Why should I talk to you?

They're tough negotiators, those Afghan Taliban. They knew power, and they relished it, and they intend, against what the West considers to be all odds - to recover it. They will leave no elementary school untouched, no medical clinic untorched, no teachers alive, no women without burqas, no music, no dance, no colourful foliage, no celebratory occasions to the devices of the West; the better to corrupt weak-minded Muslims eager to succumb to the allure of the forbidden.

And, of course, this is the contingent of Muslim scholars, the righteous and the pure of heart with whom Hamid Karzai seeks to sue for peace. Willing, some might hazard the guess - eager - to offer plum government posts to the Taliban as long as he and his cronies too are permitted to remain in power. An unholy alliance in the guise of a pacified and united Islamic agreement to govern Afghanistan wisely and with justice for all.

Muslim women should rejoice, for their patriarchal society has their very best interests - and those of their children - in mind and at heart. It is best that they not be seen in public, and certainly never without all-encompassing shrouds. And it is far preferable that they remain ignorant and unschooled, and their children taught the Koran solely in Arabic which they do not speak nor understand. That is a sufficient curriculum.

Afghan farmers know good agricultural land and the value of food crops as opposed to growing poppy fields, for one type of crop only barely sustains them, while the other brings them cold, hard cash to be used to import food crops from elsewhere. And the poppy, the opium, the heroin, is most helpful in funding the Taliban's exalted leadership, and in feeding the hunger of addiction.

The Taliban are prepared to bargain with the Government of President Hamid Karzai. There are several priorities which must first be attended to. "For the Taliban side it's all about the blacklists and the release of prisoners as a goodwill gesture. Those are the main issues - as well of course as the withdrawal of foreign troops. After that, in the later stages, would be talks about the setting up of a joint government."

Clear on this vital issues? Who is calling the shots? The vanquished and beaten Taliban, that's who. We know they're on the run, NATO so informs us. NATO is also eager to conclude the decade of skirmishes and IED deaths. More than prepared to complete its training of the Afghan police and military, leaving both capable of defending their own country.

Of course it is clear that NATO must leave; above all the American troops, all the combined one hundred thousand foreign troops which together have not been able, with the assistance of Afghanistan's armed forces and police in dissuading the Taliban from their purpose. And it is the Taliban who issue the directive:

"Until you leave my home I don't want to talk with you. You occupied my home, you captured my dignity. Why should I talk to you? To surrender to you?"

Why, why indeed? Canada too, is leaving directly.

Independence Day Congratulations, Zimbabwe

With the world's highest inflation rate, 90% unemployment, and consumer shortages of every conceivable kind from food to medicines, housing and educational opportunities, the former South Rhodesia hasn't gained too much in the last thirty years. It was once considered to be the breadbasket of its continent. It was once thought to be one of the leading countries of Africa, setting out to govern itself in the best traditions of countries free of the yoke of colonialism.

Perhaps elsewhere in the world, but not, certainly, in Africa. Those who present as liberators somehow inevitably turn themselves into vicious tribal tyrants. Not only in Africa, but certainly measurably in Africa. Predictably, the worst human-rights abusers are loath to surrender their authority, and assume that they have the right to rule for their lifetime. As most certainly has been the case with Robert Mugabe who insists he is Zimbabwe.

His administration has given corruption and mismanagement, violence and human rights violations a bad name. Odd that Zimbabwe has a history with North Korea, another human-rights-abusing regime. North Korea's military trained Zimbabwe's Fifth Brigade, which with its newly-professional training behind it, went on to kill 20,000 of its citizens, expunging a rival liberation group of dissidents.

But then tribal predations are never far from the scene anywhere in Africa. With Robert Mugabe's land-seizure policy launched in 2000, targeting the productive farms of white Zimbabweans, killing or throwing white farm families off their legally-owned land and gifting that same land to his war-time cronies who have left the land fallow, President Mugabe guaranteed the cataclysmic loss of valuable agribusiness, leaving his people to starve.

But then, of course, that's what the United Nations is for; its World Food Agency stepped right up to halt the piteous mass starvation with international food aid. Which is also needed by millions of starving North Koreans. Not-so-strange bedfellows. Nor, one must assume, is it so very strange that Zimbabwe has another great and good friend in Iran, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad set to open Zimbabwe's International Trade Fair on April 23.

Robert Mugabe is so admired by some in neighbouring South Africa for his white-cleansing activities in kicking white farmers off their land, that there has been talk about doing the same in South Africa. Not the legitimate government of South Africa; not just yet, but the influential youth, like ANC Youth League leader Julius Melama who adores espousing white hatred, and who advocates 'land redistribution', and who has been invited to come along and sing and dance in Harare.

Iran's crooked 2009 re-election of its president nicely matches that of Zimbabwe's in 2008. That wretched 'democratic' debacle brought in the Southern African Development Community to broker a union between the winning Movement for Democratic Change under Morgan Tsvangerai, with the ZANU-PF, after much heated negotiating and elbow-shoving. Still, Mr. Tsvangerai has not been able to gain the upper hand.

Desperate to save his country from utter ruin under the transitional power-sharing government, his hands are tied by the strength of Mugabe's continuing corrupt manipulations, and Robert Mugabe and his party remain effectively, disastrously, in control. Prime Minister Tsvangerai's efforts have resulted in some relief for his country from utter collapse, but political or constitutional reform remain elusive.

"Torture, harassment and politically-motivated prosecutions of human rights defenders and perceived opponents have persisted, while villagers in parts of Zimbabwe have suffered ceaseless intimidation by supporters of former ruling party ZANU-PF", read a recent report by Amnesty International.

Despite Prime Minister Tsvangerai's best efforts to thwart the continued illegal and horribly deleterious machinations of President Mugabe, he fights an uphill battle. Morgan Tsvangerai has suffered greatly, through illegal arrests, torture beatings, the death of his wife through a suspicious motor accident, the accidental death of a grandchild, yet he battles on to try to save his country.

The latest, an attempt to promulgate a new law: "pernicious racist legislation designed to facilitate the theft of property by an avaricious and venal ZANU-PF-affiliated black elite", was foiled through Mr. Tsvangerai's "nulling and voiding" President Mugabe's attempt to see that all companies invested in Zimbabwe to a value in excess of a half-million dollars would have to 'sell' 51% shares to black Zimbabweans though an "indigenization law".

