do not eke out livings in polluted ghettos by choice. The corporate interests of industrial and industrializing societies have left them dispossessed. These same interests also often directly generate or stimulate most ecological degradation. How to reconstruct social arrangements in ways that provide everyone with meaningful roles in which they can develop their innate capacities without destroying the environment or their neighbours is the issue.
Towards more sustainable national food systems: FAO and many other international organizations have made several constructive suggestions about water use and conservation in agriculture, and the development and diffusion of more environmentally friendly technologies such as integrated pest management and integrated plant nutrition systems (e.g. FAO-Tech 2, 1995; FAO-Tech 3, 1995; FAO-Tech 6, 1995). They also call attention to the hazards related to climate change stimulated by human activities, of atmospheric ozone depletion, deforestation, rising sea-levels, desertification, loss of biodiversity and overfishing. In general, however, they fail to confront the fact that continuous economic growth as conventionally measured is not sustainable. Most environmental damage results from production and consumption patterns that primarily benefit the rich.
Production and consumption patterns are inextricably interrelated. To an important degree what is available and affordable determines what is consumed. Agro-industries already dominate developed country food production and distribution, while the transnationals are rapidly expanding their markets in developing countries. Fast food outlets for soft drinks, pizzas, hamburgers, fried chicken and the like, are now found in urban centres almost everywhere. Such food is often "cheap" and accessible for middle- and some low-income consumers. It is also often unhealthy and of low nutritional value. It is usually both highly energy and import intensive in its production, processing, transport, packaging and distribution. The demand these agro-industries generate both at home and abroad profoundly affect cropping patterns in developing countries in unsustainable directions. This is an issue requiring urgent attention in both developed and developing countries as well as at the international level.
Trying to achieve universal food security supported by sustainable agriculture requires profound reforms in the patterns of production and consumption now associated with modernization. The recent World Food Summit's plan of action, for example, neglected many of these underlying issues or mentioned them only superficially. Instead it emphasized the treatment of several of the symptoms of a basically unsustainable style of development. This is necessary but not sufficient. The plan of action includes long lists of good intentions. These are interspersed with recommendations, some of which could often be inimical to improved food security. For example, it recommends the implementation by WTO members of "market access commitments to efficient food and agricultural processors, including those of developing countries". This can be interpreted as a suggestion that developed countries should reduce their trade barriers obstructing agricultural imports from developing ones. Nonetheless, this policy recommendation could also commit developing countries to open their markets to practically free access by the transnationals. This could be very prejudicial for sustainable food security in many situations.
Sustainability in developing countries implies popularly-based and participatory development strategies. Among other things, these would encourage accountable and democratic local institutions as well as national ones. Good government and good education are always fundamental. There would have to be effective progressive tax systems to finance needed investments in health, education, employment generation, infrastructure, research, training and direct food entitlements for those who still have inadequate diets.
Social and environmental sustainability should be a central concern of the state. Nation states and the international organizations they have created should endeavour to make market forces the servants of social and environmental goals.
The attainment of social and environmental sustainability would also suggest that agrarian reform should have high priority in many countries. In these, and also in others where this is no longer a big issue, there would need to be a mix of policies and institutions serving small producers and helping to protect rural workers. Meaningful and enforceable social and environmental impact assessments would have to become mandatory for all large investment projects regardless of who finances them. Polluters should usually be required to bear the costs of the externalities they generate. Many schemes involving tradeable emissions rights, for example, would allow polluters to avoid these costs and would be prejudicial to the interests of poor countries attempting to raise their living standards. All too often the quest for short-term profits by national and transnational agencies and corporations is pursued at the expense of other social groups and of the ecosystems that, in the long run, sustain society. There has to be a democratic and effective regulatory framework at all levels.
7 FAO cites anthropometric data from the WHO data base suggesting that in 1990 nearly 39 per cent of children in "inter-tropical" (sub-Saharan) Africa were stunted and 30 per cent were underweight, while the corresponding proportions of stunted and underweight children in South Asia were much higher being 60 per cent and 58 per cent (FAO-Tech 9, 1996). This seems inconsistent with the 12 per cent lower per capita food availability estimated for Africa. Of course, a great many alternative explanations can be advanced such as parasites, infectious diseases, genetic differences and differences in the degree to which available food was equitably shared. One suspects, however, that inadequate data concerning food supplies, demographies and child development may be a major explanation of this apparent discrepancy.
8 The development strategies in these countries during the past four decades shifted from initial emphasis principally on self-reliance to include policies later aimed at promoting international competetiveness of industries perceived to promise dynamic comparative advantages in world markets. While many observers treat these changes in emphasis from import substitution to strategic integration into the world economy as alternatives, others believe it more realistic to view them as different stages in processes of national development.
9 FAO's definition of investment "in the broadest possible sense of consumption foregone for the sake of future gain" is misleadingly restrictive in its background document on investment (FAO-Tech 3, 1995). The authors apparently did not accept, or understand, Keynes' analysis that showed over six decades ago why, in many situations, investment does not necessarily imply foregone consumption at macro-economic levels. This is equally true for many investments at community and family levels. A peasant family, for example, may often devote efforts towards improving its land and other resources for future benefits with no sacrifice of current consumption except possibly of unwanted leisure.
10 Attainment of food self-sufficiency at the expense of access to markets and modern technology can sometimes reduce autonomy in the longer run. For example, a state that pursues a strategy of producing all or nearly all its own food disregarding the real costs and the potential gains from selective international trade may find that it has neither the financial resources nor access to the technologies required for integrated and sustainable development. On the other hand, importing food that could be economically produced with domestic human and natural resources that would otherwise be underemployed is in many circumstances the equivalent of importing unemployment in order to enable élite minorities to reap greater private profits.
11 For example, an effective new vaccine developed through biotechnology can protect farmed shrimp against vibrosis which is one of the most devastating bacteria attacking shrimp cultivated by means of intensive technologies. However, owing to the relatively high cost, only highly capitalized commercial producers can avail themselves of the vaccine. Their output is mainly sold for consumption in high-income countries. Meanwhile, many customary users -- mostly low-income peasant farmers and fisherfolk -- of the mangrove swamps, land and water resources, which have been appropriated by others for cultivated shrimp production, have lost their sources of livelihood.
12 Commercial farmers, food processing companies and consumers in the North have been among the biggest beneficiaries of the CGIAR agricultural research in the South (The Ecologist, 1996).
13 The World Food Summit's provisional draft Policy Statement and Plan of Action failed to mention agrarian reform. This 27-page document included only a vague sentence concerning the need for improving access to land and to other natural resource as well as for tenancy reform; another brief phrase much later calls for "secure rights to resources for food production" (FAO, 1996b). The final document, however, gives much more prominence to agrarian reform issues reflecting inputs from some Southern governments and NGOs. The final document also included strengthened commitments to free trade and privatization reflecting pressures from Northern interests.
14 Also, cadastrals and other costs associated with land titling in regions where climatic and similar constraints sharply limit land productivity, and where different users overlap in the same areas, may far exceed any potential benefits in the foreseeable future. "Market friendly land reforms" frequently imply little more than rural real-estate transactions providing a few of the landless and near landless with credits to obtain initial access to land and some purchased inputs. In a context of very unequal social relations they almost inevitably benefit those groups with considerable economic and political power at the expense of the rural poor.