Political Vegetarians
117
the livelihoods of 70 percent of the world’s poorest people.”63 This is hardly a solution to world hunger. And dismantling the current subsidy system—while not a bad idea—may not change much. According to the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center, “even the total elimination of US farm subsidies would result in only negligible increases in US prices for corn, wheat and soybeans ... The small price increase would then gradually decline to nothing over nine years, as the price rise encouraged new production, oversupply and a resulting price depression ... [D]umping would continue.”64 Their answer? “Supply management is required.” The exporting countries need to stop dumping, which means they need to stop producing surpluses. Practically, that means standing up to the corporations that literally own the food supply in the US. Politically, it requires understanding what has happened to turn food—our sustenance, our future—into a commodity. Chronic oversupply is the enemy of farmers in both rich and poor countries. Grain from the US is causing starvation, not easing it. There is a severe schizophrenia on the Left. Anyone liberal to radical has some understanding that relationships of power cannot create justice. And justice is our North Star, our deepest wish. A colonial arrangement where the power center takes raw materials and cheap labor from the colony, destroying their local subsistence economies and their local land bases, is what we used to call “imperialism.” Now we call it “globalization.” No one calls it justice. Except when it comes to food. Suddenly, we’re aiming for exactly the above arrangement of power. But ask yourself: why should people in Cambodia be dependent on the US for their basic sustenance? It condemns them to participating in a market economy where they will have to dedicate their labor and local resources to produce raw materials, like timber and metal ore, or cheap consumer goods like sneakers or computer chips, for rich nations. With the pennies they get in return, they will then have to buy food from the same rich nations or their progeny, the grain cartels. This is a destructive, inhumane, and oppressive arrangement. I have to believe that the political vegetarians haven’t thought it through.