There will be no hope for this country that once promised so much for its people until the old dictator fades into history; his departure cannot come swiftly enough for Zimbabweans, most of whom have no reason whatever to celebrate their 30th Independence anniversary.

Canada's "Fake Farmers"

So what's a fake farmer? Well, it's a complex situation. But basically a fake farmer is one who applies for a license to grow tobacco; someone say who has a full time job, is an urban dweller, but whose father or uncle for example, owns a farm formerly growing tobacco crops but sworn off because they took advantage of a government offer they couldn't resist.

So the license-taker owns the license, and the father or uncle with the farm uses that license to grow crops he took a buy-out of a quarter-million dollars or more to ensure he would plant other crops.

The Government of Canada was successful, with its anti-smoking efforts in a bid to convince Canadians that the state of their health was important to the government, and since nicotine is known to have truly dreadful effects on the human body, it made good sense to swear off tobacco.

Smoking cessation became another industry. So did the importation of overseas raw tobacco and contraband cigarettes that bypassed government taxation.

In the goodness of their governing hearts government decided to assist farmers to shift to different crops and initiated a buy-out program in recognition of the debt loads many farmers were stifling under. After the federal government reached its settlement with the country's largest tobacco companies over smuggling charges, $400-million in fines were reaped and government decided to plough that money into buy-outs to tobacco farmers.

Of the 1,084 tobacco quota holders a mere 18 were hold-outs, the others taking the payments, through the government's Tobacco Transition Program with some farmers receiving up to $1-million, as incentive to look elsewhere for labouring remuneration. In total the program cost the treasury $286-million.

As a promising 'exit' from the tobacco-growing industry it looked like a win for both government and tobacco farmers.

Those who accepted the buy-out, according to government documents, would not re-enter tobacco production, simple as that. "This program is available to help producers exit the industry, transition to other crops or find new opportunities outside agriculture", went the promotion line by Human Resources Minister Diane Finley.

Something, however, went awry on the way to achieving full success.

There were enough holes discovered by diligent pokers to permit tobacco farmers who accepted the buyout to continue with the business they knew so well. Encouraged by a growing demand from cigarette manufacturers, as matters now stand more tobacco may be harvested in the season to come than the year before, and a whole lot of it coming from farms owned and operated by recipients of buy-out payments.

"The reality of the situation is that tobacco is grown on a tobacco farm and there were no new tobacco farms miraculously created. People who took the buyout are left with farmland that needs something to do, stranded equipment, perhaps stranded debt ... and in this economy they've got to feed their family." This explanation courtesy of the chairman of the Ontario Flue-cured Tobacco Marketing Board.

A spokesman for Agriculture and Agri-food Canada also had something to say about this unfortunate misunderstanding, that the marketing board was expected to implement the licensing regime, the government will conduct audits of buyout recipients, and "Program participants who are found in breach of their commitment will have to repay the assistance, plus interest."

One would think.

Mutant Pig, Anyone?

Well perhaps not quite mutant; rather, biologically engineered. Coming to a dinner plate near you. Perhaps your very own home. We're already eating, in Canada, genetically modified grain crops, so it's only a matter of time, logically, that the livestock-product we consume will also undergo biological alterations to endow them with a wide range of positives for human consumption. Creepy, isn't it?

But genetically engineered pigs are on our horizon. Environment Canada is involved, because the University of Guelph bio-engineers have been hard at work to develop a strain of Yorkshire pigs whose waste is less inimical to the environment. Once the hurdles are cleared under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, it will be up to Health Canada to approve an application submitted by University of Guelph.

After which the Canadian Food Inspection Agency will get in on the act. Aren't we well cared for? Should matters progress as planned, the University of Guelph's break-through in producing what is termed the world's first transgenic animal, the 'Enviropig' may result in a new era in livestock production techniques. The animal in question, or the concept leading to it, was created in 1999 from a piece of mouse DNA introduced into the Yorkshire-breed pigs' chromosomes.

The result is pigs that emit low-phosphorus feces. By the creation of a special composite gene enabling digestion of an otherwise-unavailable form of phosphorus, allowing the pigs to produce manure 30% to 65% lower in phosphorus than that of normal pigs. Which have borne the brunt of environmental accusations that they pollute surface and groundwater, raised in intensive livestock operations.

"The university has successfully satisfied the requirements to allow the line of transgenic pigs to be produced and farmed using appropriate containment procedures. So that's the step we're at right now", Steven Liss, associate vice-president for research at University of Guelph, explained.

"As part of an overall goal, I think it's fair to say, yes, absolutely, the university researchers involved were very driven and passionate about addressing an important environment problem at the same time supporting production of food stock and to bring forward a more sustainable and environmentally friendly option to do that."

The approval process may be a long time in bringing the research to the reality of production. Health Canada and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration may get around eventually to approving the technology and its results, but consumers generally may be more than a little standoffish in their attitudes toward accepting the product.

That'll be one huge hurdle. People don't like to actually think about the fact that the meat products they so enjoy consuming does not, in reality, appear, preparation-ready on supermarket freezer shelves without having first come from a purpose-slaughtered animal. This is not something people like to focus their minds on. It takes away from the appetite.

Digesting the information that the meat they're about to consume is the result of an animal scientifically tampered with may result in the unfortunate focus that will propel people away from enjoying their morning bacon and dinner ham steaks.

Help For Haiti

"The government has had help come from everywhere in the world - and still they don't do nothing for people. They don't do nothing for us", according to a Haitian who didn't mind speaking simple truth. The UN food program is handing out food boxes to starving Haitians. But their provisions are so meagre, so inadequate, that UN aid workers, alarmed by the presence of more starving Haitians than they can accommodate, simply resort to restocking the provisions back on their trucks and leaving the starving masses behind.

The UN has claimed to have fed 50,000 Haitians, when millions are without food and water. And having fed tens of thousands once is hardly anything to celebrate, since those people are in need of ongoing nutrition. The country's own agricultural practises have been inadequate to produce sufficient food to feed itself. Not entirely their fault, since North American agricultural products, well subsidized by the U.S. and Canada to benefit their own, dump their produce in Haiti, undercutting native producers.

