THE FOOD "SURPLUS":
A Staple Illusion of Economics; A Cruel Illusion for Populations
By David F. Durham and Jim C. Fandrem
Abstract: Disjunction market surpluses of food
and worldwide nutritional shortfalls appears to be symptomatic of
underlying vulnerabilities, raising questions about the
sustainability of agricultural production.
When is "surplus" less than plenty? How is it true
that, "Due to advances in agriculture of many countries,
there is now a substantial world surplus of food" (Abelson,
1987) while at the same time more people than ever before are
undernourished or malnourished (Chandler, 1985; Wortman, 1980)?
"Surplus" in the sense that buyers do not exhaust
supply at any price acceptable to sellers is standard usage in
economics. With food, the term denotes that a few countries have
become net exporters of certain food-stuffs around which there is
intense sales competition on the world market. While this is an
important consideration for American agriculture, which produces
many of those foodstuffs and competes on the world market, it
says nothing about whether the world's growing human population
can be adequately fed by any likely increases in food production.
Used in connection with world population, world carrying
capacity, or sustainable production, "food surplus" is
misleading or worse. Unfortunately, the erroneous connection is
widely made (see Abelson, 1987).
Only from the producers' point of view is there surplus. From
many potential consumers' standpoint there is shortage. Some go
hungry even in countries that are net exporters of food (Poleman,
1975). There is surplus largely because millions of malnourished
persons do not have the financial wherewithal to create an
economic demand sufficient to acquire a nutritionally adequate
share (Street et al., 1980; Wortman, 1980). For example in India,
a Green Revolution "success" story, the National
Institute of Nutrition estimated that as many as 50% of rural
households and 55% of urban slum households do not have enough
food to meet daily energy requirements (India's Farmers, 1988).
The real costs associated with producing the market surplus
suggest that far more than a distributional problem is involved.
"New and better crop varieties" are cited as the most
important factor in the increase in world food supplies (Abelson,
1987). Yet these new strains require expensive and nonrenewable
resource impute. Besides being expensive to produce, the new
varieties have themselves contributed to poverty and malnutrition
in third world populations through changing labor and landholding
patterns. Finally, yields may not be sustainable, and the crop
monoculture associated with new varieties is not without risk.
The introduced crops and accompanying technology may
destabilize countries because they are most successfully adopted
by wealthier landholders and tend to widen the gap between rich
and poor agriculturalists. Large aggregations of land are
required for efficient mechanization, and the new grain varieties
depend upon expensive petroleum-based inputs that only wealthier
farmers can afford. The cost of fertilizer, pest control agents,
and fuel for irrigation systems and other farm machinery
ultimately depend on world oil prices (Wade, 1973; 1974b). (Coal
is not foreseeably substitutable for most agricultural uses of
oil, so significantly higher prices will reflect the shrinkage of
oil reserves that will almost certainly become apparent within
the next decade (Gever et al., 1986).)
The initially greater return from the new crop varieties tends
to drive small producers of vegetables and other traditional
foodstuffs off the land. Peasants, become landless, no longer can
practice subsistence agriculture, and their cash earnings as
agricultural labor barely support a family in good times; in
years of natural calamity, such as drought, jobs vanish and food
prices rise beyond reach of this sector of the populace (Poleman,
1975; Street et al., 1980; Wade, 1973; 1974b).
Once large agricultural units are established, it is usually
more profitable to concentrate on a few crops that lend
themselves to export. Especially when these are produced close to
markets, which is to say, close to more urbanized areas, export
crops are highly visible and contribute to the misconception that
there is abundance in the hinterland.
The fact of such exports does not signify that there is
surplus food from a nutritional perspective Evade, 1974b).
Indeed, the reverse may well be true; foodstuffs for local
consumption may not at all be adequate for the population
involved. The production of traditional food that formerly was
sold locally is often reduced or disappears as foreign
exchange-earning crops replace subsistence agriculture (Curtin,
1985). Moreover, and even if the local populace could afford to
buy it, the export crop is probably less nutritious as a single,
dietary staple than the mix grown on the traditional subsistence
farm Wade, 1974c). Thus, it is somewhat misleading to imply that
new strains have raised world farm productivity in general, or
that the surplus is available to or constitutes adequate
nutrition for the local population of the producing country.
