It's the protectionism, stupid!

7:59am

More on the man made food shortage. Victor Mallet is, at least in part, spot on in the FT:

It is tempting to assume that the problem is purely one of supply and can be fixed by genetically modified plants or investment in a new “green revolution” to boost crop yields. The three most productive solutions, however, are all matters of policy.

First, there is an urgent need for a sustained liberalisation of agricultural trade. The immediate cause of this crisis is not – perhaps surprisingly – a shortage of food. The problem is the sudden reluctance of traditional exporters to sell their surpluses. As with credit providers in the seized-up credit markets, each producer is hoarding its own supply in case of hard times at home, because it suspects its trading partners will do the same. Trust in the efficiency and liquidity of the market has collapsed.

Farm protectionism is not new and international markets are grotesquely distorted by tariffs and subsidies. The main producers – particularly the European Union and the US – have jealously protected their farm sectors from foreign competition, partly on food security grounds.

International farm trade has nevertheless managed satisfactorily for decades to redistribute surpluses of staple foods. The current seizures in the markets are therefore a cause for general alarm. Singapore, one of the world’s wealthiest nations, depends on food imports as much as Eritrea, one of the poorest.

The second level at which policies need to change is national. Like international trade, domestic trade in farm produce is often highly distorted. While developed nations tend to support their farmers at the expense of consumers, developing countries typically subsidise city-dwellers at the expense of rural smallholders, who receive low prices and have no incentive to increase their output.

As the Financial Times reported two weeks ago, Asian countries are among the worst offenders. Farming productivity growth has slowed drastically in the current decade. “The neglect of agriculture in Asia has got to be corrected,” said Ifzal Ali, the Asian Development Bank’s chief economist.

Asian governments could do much to boost food output by liberalising their domestic markets, helping to provide farmers with credit and giving them access to the sort of modern technology and advice they once received as a public service.

Third and last, governments need to examine their population policies and limit population growth. Although there is enough grain to go round at the moment, you do not need to be a neo-Malthusian to worry about the demand implications of a global population rising by about 80m people a year or to notice that countries with fast-growing populations – India, the Philippines and Egypt, for example – are especially vulnerable to disruptions in the world’s food trade.

I don't agree with his third point, and I'll explain why in another post.

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An audience speaks

9:05am

Robert Halfon has an interesting story at Centre Right about Ken Livingstone's campaign:

A friend went to the Criterion Theatre to see a play about Anne Frank's friend, Eva Schloss. Although in no way was this a party political event, Livingstone supporters were there handing out leaflets outside. 

Nothing wrong with that you might say, but then it gets worse. Deputy Mayor Nicky Gavron was invited on the stage to answer questions about her Jewish background.  She apparently turned the occasion into a party political broadcast, urging the audience to vote for Ken  - the response was booing and hissing from the audience. Given Ken Livingstone's previous embrace of extreme Islamists and his comparison of a Jewish journalist with a concentration camp guard, it does seem astonishing that the Mayor's team think they can exploit the holocaust for political ends and hijack an important theatre production for party political purposes.

I'm less interested in the leafleting - I don't see why there is, as Rob writes, anything wrong with that. Much more interesting, surely, is the reaction of the audience to Nicky Gavron's clearly cack-handed attempts to exploit the Deputy Mayor's religion.
 
When the Mayoral contest started, I thought Livingstone was a shoo-in, not least because, as I wrote here, I couldn't take Boris seriously. Clearly I was very wrong about the former, even if I still have the same reaction to Boris. The fact seems to be that many others now share my reaction to Ken: that the imperative is to remove from office a man who proudly embraces Islamofascists.

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They do make them like that any more

11:00am

Loyalty is almost non-existent in sport today. The likes of Ryan Giggs and Jamie Carragher, who stick at one club, are anachronisms. On the other hand, they earn fortunes and don't really need to move.