Colonialism is a thing of the past, and just as well, since it isn't a nice thing at all to impose your presumed needs and entitlements upon the backs of the impoverished and the helpless. So the many special textile-goods-producing factories set up in Haiti in a bland attempt to produce more paying jobs for Haitians produced workers paid a pittance, insufficient as a living wage, doing nothing to alleviate poverty. Their nicely-produced tee-shirts went abroad, selling well and profiting investors.

Yesterday an international donors conference was convened in Montreal, where foreign ministers and other governmental executives from the developed world showed up to pledge support for the miserable country and its needs-abandoned people. "If Canada and America want to do something for Haiti, don't give the money to the government because they are going to take it and steal it", said one Haitian.

"Come and give us the houses. Otherwise people will still be on the streets. The mass population won't have the chance to take part in these new villages. The government will choose their friends to put in it. Preval has done zero for us, nothing. The duty of the government is that, whenever something bad happens in a country, they are supposed to be responsible for what happened. But this government doesn't care about what happened".

Haitian President Rene Preval begs to differ from the opinion of this Haitian ingrate. "The presidential palace has fallen. The parliament has fallen. The palace of justice has fallen. Most government buildings have been destroyed with all their records. Yet we are making progress, and the people know it", he said defying popular opinion. In his defence, his wife points out "he's constantly in meetings" with the U.S. military and the UN, helping to guide relief efforts.

And at the Montreal meeting there was general agreement among donor countries that the task ahead is an onerous one but a necessary one; to pull together to bring the country out of its crisis. "It is a shared task, but it must be led by Haitians", said Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. They're in charge, it's their country. Pity they found it impossible to discharge their duties adequately even before the devastation of the earthquake.

Representatives of 14 countries forming an alliance, "friends of Haiti", assembled at that ministerial preparatory conference. To plan ongoing rescue and recovery and longer-term reconstruction. Not that great sums of countries' treasuries haven't prior to this been bestowed upon this poor country. And have, in the final analysis produced little of value for Haitians, 80% of whom live below the poverty line.

Want to help Haiti? Stop propping up useless governments. Insist on accountability for funds transferred to the government. Pledge to assist the country to return to a robust agronomy base; keep foreign-grown-subsidized produce out of the country. Make adequate investments to produce decent, well-paying industrial jobs for the vast demographic of the under- and unemployed. Help build schools to tutor adults in literacy as well as children.

Help the country re-forest itself, and teach rural dwellers other methods of energy-production for heating and cooking. Drop the imposition of quotas and duties on Haitian-produced imports. Help urban dwellers who are jobless to return to the rural areas and resume traditional farming.

African Agriculture

After Asia, Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populated continent, covering 6% of the world's surface area. Nine hundred million people live in 53 countries in this huge continent. Both Asia and Africa were colonized by European countries, and their natural resources exploited to profit countries like Britain, France, Holland. With the withdrawal of colonial overmasters, and the independence of the countries of Africa after 500 years of foreign exploitation, Africa is still the largest recipient of food aid world-wide.

With its vast land mass and arable land, Africans haven't seemed to be able to cultivate the land in a way that would see them feeding themselves. Despite independence, their rulers are still amenable to making natural resources available to huge Western and European industries through mineral and precious metals and gems extraction, profiting few in Africa itself. It seems that only white farmers in Africa who had succeeded, through the years of colonial rule to amass huge tracts of land, have been capable of providing agricultural stability, enabling many countries to adequately feed themselves.

When Robert Mugabe enacted his land distribution process, violently wrenching land, without due process of law, from white land-owners who had farmed the land they had amassed for generations, employing countless black Zimbabweans as farm workers, the economy of the country went into collapse, and food became scarce. South Africa has now begun its embarkation on a like mission for land distribution, without the violent upheaval. And white South African farmers are anticipating that they will have to look elsewhere for arable land to be profitably farmed.

But it isn't just Zimbabwe and South Africa in agricultural transition. Many countries in Africa are now earning petro dollars, drilling for oil, in a consortium with international oil companies, and this is where attention has turned, neglecting farmland that once was intensively farmed, feeding their people. Other countries have turned to Africa to themselves invest in renting former agricultural land laying fallow, from the United Kingdom in Angola, Saudi Arabia in Sudan and Ethiopia, Qatar in Kenya and China in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This new initiative puts cash infusions into the countries' treasuries and in the pockets of government officials, but it doesn't trickle down to the population who are perennially short of food, and have to pay more than their income can sustain for imported food. South Africa's white farmers, represented by their union, Agri SA, have begun a deal with Republic of Congo to lease up to 200,000 (for starters) hectares of under-utilized Congo farmland to grow corn, soybeans and to raise poultry.

Agri SA has looked at offers of land leases from 17 African countries, opening negotiations with Angola, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia and Sudan, for prime production land. This can conceivably be a positive element in the future of agriculture in Africa, on the part of white South African farmers. In the end, benefiting the countries where the agricultural pursuits are taking place. Far less so when countries like China, the U.K. Qatar, Saudi Arabia invest in their own pursuits to ensure that the populations of their own countries have sufficient food through agriculture undertaken in Africa.

It puts no food on the table for millions of Africans already in a perilous state of insufficient food production, and needful of assistance from the international community to stave off starvation. It's past time for African countries to recognize the enormity of their need and their responsibility to their populations. And to move with determination to encourage large-scale farming on their own, undertaken by their own citizens, to benefit their own populations.

Intentions - Results

A Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Norman Borlaug, an American born of Norwegian parents who emigrated to the United States in the early years of the 20th Century. That Nobel laureate has died, age 95. He was the founder of the Green Revolution, and was awarded countless international awards for his research in developing a new variety of wheat that produced a high-yield hybrid of high quality, enabling agrarians to feed far greater numbers of people than ever before.

Two years before his death he was awarded the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal. At a time when his great discovery led to an incredible wheat production in parts of the world whose people were starving, he was lionized and feted. Now his great achievement as a botanist is questioned by environmentalists. And yet, as a result of his research, he was said to have been responsible for saving more lives than any other person who ever lived.

Not yet out of his teens, still a farm boy, he signed up for a national agency whose purpose was to combat poverty and despair, at a time of worldwide poverty and despair; the Great Depression. At work on a joint project supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican Government in an attempt to increase Mexico's poor wheat harvests, Norman Borlaug experimented with a dwarf variety of wheat and was able to finally produce a high-yield, high-quality hybrid whose success surprised everyone, including himself.

