Abstract
Turkey is able to feed its population out of its own agricultural production, while Algeria and Egypt, more typical of countries of the Arab Middle East and North Africa, require large annual importations of food in order to meet domestic demand. This raises several questions. How did this situation come about? Were not Algeria and Egypt, like non-Arab Turkey, primarily agricultural countries until recently? Is there any hope that the situation for Algeria and Egypt will be reversed in the near future? Does Turkey’s more favourable food situation give it more economic security as a nation and therefore more control over its national destiny?
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Notes
The two positions on this question are represented by, on one side, Yachir and Abdoun, who believe that national independence requires self-sufficiency in food production, and on the other, Huddleston et al., and Adams, who take the IMF view that ability to finance food purchases is the more realistic and efficient solution. Faycal Yachir and Rabah Abdoun, ‘Dépendance alimentaire, croissance agricole et équilibre externe en Algerie’, Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord, 1984 (Aix-en-Provence: CRESM, 1986) pp. 529–42; Barbara Huddleston et al., International Finance for Food Security (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984);
Richard H. Adams, Jr, ‘The Role of Research in Policy Development: The Creation of the IMF Cereal Import Facility’, World Development, 11, 7 (1983).
Ghanem El-Khaldi, ‘Reply’ to ‘The Problems of Agricultural Development and Integration in the Arab World’, in Adda Guecioueur (ed.), The Problems of Arab Economic Development and Integration (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1984) p. 40, quoting The Future of Food in the Arab Countries, vol. 3 (Khartoum: Arab Organization for Agricultural Development, 1979) pp. 2–3.
Kubursi starts his essay with the judgement that ‘Arab agriculture in the Arab world is not performing as well as it should or could… An immediate consequence of this poor performance record has been the serious deterioration in the food security position of the Arab World, particularly in the 1970s.’ Atif Kurbursi, ‘Arab Agricultural Productivity: A New Perspective’, in I. Ibrahim (ed.), Arab Resources: The Transformation of a Society (London: Croom Helm, 1983) p. 71.
Alan Richards and John Waterbury, A Political Economy of the Middle East (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1990) pp. 139–83.
Alan Richards, ‘Food Problems and State Policies in the Middle East and North Africa’, in W. Ladd Hollist and F. LaMond Tullis, Pursuing Food Security: Strategies and Obstacles in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East (Boulder, Col.: Lynne Riener Publishers, 1987).
For the complexities of the social changes that this process entailed, see Caglar Keydar, ‘Paths of Rural Transformation in Turkey’, in Talal Asad and Roger Owen (eds), Sociology of Developing Societies: The Middle East (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983) pp. 163–77.
See Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Report: Turkey, 3 (1989);
And US Department of Commerce, Foreign Economic Trends: Turkey (September 1989).
See US Department of Commerce, Foreign Economic Trends: Egypt, May 1989, for discussion of these problems.
Jean-Jacques Dethier and Kathy Funk, ‘The Language of Food: PL 480 in Egypt’, Middle East Report, 145 (March–April 1987) pp. 22–7.
The details are reported in the Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Report: Algeria, 3 (1989);
And US Department of Commerce, Foreign Economic Trends: Algeria, March 1989.
The production of meat, milk, eggs and poultry has grown dramatically in the last fifteen years in all three countries. However, the supply is projected to lag further behind demand in the coming decade. See John C. Glenn, Livestock Production in North Africa and the Middle East, Discussion Paper No. 39 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1988).
I rely here on Armartya Sen’s argument regarding the importance of ‘intrinsic freedom;’ that is, the freedom to have a decent standard of living and basic human rights, as opposed to the narrow ‘instrumental freedom’ of the pursuit of self-interest now recommended by international agencies. See Armartya Sen, ‘Food and Freedom’, World Development, 17, 6 (1989) pp. 769–81.
World Bank, World Development Report, 1989 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). See Table 4, pp. 170–1.
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© 1993 Bahgat Korany, Paul Noble and Rex Brynen
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Pfeifer, K. (1993). Does Food Security Make a Difference? Algeria, Egypt and Turkey in Comparative Perspective. In: Korany, B., Noble, P., Brynen, R. (eds) The Many Faces of National Security in the Arab World. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22568-2_6
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