So the response of theswashbuckling Surrey batsman, Alistair Brown, to the IPL's offer of a three year contract is almost unbelievable, Brown - who is capable of some of the most destructive batting imaginable, and whose game is tailor-made for Twenty20 - is coming to the end of his career (he's 38); has only a one year contract with Surrey, his employers for the past twenty years; and is on no more than sixty or seventy thousand a year. And yet he turned the IPL's offer - which would have been way, way more than he is now on, and would have lasted three years - down. Here's why (prepare for your flabber to be gasted):

The main reason was that I've been at the Oval for 20 years and they have been the best 20 years of my life. The club have been incredibly good to me and, having signed a one-year contract, I didn't feel it was quite right to turn round and say: 'Let's tear that up and do something different. I want to go out to India because there's a lot of money up for grabs.'

Harbhajan came back and said he wanted me to think again because Sachin wanted me to go out and play and it would be a big contract on a three-and-a-half-year deal. I appreciated that there was probably more opportunity this year than maybe next, when there could be windows opening up for the England players, so I did think about it again over the weekend.

They were talking telephone numbers - I won't go into details, but it was going to be a vast increase on what I'm earning here and I wouldn't say I'm earning badly - and the opportunity of playing with the likes of Tendulkar and Sanath Jayasuriya and Harbhajan turned your head. Tendulkar is the best player I've seen and Jayasuriya probably influenced my England call-up with his pinch-hitting.

It would have been fun but, ultimately, I had signed a contract with the club. At my age, I suppose they could have done something but I didn't go and ask them. I don't feel that last season brought out the best in my game and I'm really hungry to silence the doubters by scoring heavily and setting the record straight.

I was flattered to be asked to go to India and if I'd been in a different situation things would have been different, but they weren't and I'm certain I made the right decision. Life's not all down to money.

Astonishing. They do, it seems, make them like that any more.

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It's tariffs wot done it

8:23am

Say what you like about Moonbat, you have to warm to a columnist who can write this with a straight face:

I would like to encourage people to start eating tilapia instead of meat.

Still, he knows he's barking, does our George:

Re-reading this article, I see that there is something surreal about it.

Yup.

Meanwhile, also on planet bonkers...This from Raj Patel at CiF:

For anyone who understands the current food crisis, it is hard to listen to the head of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, without gagging.

... Before he replaced Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank, Zoellick was the US trade representative, their man at the World Trade Organisation. While there, he won a reputation as a tough and guileful negotiator, savvy with details and pushy with the neoconservative economic agenda: a technocrat with a knuckleduster.

His mission was to accelerate two decades of trade liberalisation in key strategic commodities for the United States, among them agriculture. Practically, this meant the removal of developing countries' ability to stockpile grain (food mountains interfere with the market), to create tariff barriers (ditto), and to support farmers (they ought to be able to compete on their own). This Zoellick did often, and enthusiastically.

Without agricultural support policies, though, there's no buffer between the price shocks and the bellies of the poorest people on earth.

This is the exact opposite of the case. It is 'support policies' - tariffs and protectionism - which are the bane of prosperity and from which the poor end up suffering worst of all.

So for something which isn't based on a complete misreading of the way the world works, might I suggest you try this piece by Caroline Boin and Alec van Gelder on the Ugandan site New Vision:

Rising food prices have caused street protests from Mexico to India to Senegal. But this could be a blessing in disguise if it makes governments eliminate the trade barriers that exacerbate high prices: the poorest countries will benefit most from dropping their own tariffs.

Nobel economics laureate Gary Becker estimates that a 30 per cent rise in food prices over five years would cause living standards to fall by 3 per cent in rich countries and by more than 20 per cent in poor countries.

A few countries have already temporarily eased tariffs on agricultural imports to soften the blow for consumers-even the European Union. Thailand is considering a cut of 50 per cent for maize, soybeans and other animal feed.

These tariff reductions will offset price increases not just by lowering prices but by increasing supply. Increased trade in agricultural goods (not just food) could even help avert famine where produce is subject to intense government control, such as in North Korea, Ethiopia, Kenya and many others. But many countries resist free trade in food, domestically or with neighbours. In Africa, 200 million people are underfed, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. They have borne the brunt of counter-productive State management of agriculture that has damaged farmers and economies.

For years, governments in Africa forced farmers to surrender their crops to state-run marketing boards at below market rates.

Some of these corrupt and inefficient institutions have been weakened or abolished but many other restrictions on agriculture remain, including tariffs on produce and on inputs such as fertiliser and machinery-and even tariffs on exports.

