Customer Reviews

Food first: Beyond the myth of scarcity

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This is an excellent work which discusses the negations involved
in major agriculture. The author explains how an increase
in food productive capability can result in greater unavailability of foodstuffs for the needy. For instance,
the following consequences may follow increases in land
productivity:
o land values increase forcing tenants and small farmers elsewhere
o payments in money become the rule although money buys less
o control of scarce land becomes concentrated in fewer hands

o even communal lands are expropriated by powerful individuals
o peasants are trapped into debt bondage
o quantity and market value rather than nutrition become the
formula for agricultural planning

The author explains negations in the Philippines, Bangladesh,
West Malaysia and Sri Lanka.

Surprisingly, some researchers have found that a country's
decrease in export earnings may make people better off.
In such circumstances, tenants are better able to enforce their
demands for land and for permission to grow subsistence crops.

This work is an important treatise on the economic aspects
of agriculture. It complements works by David Ricardo and
others.

This book is an eye opener. We have been led to believe that there is not enough food in the world to feed all of the starving people. We are told that the only solution is a combination of more technology and global trade. Is it possible that these assumptions are not true? Read this book and make up your own mind.