Mexico's insufficient wheat crop became a sad story of the past. India and Pakistan soon found themselves self-sufficient in wheat, no longer dependent on imports. By the time the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Mr. Borlaug 40 million hectares of land internationally was used for hybrid wheat cultivation, representing ten% of the global agricultural landscape.

Futurists' dooms-day predictions of mass starvation in economically emerging areas of the world, were denied by this new reality.

Africa appears not to have been able to take full advantage of the Green Revolution, because of its ongoing political instability, its constant tribal wars, and then finally the emergence of environmentalism in the West, through which the mono-culture of one specific type of grain became suspect and finally was decried as inimical to humanity's future. The decline of crop diversity was bemoaned and decried as an agricultural evil brought upon the world.

Mono cultures were more susceptible to destruction from plant viral agents, disease and pests. The emerging biotechnology that Norman Borlaug championed as the way of the future and the salvation of humankind from food scarcity, was given an environmental black eye. But instead of outright condemning agricultural practises that have great merit along with some discrediting faults, why not practise all methods of food production that prove to be successful?

Something called moderation; not being dependent on one single source, but many, inclusive of a multitude of successful agricultural practises.

African Misfortune Abounds

Except for the suffering of the people, things are relatively quiet in Zimbabwe, even while Morgan Tsvangerai's supporters still face the rough justice of Robert Mugabe, who manages still to evade the implementation of power sharing with the result that there will be none in the international community willing to invest in the country's future. It proved too inconvenient for the SADC summit in the DRC to discuss this matter, urgent for Zimbabwe and its starving people.

And over in East Africa there is the deaths-head spectre of mass starvation looming large, with an estimated twenty million Africans on the verge of extreme privation. Crop failures, drought, regional conflict and political storms appear to have become the norm in Africa. Ongoing battles between Islamists and the inept and weak government in Somalia sees half of its population in need of food assistance.

Child malnutrition is rampant; over a half-million people have been made refugees by the fighting in Somalia only since the spring, bringing the total to one and a half million refugees. Living in squalid camps without water, sanitation or medical care in camps in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. One camp alone in Kenya centralizes 300,000 refugees, in a situation described as "barely fit for humans".

Post-election violence in Kenya, which resulted in a political coalition just barely more successful than that of Zimbabwe, spelled out future problems, resulting internally displaced people, and a failure to plant crops, exacerbated by drought conditions that followed - with the war in Somalia creating like conditions, gracing Kenya with even more desperate refugees.

UNICEF has warned the international community that a third of the 250,000 Somali children under age five are a risk of death, exposed to disease and privation in the crude refugee camps in Somalia, a region threatened by ongoing drought. In Ethiopia, ten million people face extreme food shortages, with almost five million requiring food assistance.

Africa, will you ever be capable of disciplining yourself to care humanely for your dependents?

Mangan ora Mangan.. yang Penting Merkantilis

Selama tiga hari berturut-turut Kompas memuat berita terpuruknya sektor pertanian Indonesia. Setuju, peningkatan produksi dan peningkatan pendapatan petani memang perlu diperjuangkan. Sederet masalah sisi produksi masih menghambat petani kita. Fluktuasi harga menjadi momok petani sementara akses bibit, modal, dan teknologi juga menjadi penghambat daya saing produk pertanian.

Kompas juga tepat mengagkat isu dis-integrasi ekonomi domestik ketika kondisi ekonomi eksternal sedang kacau. Tantangan geografis kita sebagai negara kepulauan menyebabkan segmentasi pasar dan terbatasnya economies of scale sehingga menjadi salah satu kendala pertumbuhan ekonomi. Sulit membayangkan perekonomian Indonesia bisa tumbuh seperti China karena kita punya hambatan infrastruktur. Oleh karena itu, meningkatkan integrasi pasar domestik sebaiknya menjadi salah satu acuan Kabinet ekonomi mendatang.

Tetapi konten sentimen anti-impor yang ditulis Kompas tiga hari berturut-turut membuat saya heran. Apakah pemahanam para penulis teresebut terhadap ilmu ekonomi makin melorot? Mudah-mudahan tidak. Tetapi artikel Kompas tersebut rasanya sudah "terjebak" dalam pemikiran merkantilisme abad ke 18 yang menganggap impor suatu kejahatan dan penumpukan devisa di dalam negeri sebagai barometer prestasi ekonomi.

Artikel tersebut menuliskan bahwa Indonesia telah "terjebak impor pangan" karena impornya yang kira-kira mencapai $5 milyar per tahun. Konten berita juga mengesankan perlunya "kebijakan berani" untuk swasembada produksi.

Saya tidak ingin masuk ke teknis ekonomi pertanian, tetapi saya ingin mempertanyakan beberapa hal yang muncul dalam artikel artikel tersebut.

Pertama mengenai impor dan devisa. Memang kita mengimpor sebagian pangan dan total nilai impor 2008 mencapai $5 milyar. Dari mulai gula, kedelai, dan komoditas pertanian lain yang kita juga produsen seperti ikan tertentu Indonesia pun mengiimpor.

Yang tidak ditulis Kompas adalah total ekspor non-migas Indonesia tahun 2008 mencapai $107 milyar. Ekspor produk perkebunan, pertanian dan perikanan Indonesia di tahun itu saja juga mencapai $29 milyar dan $21 milyar tergolong komoditas pangan (termasuk sawit, teh, kopi, perikanan). Lalu kalau kita impor pangan $5 milyar, apakah ini sesuatu yang mencemaskan bagi negara dengan penduduk lebih dari 250 juta jiwa dan termasuk dalam 20 negara dengan PDB terbesar?

Betul, impor menggunakan devisa dan ekspor mendatangkan devisa. Tetapi apakah perekonomian akan lebih baik dengan hanya mengumpulkan devisa? Penumpukan devisa hanya akan mengakibatkan Rupiah terapresiasi dan akhirnya malah menurunkan daya saing produk ekspor. Memang, salah satu cara menghindari masalah ini adalah dengan meniru China yang menukarkan sebagian penerimaan devisa ekspor kedalam aset asing (seperti US Treasury). Tetapi ini juga yang mengakibatkan ketidakseimbangan global yang pada akhirnya memicu krisis keuangan saat ini.