Many development analysts are obsessed with subsidies to farmers in rich countries, now extended to biofuels, and the damage it inflicts on the world's poor.

But it is the world's poorest countries that impose the highest barriers against trade with each other: agricultural exports between sub-Saharan countries face an average tariff of 33.6 per cent, the highest of any region on Earth. A whopping 70 per cent of the world's trade barriers are imposed by governments in poor countries on people in other poor countries.

Alhaji Ahmed Abdulkadir, a presidential adviser in Nigeria, has said: "I can assure you that my pen is always ready to ban more items as long as they are available in Nigeria." These would be "either banned completely and where we have doubts, we will impose high tariffs."

Nigeria's import bans have included staples such as wheat, rice, maize and vegetable oil, making Nigerians pay sky-high prices. The World Bank estimates that global free trade in all goods would add $287b to world income each year, half of that going to poor countries.

Sixty-three per cent of that immediate gain would come from freeing agricultural trade alone. In African countries, nearly all of that 63 per cent would come from removing their own import tariffs and quotas, which artificially restrict access to other markets, including their neighbours'. High food prices are now a clear and immediate reason to cut tariffs but that does not mean it will happen.

For decades, protectionism has been imposed against the interests of local consumers because of an unholy coalition of Western activists and local vested interests.

Under the slogan "Make Trade Fair," groups like Oxfam and Christian Aid claim that protecting local industries and agriculture with tariffs will allow them to grow and become competitive-with local consumers, especially the poorest, suffering higher prices. But decades of protectionism have done little for sub-Saharan Africa.

It is no surprise that crop yields-like income and life expectancy-have steadily decreased across much of Africa since the 1980s.

The technologies that could turn their fortunes around, such as fertilizer, irrigation and genetically-modified crops, remain largely out of reach. Worse-and contrary to trends in Asia and Latin America-fertilizer use has actually fallen in many African countries in the past two decades.

Whereas an average of 107 kilogrammes of fertilizer is used per hectare in the developing world as a whole, African countries use only eight. The consequence has been disastrous: 70 per cent of the continent's workforce is still in agriculture, mainly subsistence farming, contributing only about 25 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. Demand and prices for food are rising, so freeing trade would be the best remedy for the world's poor, cutting prices at a stroke and boosting production. High food prices are putting pressure on protectionist governments to free their trade or face angry mobs.

 

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Policy not personality

8:02am

Thanks to Sky News' quiz, I see that when I vote for Boris next month I won't just be voting to keep Ken out. Of the eleven questions, I was with Boris on 7, and only with Ken on two.

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Good riddance

8:53am

Every cloud has a silver lining:

Caught in the crunch - 4000 estate agents could be forced to close.

Everyone has their own story about estate agents. (Remember that old joke about Peter Mandelson: Why do people take an instant dislike to PM? Because it saves time. For Peter Mandelson, read estate agents.) If you are bored by them, skip this post.

We bought our house in July last year. I sold my flat privately, and it was the most painless, most efficient, smoothest sale or purchase with which I have ever been involved. The estate agent through which we bought the house, however, was a nightmare to deal with, lying to us about the vendor's intentions, not returning critical calls, etc. We are still waiting for some of the documents to arrive from him! It was only when the purchase looked like collapsing because the estate agent told us the vendor had rejected an entirely reasonable request of ours that we contacted the vendor directly and discovered he was an entirely reasonable man. It was the agent playing dirty.

I've bought four houses in my life. Every estate agent with which I have dealt - all from big, so-called reputable firms - has lied to me. And I mean lied, as in telling me things which he or she knew to be fasle, rather than merely offering me false information by mistake.

I don't want house prices to collapse. I'm not that stupid. But anything which causes estate agents to go bust has something to be said for it.

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Wrong on the BNP

8:04am

There's been something of a row about the Ham and High's decision to publish an ad by the BNP.

There's not much that Tim Worstall writes with which I disagree, but I think he's missed the deeper point here:

 

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Yes, I know what's not good for me (The Times)

7:44am

I have a piece in today's Times about Prof Ian Gilmore's claim this weekend that: “There is,” he said, “no doubt at all that many people are drinking significantly more than they realise. People are aware of units, they want to stay within safe limits, but they are being pushed up way over those limits by just not realising what they are drinking.”

