Every country must first ensure its own food security.
Kamal Nath, the minister of commerce and industry in India
Just another line? But read it again. It has the solidity of a principle... a basic tenet. Because you cannot credibly rebut. And the line has reverberating implications.
It is inconsistent with current free trade. Something must fall by the wayside. Food security or current trade policy. Like two pieces of physical matter, they cannot both exist in the same space.
Events are moving beyond the relevance of free trade. Food is an item of national security. Free traders think that somehow their theories create more food, magically affecting the biological process of planting, growing and harvesting seeds used for food.
There is something fundamental about eating. If you don't do it, you die.
If you govern a country, there is something fundamental about your
countrymen and women eating. If they don't have food, you do not
govern anymore. Even if you have elegant theories about economics,
with interesting assumptions, that lead you to believe there will be an
increased likelihood of your countrymen eating in the future.
So... this is what is happening today.
At least 29 countries have sharply curbed food exports in recent
months, to ensure that their own people have enough to eat, at
affordable prices.
Susan Schwab does not like it. But she does not run a country. And she will get three meals today.
But as the United States trade representative, Susan C. Schwab,
noted in a telephone interview, “One country’s act to promote food
security is another country’s food insecurity.”
Like most of us, Ms. Schwab lives in a different world, where food security is a theoretical interest. A section within a chapter of a book on modern trade theory.
This is the world of feeding children in India.
And here is Susan Schwab.
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