Kedua, apakah keberhasilan adalah jika apapun dapat disediakan sendiri? Apakah para penulis artikel tersebut belum pernah mendengar istilah intra-industry trade?

Contohnya begini. Mengapa negara produsen keju seperti Belanda masih mengimpor keju dari Perancis? Arab Saudi pun masih mengimpor kurma dari Tunisia atau negara Arab lainnya. Australia sebagai penghasil wool terbesar masih mengimpor kain wool atau jas ketimbang menjahit semuanya sendiri. Mengapa Eropa sebagai penghasil Airbus masih membeli pesawat Boeing, Embraer, atau produk IPTN? Jepang, sebagai produsen mobil dunia masih mengimpor Daihatsu Grand Max dari Indonesia. Lalu mengapa Amerika sebagai penghasil kedelai, gandum, dan produk teknologi tinggi masih mau impor kecap ABC dan Indomie dari kita?

Perdagangan membuka pintu bagi spesialisasi produksi sehingga produsen bisa mengeksploitasi skala ekonomi dan keunggulan komparatif nya. Perdaganan juga memungkinkan terjadinya spesialisasi produksi yang memberikan keuntungan terbesar. Ini kredo dasar teori ekonomi yang saya tidak temukan setelah membaca artikel-artikel tersebut.

Ketiga, apakah "kebijakan berani" itu berarti proteksi, subsidi, atau tata niaga? Kalau maksudnya proteksi, tidak ada gunanya untuk dibahas karena ilmunya sudah jelas. Kalau proteksi tersebut untuk mengurangi ketidakadilan karena subsidi pertanian negara-negara maju, jalankan saja mekanisme safeguard WTO secara transparan dan bukan lewat larangan ad-hoc. Kita tinggal perlu membuktikan kalau subsidi impor produk pertanian tertentu membawa akibat desktruktif oleh karena itu bea masuk perlu dinaikkan.

Kalau subsidi, saya setuju tinggal pertanyaanya mekanisme subsidi bagaimana desain subsidi yang tepat. Apakah meniru subsidi pertanian di Eropa atau Amerika yang terjebak oleh lobi politik? Apakah sebaiknya terarah (targeted) kepada petani atau dalam bentuk irigasi, bibit, dan extension services? Dengan perbaikan infrastruktur fisik, rasanya produk pertanian kita juga bisa kompetitif di dalam negeri. Miris rasanya kalau betul marjin keuntungan mengimpor jeruk China bisa lebih tinggi ketimbang mendatangkan jeruk Medan atau Pontianak.

Bagiamana dengan tata niaga? Kecuali beras yang memang punya bobot besar (22%) dalam konsumsi rumah tangga miskin, sulit menjustifikasi perlunya tata niaga untuk produk pertanian lain. Tata niaga dapat mendistorsi sinyal harga dan meningkatkan resiko petani terjebak dalam produksi komoditas tertentu saja. Katakanlah kita memaksakan adanya tata niaga kedelai. Bisa jadi harga kedelai naik secara artifisial sehingga petani tidak dibiarkan menanam produk dengan harga yang menarik seperti holtikultur (sayuran dan buah-buahan).

Keempat mengenai ketahanan pangan. I'm not an agriculture economist but why the concept of food security seems narrowly focused on the ability to produce rather on securing the ability to access food?

African Agony

There will never, it seems, be an end to African need. So many of the countries of that sad continent remain mired in clan and tribal foment and distrust, hatred and vengeance to be acted out, one against the other.

Reconciliation does not appear a possibility between adversaries. In the spring election in Kenya President Mwai Kibaki refused to acknowledge the declared win of his closest rival for president, Raila Odinga, unleashing tribal brutality, displacing farmers and villagers who had become targets for the supporters of Mr. Kibaki. Mr. Kibaki remains president, Mr. Odinga has become prime minister. And they stumble along.

It was feared then that the opportunity to plant crops in a largely agrarian society, would be lost due to the post-election turmoil. And then, brutal fighting in Somalia, with the weak government forces attempting to foil the intent of their rival Islamists have sent desperate Somalians into Kenya, attempting to escape the horrors of war in their country, itself in a collapsed state of non-governance.

Now, famine stalks east Africa, with drought year-over-year resulting in poor to non-existent harvests, and an estimated ten million people - according to the Red Cross - facing hunger and starvation. The World Food Program's country director in Kenya warns that "People are already going hungry, malnutrition is preying on more and more young children, cattle are dying. We face a huge challenge."

Emergency funding of $230-million is sought to feed an estimated 1.2 million victims of the growing famine. This, in addition to the 2.6 million Kenyans already being fed by the WFP. Failing food production, a lack of government will and dedication to importing the staples people require to ensure human health.

While Africa desperately needs an infusion of corn, the West has been busy planting corn for bio-energy. Bio-energy starts, and should end with feeding people, not operating vehicles. But that is another story altogether, of course.

Africans are hoping that the seasonal rains will not disappoint. The UN's Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit has also warned that half of Somalia's population is in dire need of humanitarian aid. The country's security situation has entirely collapsed, convulsed by a a power struggle that has no compassion for the people it sacrifices.

Africa: will it ever become possible for it to present as a civil, responsible, self-reliant and just human environment? The wealthy countries of the world feel the compulsion to respond to the need of the Continent to fend for itself, to feed its population, although African governments themselves rarely succumb to that compulsion. Government officials skim off for themselves funding meant to lift their people out of need.

One supposes that as long as the countries of Africa feel entitled to anticipate that other countries have a moral and ethical obligation to rescue them, time and again, year over year, they need be in no rush to become independently responsible for their own advance into a future of self-service. Human avarice trumps humanity yet again.

Our Daily Bread

And we think that food prices are high now? And the United Nations is warning of the stress that under-developed countries are experiencing given the global down-turn and the rising price of food? And we're informed that refugees' plight requiring attention from the developed world to ensure that mass starvation doesn't overtake good intentions means that more funding will be required to deliver basic food to those masses?

The most basic, elemental and fundamental type of food, bread, may soon become unavailable to larger segments of society than ever before. Simply due to scarcity. Unless food scientists, chemists and biologists somehow discover a fail-proof way of ensuring that crop-destructive fungi don't destroy our ability to provision ourselves with the wheat the world needs. It's like the worst-case scenario of limiting ourselves to mono-crops.