Here's an extract:

Are you a porker? Do you get through a bottle of rioja every night?

You poor dear. I feel so sorry for you. You see, it's not your fault. You might be knocking back a dozen glasses of wine and then stuffing a couple of Big Macs down your throat, but you've no say in the matter. You're just a pawn in big business's game. You're a naive little (well, not so little) innocent, all at sea in the world of nasty bars and fast- food outlets.

That, it seems, is the view of Ian Gilmore, the president of the Royal College of Physicians. According to Professor Gilmore, most people are morons. Dunces. Ignoramuses. Inadequates who are too stupid to take any responsibility for their own lives.

...Yes, he really does think that we are all too stupid to notice the difference between a 125ml glass and a 250ml glass. Has there ever been a more typical example of the patronising, superior attitude of the medical profession?

...Since marrying last year I have put on a stone and a half. Not that I am in any way responsible for this. It is entirely my wife's fault. She cooks a variety of delicious meals and presents them to me on the plate.

In the absence of legislation preventing Mrs P from cooking for me, I have no choice in the matter. If Professor Gilmore is to be believed I am a helpless pawn, able only to consume what I am given and too thick to realise I've been eating more than before.

Is it any wonder obesity and binge drinking are on the rise when the likes of Professor Gilmore are blaming not the people who eat and drink too much, but the people who provide them with food and drink? I am overweight because I've been eating too much and exercising too little. And I'll thank Professor Gilmore to hold me responsible for the error of my ways.

 

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Our mad school system

2:48pm

Some of the comments at Coffee House miss the point about on Poole council's 'spying' on parents to check that they live where they say do:

The report in the Telegraph is misleading. RIPA did not give any powers to local authoriities. It restricted the use of powers they already had.

But surely the real point of this story is not the law under which such investigations were carried out, or their efficacy. It's rather the sheer lunacy of a school system in which catchment areas and bureaucratic diktat matter and which entails such checks.

So what if someone lives in one part of town where schools are rubbish and wants their child to go to a better school in another part of town? Nothing will ever improve until we have a system in which parents rather than LEA employees choose childrens' schools, and in which schools expand or contract depending on that parental choice.

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Tough, for us and them

8:05am

I have mixed reactions to this.

The Barbican has been forced to cancel a concert by the Russian pianist Grigory Sokolov because of changes to visa regulations requiring non-EU citizens to provide fingerprints.

Sokolov, 57, was due to perform a programme of Mozart sonatas and Chopin on 10 May at the London concert hall, followed by an appearance at Glasgow's City Hall. But the pianist will no longer travel to the UK, where he has been performing regularly for the past 18 years, because he is unwilling to disrupt his schedule to apply in person for the new biometric visa.

Sokolov is a wondrous pianist and I had tickets for that now cancelled concert. And if his unwillingness to travel to the UK is the first of other such decisions by great artists, I will be despondent.

However, these comments made me see red:

The Barbican is concerned that the changes to the visa system could deter other artists from travelling to perform in the UK.

Robert Van Leer, head of music at the Barbican, said: "In the past, Grigory Sokolov has always been able to [apply for a visa] remotely. He hasn't had to go anywhere in person. We're dealing with an artist of the highest sort. He really only does two things. He practises and he goes to concerts and plays."

Mr Van Leer added: "Even if we move past this individual situation, I don't see it as a tenable way of working with artists. We often have artists who are not back in their home country for weeks on end. I'm worried about how we're going to deal with these artists."

...A spokeswoman for the pianist said: "He's been coming for the past 18 years and he's never had a problem before. The whole process has become incredibly complicated, time-consuming and difficult.

"Some artists just can't quite handle that sort of intrusion into their music. For someone like Sokolov, who languished behind the Iron Curtain for years and his career in the West started very late, having suffered at the hands of that regime, to find all this obstruction to playing in a country he's played in for 18 years is very distressing."

I beg your pardon? I revere some musicians. I would travel - have travelled - to the other side of the world - for concerts and opera. But why should they have the right - as is the implicit demand behind such comments - to be treated any differently from the rest of us? If the poor dears can't cope with the real world, that's tough: for us and for them. But sensitivity and an inability to live in the real world are no good reasons for the law not to apply.

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