Development as Freedom (35 page)

The African food output has, however, declined (on which I have already commented), and the prevalence of poverty in Africa puts it in a very vulnerable situation. However, as was argued earlier (in
chapter 7
) the problems of sub-Saharan Africa are mainly a reflection of a general economic crisis (indeed a crisis with strong social and political as well as economic components)—not specifically of a “food production crisis.” The food production story fits into a larger predicament that has to be addressed in broader terms.

TABLE
9.1:
Indices of Food Production per Head by Regions

Note:
With the three-year average of 1979–1981 as the base, the three-year averages for the years 1984–1986, 1994–1996 and 1996–1997 are obtained from the United Nations (1995, 1998), table 4. The three-year averages for the earlier years (1974–1976) are based on the United Nations (1984), table 1. There may be slight differences in the relative weights between the two sets of comparisons, so that the series should not be taken to be fully comparable between the two sides of 1979–1981, but the quantitative difference made by this, if any, is likely to be quite small.
Sources:
United Nations,
FAO Quarterly Bulletin of Statistics
, 1995 and 1998, and
FAO Monthly Bulletin of Statistics
, August 1984.

There is, in fact, no significant crisis in world food production at this time. The rate of expansion of food production does, of course, vary over time (and in some years of climatic adversity there is even a decline, giving the alarmists a field day for a year or two), but the
trend
is quite clearly upward.

It is also important to note that this rise in world food production has taken place despite a sharply declining trend in world food prices in real terms, as table 9.2 indicates. The period covered—more than forty-five years—is from 1950–1952 to 1995–1997. This entails a decline of economic incentives to produce more food in many areas of commercial food production in the world, including North America.

TABLE
9.2:
Food Prices in Constant 1990 U.S. Dollars: 1950–1952 to 1995–1997

Note:
The units are constant (1990) U.S. dollars per metric ton, adjusted by the G-5 Manufacturing Unit Value (MUV) index.
Sources:
World Bank,
Commodity Markets and the Developing Countries
, November 1998, table A1 (Washington, D.C.); World Bank,
Price Prospects for Major Primary Commodities
, vol. 2, tables A5, A10, A15 (Washington, D.C., 1993).

Food prices do, of course, fluctuate in the short run, and panicky statements were often made in response to an increase in the mid-1990s. But this was a small rise compared with the big fall since 1970 (see
figure 9.1
). Indeed, there is a strongly declining long-term trend, and there is nothing yet to indicate that the long-run downward trend of the relative price of food has been reversed. Last year, during 1998, the world prices for wheat and coarse grain declined again by 20 percent and 14 percent respectively.
²

In the context of an economic analysis of the present situation, we cannot ignore the disincentive effect that the lowering of world food prices has already had on food production. It is, thus, particularly impressive that the world food output has nevertheless continued to grow, well ahead of population growth. In fact, had more food been produced (without curing the income shortage from which most of the hungry people in the world suffer), the selling of food would have been even more of a problem than is reflected in the declining food prices. Not surprisingly, the biggest increases have come from regions (such as China and India) where the domestic food markets are relatively insulated from world markets and the declining trend of world food prices.

FIGURE
9.1:
Food Prices in Constant 1990 U.S. Dollars

Note:
The units are constant (1990) U. S. dollars deflated by the G-5 Manufacturing Unit Value (MUV) index.
Source:
World Bank,
Commodity Markets and Developing Countries
(Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1998), table A1.

It is important to see the production of food as a result of human agency, and to understand the incentives that operate on people’s decisions and actions. Like other economic activities, commercial production of food is influenced by markets and prices. At this time, the world food production is being kept in check by the lack of demand and falling food prices; this in turn reflects the poverty of some of the neediest people. Technical studies on the opportunity to produce more food (if and when the demand increases) outline very
substantial opportunities of making the food production per head grow much faster in per capita terms. Indeed, yield per hectare has continued to rise in every region of the world, and for the world as a whole, it went up on average by about 42.6 kilograms per hectare per year during 1981–1993.
³
In terms of world food production, 94 percent of the rise in cereal production between 1970 and 1990 reflected an increase in yield per unit of land, and only 6 percent was due to area increase.
⁴
With greater demand for food, the intensification of cultivation can be expected to continue, especially since the differences in yield per hectare are still enormously large between the different regions in the world.