Where, with heritage types of fruits and vegetables having been whittled down in importance to certain single crops and specialized crops that have been genetically altered to make them more impervious to insect predation and infestations, suddenly have the potential to fatally succumb to another of nature's unpredictable scourges. And without diversity, other crops that might be impervious to that ravaging scourge, we're left without any.

Now, news of an air-borne fungus named Ug99 that has begun to devastate wheat crops in eastern Africa, on its way into the Middle East and Central Asia. It has, thus far, proven unstoppable. A destructive fungus that begins as a 'rust' presence on the stem of plants and saps the life-cycle, destroying the properties that make wheat able to mature to a human-digestible form of food.

Scientists are genuinely worried that without a breakthrough enabling them to successfully combat the onslaught of the fungus, it will make its way to the wheat-fecund, breadbasket regions of North America, Russia and China. The United Nations has identified Ug99 as "a major threat" to world food security. This stem rust disease is proving to be universally devastating.

Fungus spores attach to the stalk of a wheat plant emitting a reddish-brown rust colour pustule that grows, taking over the plant's nutrient and water system for its own growth, instead of enabling the plant to mature to become a human-edible grain. The problem of 'rust' is not new, but this is a new strain, one that is expected to mutate enabling it to attack all wheat types; spring, winter and durum.

Traditionally food scientists have taken to developing new wheat strains when new rust-causing fungi develop by introducing resistant genes into wheat plants. The process, however, can take a dozen years to develop new pest-resistant wheat variants. And the spread of this Ug99 rust has advanced exponentially, to the point where scientists don't have the leisure of time.

"Resource-poor farmers are particularly vulnerable to wheat-stem disease, which has the potential to wipe out entire crops", according to the director of agricultural development for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which has set up the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project at Cornell University.

According to the executive director of the Alberta Winter Wheat Producers Commission there is little or no research money poured into wheat. "This is one of the concerns that a lot of grower groups have. Cereals haven't had research dollars spent on them because there's more of an attractive pull into corn and soybeans, just because of the return on investment."

It's been left to governments to fund research in North America, to develop new wheat strains. Here's hoping governments become sufficiently infused with the sense of urgency that food scientists are themselves reeling under. Much depends on it.

News, Daunting and Trivial

We see it so often, the peculiar and often insane juxtaposition of news items on a page of the newspaper, one urgently upsetting, the other just plain trivial in nature. Page A2 of today's paper, a national newspaper no less, three columns and a number of large photographs of beautiful people in a glitzy setting, raving on about the Emmys. Which inane television program and its untalented but attractive stars will be chosen for U.S. television's highest awards.

I think to myself: people care? They read this stuff? They take all this nonsense seriously? It matters to them?

Directly next to that breathless article, a single column, page-long, devoted to China's latest food atrocity: Government negligence and corporate greed leading to serious contamination of yet another food source. Not just any food source, but milk and milk products, the primary consumers of which are mostly children. And, it appears, authorities in the country had knowledge of the tampering of milk products before this outbreak resulting in countless children becoming seriously ill.

The World Health Organization has taken the country to task for its laggardly response to this new crisis in confidence. Sometimes governing bodies are more complacent than they should be. When it comes to food safety and production in China there have been more than enough scandals to ensure that those in whose care the safety of the indigenous food supply, let alone that shipped regularly to global destinations, should be reliable and safe.

Food safety is so fundamental to the needs of any society, one might imagine, obviously wrongly here, that it takes precedence over so many other issues of social regulation. But then, even a country like Canada which prides itself on its record of food safety for the consuming public comes up against the hard fact that safe procedures are sometimes not sufficiently hygienic to ensure complete safety from deadly bacterium.

But in Canada's case, with the recent recall of cold cut meats, the Listeria outbreak was occasioned by food safety laxity in a stringent environment which demands better. In the tainted milk scandal unfolding in China today - the dreadful incidence of thousands of children falling ill as a result of ingesting milk products to which melamine, a type of plastic agent, has been added - it was the result of deliberate and industry-wide corruption.

Melamine was deliberately added to dried milk powder, to ice creams, to yogurts and liquid milk because it mimics the presence of protein in chemical tests. Something that industry producers and even farmers resorted to in an effort to conceal their watering-down of the original milk product to obtain a higher profit margin. In the process endangering the lives of consumers, and most bitterly, the lives of babies.

The situation has sent shock waves outside China as well, since a number of companies, including the Swiss conglomerate Nestle, manufactures their products in China, using Chinese-derived milk products, of course, for sale and distribution in the Far East. Although they steadfastly maintain that they exercise the same level of product maintenance and quality control in China as they do elsewhere, it's clear their guard was down.

Melamine added to milk and milk products has the potential to cause urinary conditions, including kidney stones. And it was discovered to be present in baby formula. There is a mass recall underway, but there is also a mass stampede of frantic parents taking their young children to hospitals. The hospitals identifying cases of mild impaction, readily remedied, and other, far more serious instances of infants' kidneys being destroyed.

Along with a number of deaths. All avoidable, with a measure of due diligence to food safety. Yet, we're informed that this situation is not unique, not new, but that the consumer and safety irregularities had been in place for years. Which translates to the country's consumer protection agencies either being ignorant of the problem, or incapable of stemming it.

A New Zealand dairy with a joint venture with China's worst dairy offender has been aware, it would appear, for a considerable length of time that a catastrophe in food safety was brewing. Their overtures to the government, and requests for a recall had been ignored. China is such a huge country, with an immense population and a gigantic array of industries. Corruption is known to be rife.

There have long been accusations levelled against the government that it is not upholding its most vital duty to the population, in ensuring safety of the food supply available to its people. The government, although purporting to have the best interests of its people at heart, seems comfortable ignoring such problems until they become an international horror story.

China, so long insulated against the world outside its borders, has latterly become consumed with the desire to throw its doors open to the world, to proudly demonstrate how much has been accomplished in bringing the country prosperity, how it has been able to challenge the apprehension of the outside world of China as a political backwater, a socially challenged and materially deprived country.

A huge financial investment, along with a political one, was made in the production of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. A proud, efficient, capable and wealthy country showed off its consummate ability to entertain the world at large and to burnish its reputation as a surging world power.

