Slave
ships carried peanuts to the American South because colonists needed a
high-protein, high-caloric staple to feed their captives. Growing conditions
proved ideal, especially in Georgia, where cultivation thrived, and where today
nearly half the American crop is harvested. In the 80s, peanuts were the
eleventh most valuable crop grown in the United States, worth half a billion
dollars a year.
John
Johnston, a thirty-four-year-old Georgia peanut farmer, cultivates 540 acres of
peanuts and another 650 acres of corn. His ground is prepared for planting by
tractor. Government-sponsored research has discovered improved combinations of
seed and fertilizer and the extension service ensures that farmers know how to
use them. Pesticides are sprayed on Johnston’s crop from airplanes. Combine
harvesters pick the ripe plant and separate the peanuts for drying. Johnston
sells his crop to a broker in nearby Blakely, where the peanuts are stored in
modern warehouses. The broker sells them to processors through larger brokers
in Atlanta, New York, or Chicago. The price received by Johnston is maintained
above the world-market price by a U.S. government support program that
restricts imports, limits domestic acreage, and protects the farmer from price fluctuations.
Research, mechanization, efficient marketing, government price supports, and
hard work enable Johnston to net as much as $100,000 from his peanuts in a good
year. At this income, the Johnston family lives in comfort, enjoying the wide
variety of goods – basics and luxuries – available to affluent Americans.
In
Senegal, Cherno Diof grows peanuts on his small farm near Jalab. Like Johnston,
Diof inherited his land, which is the sole support for his family of five plus
three relatives. Like Johnston, Diof cultivates relatively good land for
peanuts and he has begun to mechanize what was until recently a handpicked
harvest. But his plows are not as productive as Johnston’s combined harvesters,
while fertilize and insecticides are either unavailable or too expensive. Diof’s
yields are about a fifth of Johnston’s. And his output must be sold to a government
corporation that pays the farmer well below the world-market price in order to
extract tax revenue for the government. Storage facilities are rudimentary and
much of the harvested crop may be lost to blight, insects, or bad weather. The
small size of their farm, poor yields, low prices, and storage losses keep the Diof
family very poor. Eight people must live on only $400 of cash income in a good
year, much less than john Johnston’s field workers, who earn $ 100 a week when
they work and are extremely poor by American standards. Even though the Diofs
grow much of their own food, their diet is inadequate, consisting mostly of
millet made into a gruel. Jalab has no electricity, no school, no clinic, and
no shops. Cherno’s wife draws water from a village well a few kilometers from
their hut, much closer than for most farm families in Senegal. For every
hundred children born in his village, twenty will probably never see their
first birthday.
Not
all Senegalese are as poor as Cherno Diof. In Dakar, the modern capital, officials
of the government peanut marketing corporation work in air-conditioned offices,
own cars, and live in substantial houses, enjoying some of the same of the same
comforts as the Johnston’s in Georgia. Their children attend the best schools
in the country and, if necessary, can be treated in a nearby modern hospital.
Of course these officials are part of a minority group in Senegal, a group
favored by birth, education, urban benefits, and income over the vast majority
of poor, small farmers. The resulting governments revenues help pay the
salaries of government workers, who are much better off than Cherno Diof; the
foreign exchange help to pay for imports that are consumed largely by people in
the cities.
In
each country the political process reinforces disparities. John Johnston is
represented in Washington by a congressman who is responsive to his needs.
Congressmen representing farm states remain powerful enough, even in a
predominantly urban country, to perpetuate the government’s price supports,
agricultural research, and extension system that have been so beneficial to
farmers like john Johnston. Cherno Diof has little or no political influence.
Although farm families like his make up most of Senegal’s population, it is the
minority urban dwellers who command most of the government’s attention and
resources. Diof is virtually helpless to influence the price the groundnut
marketing corporation pays for his crop or what services the government
provides him and his family.
Currently,
there is no effective international mechanism to reduce the vast disparities
between people like the Johnston’s who live in North America, Europe, and
Africa, Asia and Latin America. Although national fiscal policy can transfer
income from rich to poor within a country, no international fiscal mechanism
exits. Foreign aid has been conceived as a method of transfer from rich to poor
nations, but it is voluntary and grossly inadequate for the task. Discussions
have taken place about international price support, such as those that exist
within many countries that would raise the incomes poor countries earn from
their commodity exports. But differing national interests make agreement on
such schemes unlikely. U.S. restriction of peanut imports, which discriminate
against the Diofs and help Johnston, are only one of hundreds of trade
restrictions that slow international development.Why do disparities like these exist? Why are Senegalese farmers – and three billion like them in other countries –so poor while Americans and Europeans are rich? What could be down about it, by Sengalese or Americans? And what is likely to happen?
[i] This narrative is
sourced from the second edition of Economics of Development. It is adapted from
a television film by Otto C. Honegger, The
Nguba Connection, jointly produced by WGBH Boston, Swiss TV Zurich and
Swedish TV (SK2). Names have been fictionalised.
No comments:
Post a Comment