Economic Consequences of Food/Climate Variability

Abstract

The analysis of economic consequences of food/climate variability is restricted in this paper to the year-to-year variability of cereal yields. This requires a definition of the level of analysis of both the temporal and spatial limits of the economic and social entity. It is argued that the tools and methods have not been adequately developed as social and natural sciences tend to respond to the effective social demand of the most powerful countries and social groups. The issue of food/climate variability was of prime concern to many French “economists” from the late 17th century to the French Revolution, when agriculture was the backbone of the economy. Periodic famines and food scarcities forced administrators, statesmen and scholars to make an attempt to understand these crises, which threatened to impoverish the nation and to lead to social disruption

With a few exceptions, there was no interest in these issues between the French Revolution and the 1940s crisis, not only because industrialization was becoming the major issue but also because advocates of “laissez-faire” policies thought their policies would take care “naturally” of the problems while their opponents oversimplified the relationship between nature and society.

The recent food crises in poor countries have produced empirical studies that still feed from the 19th century Nature/Society controversy. By treating climate as a resource in a food sytems approach it is hoped that new theoretical developments and alternative policies may result.

On the social sciences side, it is felt that self-provisio-ning in poor countries has a theoretical and practical importance not yet fully comprehended. For this reason, the concept of forces of retention (food as a basic need) struggling against forces of extraction (food as a commodity) is introduced. This dual nature of food, with low average yields, accounts for the extreme sensitivity to climate variability of the poor farmers in poor countries.

On the natural sciences side, the most urgent task is to develop a better scientific knowledge of inter cropping and relay cropping systems which make full use of climatic resources. This requires a drastic change in agricultural research priorities and funding towards a more democratic agricultural research geared to the needs of a majority of poor farmers in rainfed agriculture who are particularly vulnerable to climate variability rather than to a minority of rich farmers in irrigated areas.