This is China's statement to the world. It is functionally incapable of focusing on the vital matters of providing safe and reliable food to its population, through the neglect of a bored, corruption-prone bureaucracy. Yet it can muster its huge talents and careful designs to stagger the world with its precise and practised artifice.

Much like the juxtaposition of news items; the dread with the drear.

Saving Subsidies

It's a tough call, isn't it? Every country needs its primary food producers, its farmers to thrive. What is a country without a viable agricultural base? When push comes to shove, it's the farmers, the producers of the country's food that should be of primary concern; that they are able to work the land, produce the food that the population requires, enabling a country to be reliant on the most vital of its internal food sources.

There are so relatively few people in developing countries still farming in the traditional way. The family farm is still there, but barely hanging on. In under-developed countries farming is a subsistence occupation, albeit a highly critical one. The farms of today are largely huge corporate affairs which have succeeded in sheer scale of purchase-power and crop yield through the use of mono crops and ability to transport yields internationally.

Countries of the world, recognizing the vital importance of a needed farming demographic, give subsidies to their farmers as encouragement, as guarantees of sustainability through state economic support. At times subsidies result in situations where successful yields equate with an over-abundance and farmers can be paid not to produce. Control is the issue; supply management.

There's another issue, that of international farming groups reaching agreement with developing nations to grow crops not generally grown for internal consumption; meant specifically for export. The national governing body reaps the benefit while the people see no benefit; land traditionally used to grow crops for home consumption given over to export yields.

The 9-day Doha round of talks in Geneva just concluded won no hard concessions from the gathered 153 countries represented by the World Trade Organization. The original aim was to help the poor nations of the world enter markets where they have been locked out due to farm subsidy protectionism by developed countries.

In the end the industrialized countries couldn't agree to give up their agriculture tariffs and subsidies.

Canada's position represented a philosophical conflict, if not a downright ingenuous hypocrisy. It's all for helping developing countries, but remained resolute that it would not surrender its protectionist policies that ensure dairy, poultry and egg farmers are well protected from cheaper imports. The government position was opposed by the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance which represents export-oriented sectors.

But the government had the last word. Despite that its position actually harms Canada's credibility in asserting it's prepared to bring down barriers in trade. Canada's a bit player, however, and it really came down to the United States and India, the real heavy-hitters, along with China, which balked at coming to mutual agreement.

India called for lower import surge levels to protect their millions of poor farmers from starvation. That didn't suit exporters. The United States is ardent about its farm subsidies, particularly on cotton. Trade restraint measures didn't fly. Common sense doesn't always prevail as countries do what they have always done; circle the wagons to fend off potential inroads by interests other than their own.

'Tis the way of the world.

Meeting Lofty Standards

There's that about the European Union; in a concerted effort to remove differences, to broaden opportunities and level the playing field, everything is regulated, every country held to the same rigid standards of performance and production. Complete uniformity is the order of the EU, and let no one think otherwise. In the process of meeting those standards, ages-old production methods, tried and true and representing pride of accomplishment are abandoned.

That's one of the prices to pay for standardization, for insisting on an unassailable level of neutralized conformity whose purpose is to strengthen unity, and present a common facade to the world at large. Mind, a whole lot of people thought they were going a little too far, taking things to extremes when agricultural standards became rigidly imposed on the entire unit. Standards that would impose perfection of shape and size, for example on the shapes of fruits and vegetables.

Crooked cucumbers? Discard, immediately, not up to standard. Carrots resembling a forked tongue, horrors, never! Bananas too awkwardly and suggestively curved - into the compost bin! Discard, discard...! Selectivity for perfection of aesthetic appearance, let alone standards for taste and transportability make for a very testy market, with farmers no doubt cursing shape-obsessed bureaucratic decision-making.

And then, and then, the impracticality of all that wasted food suddenly impales the European Union on the painful stench of waste through its absurd search for perfection in a world suddenly discovering itself to be in the throes of an acute food shortage. As of almost now, the European Commission will take steps to reform its strict governing on such vital matters as the uniformity of leek colouration, and the shape and size of melons.

Britain, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Germany are all for reform of the rigid standards, while France, Spain, Italy and a few others are on the opposition end of the spectrum. In the meantime, the prevailing strictness of the standards are such that thousands of tons of fruit and vegetables are discarded annually because of an unsupportable, perceived inadequacy in conformation.

So farmers toss tons of cherries, onions, peas, plums and spinach, along with a host of other fresh-grown market edibles. Market traders, even if they proceed to bring these "inadequate" types of produce to market find themselves black-listed because their sale is disallowed by current regulations, and they've no choice but to swallow sales losses. Kiwi smaller than allowed? Ditch them.

The light of reason has dawned. "In these days of high food prices, it's silly to throw stuff away", claims a spokesperson for the commission, now. "It doesn't make sense." Well, the question they might be asking themselves is, did it ever make sense? Was it ever less than a waste? Did it ever represent anything but arrogant condescension to consumers' needs?

With the clout of the EU and their sanctimonious agonizing over world food shortages, why wasn't this food, ostensibly not good enough for sale, shipped to where it could be used, by food-desperate people? Those whose governments have had to brace themselves against the desperate anger of hunger expressed through food riots. This isn't a generous gesture, to offer excess or unwanted food, it's a prime obligation.

Facing reality and owning up to senseless bureaucratic stupidity, the commission should shamefacedly allow that it's criminally absurd to discard tomatoes, apples, pears, strawberries, lettuce and kiwi fruit because of a perceived lack of aesthetic appeal. When even minimum standards aren't met in conformation, these foods can't even be sold as second-class produce.

To do so would reflect poorly on the truly ridiculous standards that the European Commission has imposed on itself. Ech! Waste not, want not.

Government Getting It Right

When it comes to making good legislation, the Conservative government in Canada is quietly going about its efficient business of enacting new rules and regulations whose end result protects the health and welfare of Canadians.

Long past due, these responsible initiatives. When the world began to worry about the quality and trustworthiness of food and hygiene products, as well as toys and jewellery coming out of China, contaminated with people-averse chemicals, we knew we had a problem.

Well, it's not just lead-based paints on children's toys, and lead used in the manufacture of inexpensive jewellery, and rat poison in dog and cat food, and toothpaste laced with cancer-causing ingredients, but a whole raft of other issues as well.

