Capitalism: increasing food production and destroying the caste system
Posted on August 31st, 2008 by bile Tags: Canada, capitalism, caste system, Chandra Bhan Prasad, communism, community farming, food aid, food prices, India, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, poverty, Russia, Samir Suleymanov, socialism, Soviet Union, United StatesThe fields around this little farming enclave are among the most fertile on earth. But like tens of million of acres of land in this country, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they literally went to seed.
Now that may be changing. A decade after capitalism transformed Russian industry, an agricultural revolution is stirring the countryside, shaking up village life and sweeping aside the collective farms that resisted earlier reform efforts and remain the dominant form of agriculture.
The change is being driven by soaring global food prices (the price of wheat alone rose 77 percent last year) and a new reform allowing foreigners to own agricultural land. Together, they have created a land rush in rural Russia.
“Where else do you have such an abundance of land?” Samir Suleymanov, the World Bank’s director for Russia, asked in an interview.
As a result, the business of buying and reforming collective farms is suddenly and improbably very profitable, attracting hedge fund managers, Russian oligarchs, Swedish portfolio investors and even a descendant of White Russian émigré nobility.
The average Russian grain yield is 1.85 tons a hectare — compared with 6.36 tons a hectare in the United States and 3.04 in Canada. (A hectare is about two and a half acres.)
Should be noted that when the USSR was the largest exporter of food years ago the United States was sending food aid to it’s people who were starving. In fact, the USSR likely wouldn’t have survived into the 1950’s if it wasn’t for western aid to the fledgling government in the 20’s.
When Chandra Bhan Prasad visits his ancestral village in these feudal badlands of northern India, he dispenses the following advice to his fellow untouchables: Get rid of your cattle, because the care of animals demands children’s labor. Invest in your children’s education instead of in jewelry or land. Cities are good for Dalit outcastes like us, and so is India’s new capitalism.
Mr. Prasad was born into the Pasi community, once considered untouchable on the ancient Hindu caste order. Today, a chain-smoking, irrepressible didact, he is the rare outcaste columnist in the English language press and a professional provocateur. His latest crusade is to argue that India’s economic liberalization is about to do the unthinkable: destroy the caste system. The last 17 years of new capitalism have already allowed his people, or Dalits, as they call themselves, to “escape hunger and humiliation,” he says, if not residual prejudice.
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2 Responses to “Capitalism: increasing food production and destroying the caste system”
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August 31st, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Capitalism, you’re in it.
September 1st, 2008 at 1:03 am
The author too freely interchanges “modern capitalism” (where he really means corporatism or neomercantilism) and “capitalism.” Making them effectively the same. I think he’s being very simplistic in his 4 step model too. Step 4 would have to fit in with what the demand is for the product. The workers can’t simply raise wages or spend capital on bettering conditions without… expending capital. I don’t see how the entrepreneurs of the business would not desire to minimize capital consumption in order to expand. Competition will require them to continuously balance comfort now with future wealth increases. He makes it sound like workers will plateau. If they did they’d quickly loose their ability to set conditions and wages because they’d be undercut and lose customers. In a free market the business doesn’t really choose how things are run… customers do through proxy.