Bifurcation of the society into a more modernized economy
centered around major cities and ports, and collapsing, backward
rural areas is a further consequence of concentration on the
export sector. The disparity in land values between urban
periphery and hinterland is exaggerated by often-poor rural
distributional systems. Differential access to health care,
educational facilities, and jobs is compounded by high fertility
and promotes rural to urban migration at rates higher than the
economy can absorb. Once collected in politically-sensitive
population centers, unemployment and poverty generate pressure to
further increase production (Eckholm, 1975; Wade, 1974b).
Bringing more land into production is widely accepted as an
appropriate and ostensibly costless response. However, the
ramifications are in fact complex and often mean that not only
that producers of less profitable foodstuffs have been displaced
but also that land has been converted from a sustainable use to
one that degrades the soil. Examples of overuse of unsuitable
lands include cultivation of un-terraced hillsides, reduction of
fallow periods in rain forests, and intensive pasturage in dry,
mountainous, or poor soils. Both semi-arid regions and tropical
rain forests are ecologically delicate. and environmental
degradation ultimately reduces carrying capacity for both flora
and Jauna (including Homo sapiens) below the original sustainable
level (Brown, 1975; 1984; Eckholm, 1975; Holdren et al., 1980;
Walsh, 1988).
Such adverse ecological effects were realized in the 1930s
dust bowl in the United States and are equally evident in the
arid African Sahel and the tropical rain forests of South America
and Asia. For example, the poor soil base in large parts of the
Amazon and Orinoco drainages lends itself to intensive
cultivation and extensive fertilization over the short term only.
Within a few years of large-scale clearing, some soil types turn
to hardpan, or laterite. Others are too poor to support intensive
cultivation without intensive fertilization. Others become
weed-choked but cannot be intensively cultivated because of cost
or situation on hillsides subject to erosion. The net result of
attempting to intensify agriculture in such regions is a greatly
degraded resource available to the local population (Holdren et
al., 1980) as well as a reduction in the amount of rain forest
available to maintain the ecological balance of the world as a
whole (Marland,1988; Lewin,1987).
Cultivation-fallow rotation (swidden gardening) appears to be
the highest sustainable use of many tropical rain forests. With
fertilizer and introduced vegetation for weed-control, the fallow
period can be shortened but not eliminated (Sanchez and Benites,
1987). Swidden technology supports low density populations on
marginal land; cleared for intensive cultivation or grazing, that
land soon supports almost no one. (Brush, 1975; and see Russell,
this issue).
Even in areas suited to intensive agriculture, certain
characteristics of the new crop strains exact long-run costs. Row
crop cultivation speeds top-soil loss, particularly in windy or
hilly areas (Brown, 1984). The new strains often deplete the soil
with extreme rapidity and so also require heavy application of
chemical fertilizers based on nonrenewable resources such as
petroleum (Revelle, 1980; Gever et al., 1987).
Fertilizer-intensive cultivation itself removes humus which, if
not replaced, turns the soil to sand. Irrigation further
increases dependence on nonrenewable and usually imported energy
inputs (Holdren et al., 1980). As supplies of nonrenewable
resources decrease and are subject to competitive alternate uses
(for example, the synthetic material, fuel, and heating oil uses
of petroleum), a growing population faces scarcity of the energy
and other inputs required to maintain the production of the new
strains of food crops upon which it depends (Walsh, 1988; Wall,
1988; Hirst, 1974; Wade, 1974c; Chancellor & Goss, 1976;
Gever et al., 1987).
Fertilization and irrigation create other problems, including
salinization, watertable depletion, fertilizer run-offs, and
environmental pollution such as that increasingly experienced in
California's Central Valley. Increased use of pest control
chemicals also is detrimental to wildlife and people living in
agricultural areas (Holdren et al., 1980; AAAS Office of
International Science, 1977).