Issues by no means emanating solely from Chinese imports. Rather, manufacturers of products based in Canada and elsewhere who have been taking short-cuts, who have seen little amiss in risking the health of the consuming public to enhance their bottom line.

So the government initiated tough new rules for toy product recalls, heavier penalties for shoddy manufacturing of common goods, and increased safety inspection protocols in defence of the consuming public.

Yet another initiative taken by the current government to identify and label as toxic chemicals elements commonly used in products such as chewing gum, cosmetics, hygiene products, and even silicone breast implants.

Eleven such chemicals (out of thousands used in various products) have been isolated, including Vinyl acetate, a carcinogen used as a base in chewing gum. Cancer-causing agents heedlessly included in products used on a daily basis by people unaware of their potentially harmful effects.

Additionally, there are some synthetic chemicals whose use may be eliminated entirely because of their potentially harmful effects on the environment. These are synthetic chemicals used in the preparation of cleaning compounds, cosmetics and shampoos, creams, lotions and antiperspirants. All in the name of protecting the Canadian consumer.

And when retailers became aware that the government was on the verge of banning polycarbonate-containing baby bottles and water bottles, the big box retailers took the initiative themselves of clearing their shelves of such potentially harmful wares. From Wal Mart to Canadian Tire, from Mountain Equipment Co-op to small retailers, these containers quickly disappeared.

Bisphenol A, linked to developmental problems in young children, will no longer be permitted in items produced for children.

And then there's the latest, long-awaited and long-overdue move to ensure that goods and products labelled "Made in Canada" really are just that. It's not just food products, but all manner of consumer goods, from clothing to household goods. If they were packaged in Canada, but produced elsewhere, or one small addition made to the product added in Canada, the "Made in Canada" label might be there.

Consumers selecting "Made in Canada" products on trust were not really deep-thinking when they bought food items with that label when the country wasn't capable of growing those products. Canada doesn't grow olives, we don't harvest cocoa beans. As Prime Minister Harper pointed out when making his announcement: "The truth is that products marked "Product of Canada" or "Made in Canada" may not be very Canadian at all.

"A bottle of apple juice could have a 'Made in Canada' label on it and be made from apples from China. Chocolate may say 'Product of Canada', but the cocoa beans come from the Ivory Coast. You may even find a 'Product of Canada' label on a box of salmon from Russia." Or China, as the case may be.

Fact is, if goods are shipped loose, then packaged here, there was no regulation that stipulated country of origin had to be stated at all. Now it's full Canadian content before that label can be slapped on, under new legislation.

Under these new regulations products are required to be domestically grown or produced to qualify for a "Product of Canada" label. A disclaimer clearly stating that some of the contents are imported must appear on products with foreign materials included, relating to goods bearing the "Made in Canada" label.

At least the public will be informed, and will be able to make choices based on information provided. It's empowering, and about time. The same holds true for Canadian producers, who will now benefit from the fact that the consuming public more eager now than ever before to buy home-grown and/or produced products will see an increase in their product demand.

About time, and thank you very much.

The International Food Crisis

The causes are many and they are varied. From protectionism, biofuel production, disastrous growing conditions; droughts and floods, to increased demands for a shrinking base product. But United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been forced to establish an international task force to ensure the world's hungry can be fed. The food crisis threatens to become global, and it has already created riots on what is considered an unprecedented scale.

Wealthy countries of the world are being encouraged to hand over more ready cash to ensure that the World Food Program can meet immediate needs. Canada, already the world's second-largest donor to the program after the United States, has today increased its pledge from $150-million to $200-million. As the largest distributor of emergency food aid, the WFP fears that 100-million people now face dire food shortages.

Rioting in Haiti has riveted world attention on that poorest of poor countries, forever in political and social ferment. A dozen people have died as a result of rioting in Yemen. Indonesia has increased subsidies to assuage public anger over high food prices. Farmers in poor countries who cannot afford fertilizer costs at the best of times now see the price rising beyond their reach.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Bank are becoming involved in offering millions to farmers in badly-affected countries in hopes of increasing food production, and to assist in the purchase of seeds. Lending by the World Bank to Africa for agriculture is to be doubled. The World Bank president says export bans by producing countries are serving to increase shortages.

Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, China, Cambodia and India, all major grain-exporting countries have imposed export restrictions. These are panic reactions to rising food costs and growing scarcity. Controls which have been imposed in countries like Russia, Ukraine and Argentina are singled out as encouraging hoarding, driving up prices and ultimately harming the poorest in the world.

In the Philippines, government troops armed with M-16 rifles supervise the sale of subsidized rice. Police enforce a presidential decree outlawing food hoarding. Pakistan has ordered troops to guard flour mills. Protests have been occurring in Mexico, Jordan, Egypt, Mozambique and other countries facing shortages.

Because of the biofuels initiative by the European Union, the United States and Canada, farmers have turned to growing crops for ethanol production, diverting their lands from food-crop production. Ironically, while previously grain farmers were receiving just enough pay-back from their efforts to get by, they're now becoming wealthy on biofuel crops.

In parts of Latin America, peasants and indigenous peoples are being turned off their land for agribusiness to take over, growing crops so that "people in rich countries can feed their cars" according to Javiera Rulli, a biologist turned human rights defender in Paraguay. "Farmers in our countries pay with their blood. The grain used to fill one SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year."

Yet, according to EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, "There is no question for now of suspending the target fixed for [use of] biofuels." Brazil is the world's largest exporter of ethanol made from sugar cane, and its president, Lula de Silva claims: "Biofuels aren't the villain that threatens food security. The real crimes against humanity are discarding biofuels ..."

Malawi plans to restrict corn exports, Kazakhstan has banned wheat exports - it is the world's largest wheat exporter. India has stopped the export of non-basmati rice, peas and beans. To our great discredit, the United States and Canada remain committed to their programs promoting biofuel production and subsidizing biofuels in their effort to fight carbon emissions.

Yet a worldwide survey of a thousand scientists discovered a low level of trust in biofuels as a response to our environmental problems. Solar power remains the most-favoured low-carbon technology.

It's amazing how government bureaucrats and elected officials can seek feverishly for answers to vexing problems, and come up with solutions that are not well-balanced, whose repercussions are never fully realized, yet they cling to them, despite obvious symptoms of failure.