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While India is dismantling its farmer support programs, China is promising to increase the minimum purchase price it offers to grain producers.
Why are the two states responding so differently to the pressures imposed by Western agribusiness interests?
Why are the two states responding so differently to the pressures imposed by Western agribusiness interests?
Both China and India have long had their agricultural subsidies attacked as "unfair trade" practices by Western agribusiness interests at the World Trade Organization. This conflict played a significant role in bringing the WTO Doha round of trade talks to a standstill
In recent years, Western states and agribusiness have increased the pressure on both China and India to reduce their support for farmers, especially via the minimum support price. https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/agri-business/price-support-for-grains-wto-rules-against-chinas-scheme/article26404412.ece
It is interesting to note that thought the Trudeau government in Canada angered the Indian government with its suggestion of support for the farmers protests, Canada has nonetheless been quite involved in pushing for China and India to dismantle their farmer support programs
More on the recent WTO actions against China and India https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/untenable-assault-on-our-farm-subsidies/article25664704.ece
While Western agribusiness and grain exportes have much to gain from increasing their export markets, and potentially taking over grain trade within India and China, for farmers in these countries and Global South more broadly such policies spell disaster
As Samir Amin once argued so many years ago, the integration of global South agriculture into capitalist globalization would consign billions of people dependent upon small scale agriculture to permanent exclusion as a 'surplus humanity'
Amin: "Modernization through capitalist market liberalization, as suggested by WTO...the production of food on a global scale by modern competitive farmers mostly based in the North but also possibly in the future in some pockets of the South..."
"and, the marginalization, exclusion, and further impoverishment of the majority of the three billion peasants of the present third world and finally their seclusion in some kinds of reserves."
Source: https://monthlyreview.org/2003/10/01/world-poverty-pauperization-capital-accumulation/
Source: https://monthlyreview.org/2003/10/01/world-poverty-pauperization-capital-accumulation/
Mike Davis feared that this seclusion of dispossessed peasants/small farmers into reserves would lead to a "planet of slums"
https://versobooks.com/books/2293-planet-of-slums
https://versobooks.com/books/2293-planet-of-slums
This is why the farm bills in India are being fought against with such ferocity by Punjabi farmers - it is literally a question of survival and resistance against falling into the condition of permanent exclusion that Amin and Davis warned about
To get back to where I started, while India has seemingly embraced the WTO rulings, China continues to go its own way, prioritizing increasing minimum purchase price as essential to food security in the age of covid and climate crisis https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3114483/china-aims-upgrade-farmland-size-republic-ireland-heres-why?utm_source=China%20Digest%20English&utm_campaign=26d9213c5a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_8_15_2020_13_19_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a315a15a77-26d9213c5a-547675006&ct=t%28EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_8_15_2020_13_19_COPY_01%29
"China is reinforcing and restoring grain zones...The government has also promised to increase minimum purchase prices for wheat and rice, and continue to offer subsidies for rice, corn and soybeans."
This speaks to the different relation between state and capital in China and India respectively. While Western critical theorists have long ridiculed "socialism with Chinese characteristics" it is clear that there is qualitative difference in Chinese state-capital relation
Organized power of global capital can be better confronted in China so that production of food, for example, can be organized according to logics other than the short term profit interests of globalizing agribusiness
