Page 4 RAIN February/March i 978 . . "INTRODUCTION OF 'ANY PROFITABLE I TECHNOLOGY INTO A SOCIETY RIDDLED WITH INEQUALITIES OF POWER DISASTROUSLY WORSENS·THE CONDITION~ OF THE -LESS POWERFUL MAJORITY." Food First, Frances ~oore ~ppe and Joseph Collins, 1977, $10.9S froni: Institute for'Food Development Policy • ,2S88 Missio.n Street San Francisco, CA 94110 READ THIS BOOK! Back in October we reprinted Lappe and Colltns' Beyond the Myth ?f Scarcity from their new magazine, Food Monitor. It was clear they were o~ to something important. Their book, Food First, had just arrived, but we hadn't.time to read it, so ran th(! article an4 put off reviewing the book until ·we had time to digest it. We've read it now, and it's dynamite! They show that neither shortage of land nor offood is the cause of current world hunger. There is no shortage of either. Every country has the capability to feed itself The real problem lies in who controls the use of those resources. It's the governments forcing the growing of cash crops instead of food to pay taxes to support an urban elite, the expropriation of agricultural land for corporate or elite-controlled planta- · tions producing luxury food or non-food crops for export, and corporate control of the food processing system. It's the control of essential resources by those who cannot view them as sources of real food for real needs but only in monetary terms-as sources of wealth thar can be expropriated and used to further their own economic gain. . Food First goes on to detail the effects of the Gr~en Revolution on subsidizing rich farmers and impoverishing the rest, how foreign trade exploits both the farmer and consumer, the U.S. governmentlagribusi~ess manipulation offood supplies and prices, the exploitive effects of cdrporate activities in the food system and much more! More importantly, it/ays out both the f?rinciples necessary for food self-reliance and specific actions that can and need to be taken. The'real impact of the book, though, goes far beyond its -major break~hrough in understanding the real root causes of world hunger and how to deal with them. The machinations they've tincovered in the food system are the same o.nes at work in the rest of our economic system and the principles underlying our food system are the same underlying the. rest of our economy.· The exploitation behind world hunger is the same as that behind rich country/poor country relationships, urban exploitation of small towns and rural areas, and poverty in our cities and villages. Its insights need to be expanded and applied to the whqle realm of our "economic 11 system. At root, Food First shows what can be gained by examining problems in their social context rather than as merely technical questions. -TB Food First Most people believe there is just not enough food to go around. Yet, despite the tremendous wastage of land-which we will document-and the "food.crisis" of the 1970s, the world is producing .each day two pounds of grain, or more than 3000 - calories, for every man, woman and child on earth. 3000 calories is about what the average American consumes. And this estimate is minimal. It does not inclu~e-the many other staples such as beans, potatqes, cassava, range-fed meat, much -less fresh fruits and vegetables. Tlius, on a global scale the idea that there is not enough food to go around just does..not hold up. Moreover, we have found "acre-to-person" comparisons to be poor measures of food scarcity. To many, the size of a plot of land is obviously the most important determinant of how many people it can feed. We have had to learn, however, that much more important than size are four other factors.: First, the level of human investments made to improve productivity. As demographer D~. Helen Ware notes, "soil fertility is not a gift of nature·, determined once and for all, but dependent upon man's u·sage of the land." Most people associate the intensive use of the land with the loss 'of soil fertility, but, as Dr. Ware underscores, "fert,ility may indeed be the result of intensive methods of land utilization ..." The croplands of Japan were once inferior to those of northern India; today Japan's foodgrain yield per acre is five times that of India. , The original soils of Western Europe, with the exception of the Po Valley and parts of France, were, in general, once of .very poor quality yet today they are highly fertile. Centuries ago the soils of F,iniand were less productive than most of the nearby parts of Russia; today the Finnish croplands are far • sµperior. Thus using an acre as a fixed unit by which to measure the degree of overpopulation is not helpful. Depending on the human investments .made, an acre might be capabl~ of fe~ding five people or one-or none at all. Second, how many people an acre can feed depends on whether the land is used to feed people directly or to feed livestock. In the Andean region of South America and in the Caribbean nearly four times as much land is used for _extensive grazing of cattle as is devoted to ci;ops. Cattle ranches often occupy,thd relatively flat land of the river valleys and coastal
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