ISLAMABAD, Dec 22: The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) are forcing the developing countries, including Pakistan, to shift from staple foods to cash crops that only meet the luxury requirements of the western countries.
These donor agencies are also forcing these countries to dismantle state support to food procurement, price support to farmers, food procurement and relax the land ceiling laws enabling the corporate sector to move into agriculture under the structural adjustment programmes.
Delivering a lecture on "sustaining the future of food and agriculture in the WTO regime: Developing country perspective" Devinder Sharma, an agricultural scientists, said the same prescription for farming had never been suggested for the rich and industrialised countries.
He said the industrial world, needed to go for diversification, as they produced mounting surpluses of wheat, rice, soybean, sugar, beat, cotton and that too under environmentally unsound conditions leading to an ecological catastrophe.
Mr Sharma said if the WTO had its ways and the developing countries failed to understand the prevailing politics that drove the agriculture trade agenda, the world would soon have two kinds of agriculture systems - the rich countries would produce staple foods for the world's six billion plus people and the developing countries would grow cash crops like tomato, cut flowers, peas, sunflower, strawberries and vegetables.
The dollars that developing countries earn from exporting these crops will eventually be used to buy food grains from the developed countries, he added. He quoted the examples of Central American Countries, which shifted to crops like melons, strawberries, cauliflower, broccoli and squash that were shifted to the supermarkets, mainly in America. In return, these countries disbanded cultivation of staple crops like corn and bean and have become importers and that too from the United States.