The experience of famine areas highlights the fragility of the
world's ecology. Relief through the importation of large
quantities of "exportable food" from other areas of the
world brings immediate reduction in hunger; but such aid does
nothing to establish or revitalize existing local food production
or ecosystems and may indeed further dislocate whole communities
(Wade, 1974a). Not only does the stream of imported food-stuffs
often disrupt what customary local production is available,
creating long-term dependence; more dangerously, it may encourage
a spurt in population growth in an area where carrying capacity
cannot support it beyond even one generation.
A further element of risk is that, although new crop varieties
have indeed increased productivity per acre, they are also
introducing a degree of genetic uniformity in any given crop
category that can be extremely dangerous in the long run. Crops
that formerly varied from relatively small area to relatively
small area now have become genetically uniform over very large
areas, even worldwide (Wilkes, 1972). Food supply thus becomes extraordinarily vulnerable to climate change, insect or other
infestations, or plant diseases; catastrophe associated with a
particular genetic strain becomes a matter of worldwide as
opposed to local significance (Wall, 1988; Wade, 1972; 1973;
Miller, 1973).
Thus, any supposed surplus of food prevailing overall in the
world or, more likely, in the export sector, seems barely
relevant to the needs of an expanding world population.
Fundamental questions must be answered by those who deduce world
carrying capacity from market surpluses. For example, how is even
the present level of food production to be sustained, given
side-effects including degradation of soils, increasing
pollution, and dependence on nonrenewable inputs? And, is
juxtaposition of surplus and famine, far from being an artificial
dysfunction in the distributional system, not a reflection of
rising production costs associated with trying to increase and
even sustain yields as well as of social structural developments
that can be traced to the new technologies?
Population growth threatens to render modern methods
inadequate and unsustainable (Ehrlich, 1988). Even in areas such
as Indonesia that have adequate petroleum stocks and are heavily
committed to modern technologies, production is now lagging
population growth. The marginal return from pesticide and
fertilizer has decreased. Weekly community-wide rat hunts to
reduce rodent populations suggest the urgency of protecting
existing food. It appears that the present deterioration of food
supplies relative to human numbers may not be reversible. Even
delay of a catastrophic collapse is moving beyond reach because
funds to support innovation are scarce; laboratories stand empty
and field stations have deteriorated (Wall, 1988).
From this perspective, the increasing rate of production of
some crops is notable mainly because it is a response to a
population phenomenon, viz. that population increase has
outstripped traditional methods of producing food. The new
strains were developed precisely because of the needs of growing
populations. But the availability of such food crops is only
marginally beneficial to hungry people, even in nations where
that food is produced. The achievement of an ostensible food
surplus is illusory and essentially meaningless in terms of world
hunger (Brown, 1984).
Thus, the danger is that this illusory surplus will be yet
another factor contributing to the pressure that make efforts at
meaningful control of population growth extraordinarily
difficult, if not impossible. The concept of a world food surplus
is extremely mischievous when separated from its intended
context: the required economic return to large scale agricultural
producers, and the effort of the American producers to be
competitive in the export sector of the world food market. Facile
references to food surplus most unfortunately divert attention
from the fundamental world problem—which is of staggering
proportions—that given rates of natural increase from the
mid-1980s, the world population doubling time appears to be 40
years (Population Reference Bureau 1985; 1986; 1987).
Food surplus says next to nothing about population carrying
capacity or the realities of actual food distribution. Food
surplus is a market term; it is meaningful only as a description
of supply in "supply and demand" equations. Demand is
"effective" only when joined with buying power. The
increasing numbers of hungry people of the world remain hungry,
despite any economic surplus.
It is not apparent how food production will keep pace with
unbridled population growth. Current technologies cannot
indefinitely sustain intensification of agriculture. Requirements
for increasing energy inputs to maintain any given level of
production, depletion of resources, pollution, the exhaustion of
fertile land, risks associated with monoculture, and other side
effects destructive of the carrying capacity are limiting
factors. Reference to a marketplace surplus masks this dilemma.
Sustainable production depends on maintaining the carrying
capacity which is a prerequisite to that production. Yet
maintenance of agricultural, and indeed, the whole earth's
ecological, carrying capacity depends on limiting the human
population growth which increasingly impairs it.
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Appeared in Population and Environment, Volume 10, Number
2, Winter 1988. Reprinted by permission of the publisher and the
authors.
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