Globally Cooperative Localisation: John Bunzl writes to India’s high-profile food and trade policy analyst

Localisers will appreciate this rediscovered treasure. In 2002, ‘Subject: Re: Food Security’; John Bunzl (Simpol, below right) wrote to the editor and Devinder Sharma (below left) as follows (emphasis, photos and links added):

Sorry for the delay in responding to your exchanges and I have now read Devinder’s very informative ‘backgrounder’.

It seems to me – as a rather ignorant newcomer to all this – that the priority which should be pursued in the interests of both developed and developing countries is what I would call ‘Globally Cooperative Localisation’.

This means that farmers in all countries, rich and poor, should be entitled to sufficient price protection to allow the maximum amount of food to be grown locally in each country for local consumption. This entails global cooperation (along the lines of Simpol http://www.simpol.org ) to establish and agree fair quotas for all commodities which would qualify for protection and the level of protection to be provided. Beyond those quotas, however, trade would be free. No doubt these measures would have to be introduced in a phased
(simultaneous) way with some transitional relief being provided where appropriate.

There are various mechanisms that could be used to achieve the desired effects, not all of them necessarily being through the imposition of direct quotas and tariffs. For example, a stiff global tax on fuels as Simpol could make possible, would immediately make long-distance transportation of foodstuffs (and all manner of other widgets) much more expensive, and therefore automatically make them less competitive with locally produced and consumed items.

This tax would promote local production and consumption almost ‘automatically’ as well as making high-tech, oil-based farming less competitive with smaller-scale organic farming.

In addition, there would be many other spin-off benefits of this including a reduction in transportation, pollution, pollution-related diseases, etc.

Furthermore, from the tax revenues raised, not only could oil-producing countries be compensated for their loss of fuel production revenue (thus keeping them cooperative), but funds would be available to help developing countries meet higher standards, for other global purposes, disaster emergencies, the UN, etc, etc.

In general, it does seem to me that, particularly in agriculture where the health of the land everywhere is paramount and where, therefore, simple market forces cannot be allowed free reign, some combination of protectionism and free trade – along the lines I propose above, and always within a globally cooperative framework – is necessary. 

What I would like to see, Devinder, is all manner of organisations and NGOs – including trade unions – taking some time to look at this wider picture and, hopefully, to adopt SP as the preferred means or ‘tool’ for its practical implementation or an even more effective process if one emerges.

For what you describe in your backgrounder can, I fear, only get worse until people can find a globally cooperative way out. Of course we can and must fight the present situation but we should, I think, keep in the back of our minds that this can only be a losing battle unless the global paradigm is changed.

Since both ‘free trade’ and protectionism are BOTH characterised by unsustainable levels of destructive competition, it should not be difficult to deduce that the answer lies in global cooperation and the implementation of an appropriate ‘mixed’ regime which includes protectionism where that is needed to achieve localisation and free trade for everything else (but with appropriate compensating redistributions to provide for a gradual convergence between rich and poor nations).

This of course ties in with the discussions we were having about the need to highlight the issue of ‘international competitiveness’ as the key barrier to achieving the needed reforms and I still think we should form a global group of individuals to bring this issue out more clearly.

Be that as it may, do you think, Devinder, that the farming unions in India might have the time/resources to look into these issues in more detail and in a more strategic way (rather than solely concerning themselves with their immediate concerns)? I already had interest in SP from Public Services International (PSI) in Geneva which is an umbrella group of all manner of trade unions from all over the world with about 10 million members between them and I believe the union movement worldwide could be an excellent medium through which to achieve paradigm change.

 

 

 

 

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