They're Coming for the Military

A number of Democratic Socialists of America party members have been campaigning on defunding the U.S. military. This is apparently part of an agenda that seeks to dismantle American military power which is seen as supporting an imperialist history with a colonial agenda. Particularly concerned are these candidates with American “business” investment overseas which they see as uniformly evil, just making “profits” and protected by U.S. militarism.

In 1978 a study appeared in Ag World that examined such claims in remarkable detail. The study determined that in the third world land devoted to export luxury crops was at the time all of 29 million hectares. This amounted to around 3% of the then 890 million hectares (now 1.6 billion hectares) devoted to crop land, of which 97% was used for domestic food consumption. On top of which 100 million hectares, (now 200 million) of permanent crop land and 3.1 billion hectares of pastureland (now 3.6 billion hectares) were both also used for domestic food production.

Nonetheless, the narrative endured that “luxury” export crops including peanuts, cotton, coffee, sugar, and tobacco for example were being produced and exported from poor countries to rich nations. And as Lappe and Fanon argued, it was colonial agribusiness run by profit seeking oligarchs that were starving the oppressed.

Facts are all available from the Food & Agricultural Food Balance sheets [FA0] prepared by the United Nations which now details production, consumption, imports and exports for agricultural products worldwide for nearly 200 nations.

FAO’s data even back in 1978 illustrated that even if eliminated food and non-food ag exports to rich countries from the less developed world would have no beneficial impact on poverty or hunger. The export land at that time of the Ag World analysis accounted for only .7% of one percent of all agricultural land used in the poor nations of the world. Less than one percent more land wasn’t the solution to hunger. And remarkably, such a relatively small amount of land produced through free enterprise, some $300 billion in export earnings for third world nations around the world which the socialists would destroy, seriously harming the local economies.  

In summary, in the poor nations of the world far more land (by a factor of 14,000 to 1) is used for domestic food consumption than luxury crop production for export to rich nations.

Obviously, the DSA types who think “free enterprise agriculture” and agribusiness are starving the world don’t even know the fundamental facts. They are convinced western white imperialists acting like colonialists are stealing top quality soil to grow luxury crops in poor countries for export to rich people in rich countries.

At that time, the coauthor of Food First even told me over lunch that the reports of “agrarian reform” causing deaths in Cambodia were widely exaggerated. But why was Collins defending Cambodia? Well from Chapter 4 in Food First there in black and white is a list of nations (all communist!) that reflect how to get food policy right: Cambodia, Ethiopia, North Korea, Cuba, China, Angola, Mali, Vietnam, and Guinea Basso. Even the USSR got an honorable mention as “at least reducing food inequality.” (Same paradigm comes up as DSA folks embrace Hamas).

Although collectively these national governments killed 80 million of their own people, Food First explicitly praised them.  Even as these deaths have been documented by the Black Book of Communism published by the Marxist Institute in Paris after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the firm embrace of communism by the Food First authors was unmistakable. These nations, collectively, had in 1978 according to Ag World, the majority of the 29 million hectares of export crop land producing supposed luxury crops being exported to rich countries.

For example, Cuba grew sugar cane on 1.8 million hectares (1978) and sold the sugar to Moscow at 5 times the world price to make cheap vodka in Russia. China grew more than a million acres of tobacco to make cheap cigarettes to sell around the world. The very nations Food First praises for doing everything right were in fact doing precisely what Food First complained was causing hunger around the world!!

The reality? “Food First” was a complete fairy tale swallowed whole by the Washington Post and New York Times in glowing editorials praising the thesis of the book. They did the same with Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth.”

There’s one thing in common in the countries listed: with respect to their agriculture policies, they have killed millions of their own people. It’s not a coincidence. The DSA are selling the same stuff.

Peter Huessy is President of Geostrategic Analysis of Frederick, Maryland.