All this does not, however, wipe out the need for slowing down the population growth. Indeed, the environmental challenge is not just that of food production—there are many other issues related to population growth and overcrowding. But it does indicate that there is little reason for any great pessimism that food output will soon start falling behind population growth. In fact, a tendency to concentrate on food production only, neglecting food
entitlement
, can be deeply counterproductive. Policy makers may be misled if insulated from the real situation of hunger—and even threats of famines—by favorable food output situations.

For example, in the Bengal famine of 1943, the administrators were so impressed by the fact that there was no significant food output decline (on which they were right) that they failed to anticipate—and for some months even refused to recognize—the famine as it hit Bengal with stormy severity.
⁵
Just as “Malthusian pessimism” may be misleading as a predictor of the food situation in the world, what may be called “Malthusian optimism” can kill millions when the administrators get entrapped by the wrong perspective of food-output-per-head and ignore early signs of disaster and famine. A misconceived theory can kill, and the Malthusian perspective of food-to-population ratio has much blood on its hands.

While the Malthusian long-run fears about food output are baseless, or at least premature, there are good reasons to worry about the rate of growth of world population in general. There is little doubt that the growth rate of world population has speeded up over the last century at a remarkable rate. It took the world population millions of years to reach the first billion, then 123 years to get to the second, followed by 33 years to the third, 14 years to the fourth, and 13 years to the fifth billion, with the promise of a sixth billion to come in another 11 years (according to the projections of the United Nations).
⁶
The number of people on earth grew by about 923 million (1980–1990 alone), and that increase is close enough to the size of the
total
population of the
entire
world in Malthus’s time. The 1990s, when they are done, will not have been significantly less expansionary.

If this were to continue the world certainly would be tremendously overcrowded before the end of the twenty-first century. There are, however, many clear signs that the rate of growth of world population is beginning to slow down, and the question that has to be asked is whether the reasons behind that slowdown are likely to become stronger, and if so, at what rate. No less importantly, it has to be asked whether something should be done through public policy to help the process of slowdown.

This is a highly divisive subject, but there is a strong school of thought that favors, if only implicitly, a coercive solution to this problem. There have also been several practical moves in that direction recently—most famously in China, in a set of policies introduced in 1979. The issue of coercion raises three different questions:

The acceptability of coercion in matters of family decisions raises very deep questions. Opposition to it can come both from those who would give priority to the family to decide how many children to have (it is, in this view, a quintessentially family decision), and from those who argue that this is a matter in which the potential mother in particular must have the deciding voice (especially when it comes to abortion and other matters that directly involve the woman’s body). To be sure, the latter position is usually articulated in the context of asserting the right to have an abortion (and to practice birth control in general), but there is clearly a corresponding claim that would leave the woman to decide
not
to abort if that is what she wants (no matter what the state wants). So something substantial does turn on the status and significance of reproductive rights.
⁷

The rhetoric of rights is omnipresent in contemporary political debates. There is, however, often an ambiguity in these debates about the sense in which “rights” are invoked, in particular whether the reference is to institutionally sanctioned rights that have juridical force, or whether the appeal is to the prescriptive force of normative rights that can precede legal empowerment. The distinction between the two senses is not entirely clear-cut, but there is a reasonably clear issue as to whether rights can have intrinsic normative importance and not just instrumental relevance in a legal context.

That rights can have intrinsic—and possibly pre-legal—value has been denied by many political philosophers, particularly utilitarians. Jeremy Bentham in particular is on record as having described the idea of natural rights as “nonsense,” and the concept of “natural and imprescriptible rights” as “nonsense on stilts,” which I take to mean highly mounted nonsense that is made arbitrarily prominent by artificial elevation. Bentham saw rights entirely in instrumental terms and considered their institutional roles in the pursuit of objectives (including the promotion of aggregate utility).

A sharp contrast between two approaches to rights can be seen here. If rights in general, including reproductive rights, were to be seen in Benthamite terms, then whether or not coercion should be acceptable in this field would turn entirely on its consequences, in
particular utility consequences, without attaching any indigenous importance whatsoever to the fulfillment or violation of the putative rights themselves. In contrast to this, if rights were to be seen as not only important but also as having priority over any accounting of consequences, then the rights would have to be accepted unconditionally. Indeed, in libertarian theory, this is exactly what happens to the delineated rights, which are seen as appropriate no matter what consequences they yield. These rights would, then, be appropriate parts of social arrangements
irrespective
of their consequences.