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The nerve of those farmers!

Who says farmers are inflexible? In rich countries, they have long justified farm hand-outs by pointing to low world prices for food (never mind that low prices were partly caused by their own subsidised overproduction). Without public cash, they said, farmers would desert the land, leaving meadows to brambly ruin. Now that the world is running short of food, the farm lobby has deftly changed tack. Prices for many crops are at record highs, the new line goes, and rich countries need to protect their farmers in order to ensure that their people get fed.

Thankfully, Jagdish Bhagwati and Jeffrey Sachs stress three suggestions to tackle the long-term consequences of the current food crunch that are not mentioned too often.

1. Meat production consumes grain, so, either through lifestyle changes or by removing subsidies, reduce meat production;

2. Bhagwati talks about GM food, and Sachs about climate-proof food, but science needs another Norman Borlaug to revolutionize agriculture;

3. Again, Bhagwati talks about the IMF offering short-term balance-of-payments help, and Sachs about a new Global Fund for Africa, but this crisis illustrates again how small the world is becoming.

But, reform starts with the first big swing, and that's the EU's (and American) subsidies.

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A tiny dog threatened to delay the transit of the South Korean president's motorcade to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) venue at Haeundae Beach in Busan in November 2005. The comic spectacle unfolded within a scripted display of authority, where two columns of police conscripts bused from the far corners of the country faced each at attention across one of the busiest thoroughfares in the city center. Where no bus, taxi, or car dared enter, one little dog advanced unhindered in its daily routine. Finally, inevitably, almost as a farcical denouement, the most senior officer commanded a subordinate to chase down the unwitting canine on the next crossing, or else the motorcade might be halted. Captured after some difficulty, the little dog was imprisoned within his master's store, yelping as people applauded the motorcade zooming through the honor guard unimpeded. Meanwhile a barrier separated the APEC venue from the general public, who were required to produce special identification loaded with biometric technology, to gain access. On the streets farming lobbies orchestrated protests rebuffed by the deployment of water cannon and parked trailers, effectively blocking transit through the coastal road. The dog, the barrier, and the protests symbolize the character of globalization more fully than the evangelic faith in a politically and economically integrated world. When Jagdish Bhagwati advocates, that reason deserves as much of a place as the passions, he overestimates the opposition between the two human forces. «Reason and analysis require that we abandon the conviction that globalization lacks a human face, an assertion that is tantamount to a false alarm, and embrace the view that it has one.» Accepting Bhagwati's singular «conviction», though, is as unappealing as championing the dog, the barrier, or the protests. As Stuart Hampshire argues,

Rationality, prudential and moral, as a common human possession or potentiality, is most plausibly identified, as argument and counter-argument, with the just and fair weighing of conflicts of evidence, and of conflicts of desires. Every individual person has used procedures for resolving contrary pulls and contrary impulses: political conflicts and their resolution are strictly analogous.

The Dog, the Wall, and the Protesters: A Critique of Jagdish Bhagwati's Defense of Economic Globalization - Get more documents