RESEARCH PAPER NUMBER: X3
RESEARCH PAPER MNEMONIC: XAGRIC
RESEARCH PAPER NAME: Agriculture, Environment and Trade
DRAFT AUTHOR: Karen Farrell (Summer, 1996)
I. AbstractTrading in agricultural products is a commercial activity that pre-dates the Common Era (C.E.). It originated when traveling peoples came into contact with one another -- sharing their knowledge and possessions from their native lands. There naturally developed an exchange of agricultural products, because this if nothing else is what people carried with them on their travels; food and other agricultural products constituted the bare necessities when travelling in the days before there was a McDonald's on every corner. Some of these products they carried with them could be acclimated to the region and cultivated there; others were region specific and could only maintain a continual presence through trade. So, if people began to rely on a specific product, they sought to develop a trade route that fed this desire. Such activity has continued until present day, and the six TED cases under scrutiny all involve developing countries' agricultural trade for export. However, that is essentially where the similarities end and the contrasting begins. Each has dealt with the logistics of the trade in a different manner; some have focused on legal products while others on the illegal. Each has confronted the environmental impact from a separate perspective; some have ignored it, others have sought to stem it once damage was apparent, and a few do not mention having environmental problems. Each has a singular conclusion to the problem; some have sought alternative crops, others have attempted to divest from agricultural. This research then delves into what the options are for a country confronted with extensive environmental degradation stemming from a crop on which its economy is substantially, if not almost solely, dependent.
II. Issue
BackgroundThe main historical problem with trade in agricultural products is the correlated destruction of the environment. This becomes especially true in situations wherein the agricultural crop being traded has become widely popular (such as tea or cocaine) or the country's clime does not support a second major crop as easily (the Philippines and sugar; or historic Arabia and spices). Under these conditions, a country is prone to directly or indirectly promote mono-cropping, more often than not in the current world market for export. Such mono-cropping spells disaster not only financially, but environmentally. Financially, once an economy comes dependent on a single crop, it has the distinct potential of being devastate should pest or disease destroy that crop for even a single season. Environmentally, mono-cropping depletes the soil of various nutrients, permitting scant opportunity for it to replenish itself.
This issue has become more crucial in the modern times because of export-oriented development, combined with dramatically increased technology to promote pollution. Many international aid agencies have focused on the potential for developing countries to gain a comparative advantage in the international market by producing only one crop, and encouraged it through the development of aid packages that precondition aid on such practices. Others, producing narcotics, have adopted production of the illegal crop for similar profit motives. Not only do these choices limit the possibilities for growth in the individual country, providing it no security in the event of a plague or draught, but it also escalates the erosion of the land as constant single cropping only depletes the soil of nutrients and replaces nothing.
III. Relevant
TED
CasesThe production of cocaine in South America, especially the Andean region, has had a devastating and measurable impact on the environment. This destruction can be seen throughout the product's life cycle, and covers an extensive range of environmental problems including pesticide use, chemical dumping, deforestation, soil erosion, water pollution, a shift to mono-agriculture, bio- diversity loss, and a potential loss of cultural eco-knowledge. In an attempt to assist the Andean region, and to lessen the international drug trade, the United States has attempted to set up economic alternatives, such as the Andean Trade Preference (ATP) Act of 1991, in hopes of shifting the economies of Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador away from this highly profitable market upon which the peoples, especially the poorer strata, have come to depend.
The Cote d'Ivoire is the world's largest producer of cocoa. In addition, it is the third largest producer of coffee, after Brazil and Columbia. The Cote d'Ivoire is also a typical example of an export-oriented economy that relies for its foreign earnings on the proceeds of primary products. This vast reliance on primary commodities to the exclusion of secondary ones negatively affects the country's environment. For purely economic motives, millions of hectares of tropical rainforest have been devastated for the creation of cocoa and other primary commodity plantations. Over the last thirty years, the impact of such destruction has significantly altered the eco-system and affected the flora and fauna as well as human living conditions in rural areas.
Coca and poppy cultivation in the Andean jungle is significantly damaging the environment in the region. Principal environmental threats are deforestation caused by clearing the fields for cultivation, soil erosion caused by a variety of factors, and chemical pollution from insecticides and fertilizers. Additionally, the process of converting coca and poppy into cocaine and heroin has adverse effects on the environment. These environmental issues are difficult to address due to coca's position as a traditional crop and trade item, the influence and wealth of the drug traffickers opposing restrictions, and the issue of national sovereignty. Moreover, widespread attention is granted to the social impact of the drug trade worldwide, but little is given to its vast, and equally destructive, environmental impact.
India, the world's largest tea producer, has the distinction of producing both the highest and lowest quality of teas. The best of India's prized Darjeeling is considered the world's finest tea, and almost all of it is exported. Currently, however, India is facing rising competition in the world tea market, principally from Sri Lanka and Kenya. Tea profits in India are currently on the decline with reduced demand combining with an excess supply of tea. While world market prices in real terms have declined, the cost of production has increased steadily, cutting producers' costs. Moreover, big buyers like Russia, Iran and 'Iraq have become effective non-buyers of late due to political circumstances. Changing consumption patterns have also contributed to the decline in tea prices. The results have been a devastating impact to India's economy as well as excess pressure on tea production.
Since 1844, sugar has been the Philippines' leading export crop, and most of it has been exported to the United States. However, due to US quota reduction in the late 1980's, the Philippines have had to sell their sugar to the world market at a price below production costs. The low price of sugar was due to the ineffective world pricing controlling mechanism of the International Sugar Agreements (ISA). Meanwhile, the owners of sugar plantations decided to leave unharvested a large area of their sugar cane fields. Thus, landless cane workers were forced to migrate to the uplands. This, coupled with already situated sugar cane field converted by forests, added another cause of deforestation and soil erosion. With human settlement expansion, forests have been cleared to grow crops, wetlands have been drained, and grasslands have been irrigated. The net effect has exacted a heavy environmental toll in the Philippines.
From the seventh to the ninth centuries C.E. (Common Era), the Arabs maintained flourishing trade centers. They gained control over the spice trade around 960 B.C.E. (Before Common Era) and continued domination until 1100 C.E. However, this study is concerned principally with the period from the beginning of Islam in the seventh century C.E. until its decline in the twelfth century C.E., or more specifically from the tenth century C.E. when it really began to expand beyond the Arab lands. The new religion was spread beyond the Arab lands through two primary methods. The first was conquest through war. The second, less violent, approach was that carried along the spice trade routes. This second approach was far preferable within the teachings of the new religion because it allowed for true converts, not those by force which the Qur'an condemns. This case study then will be a historic look at the spread of Islam using the spice trade as its chief vehicle, as well as a discussion about data surrounding this agricultural trade's impact on the environment.
The biggest difference among these cases is that the Spice Case is a historical one; one that has already reached full closure. Therein, it is interesting to observe the ramifications of agricultural trade on the environment in the past compared with current issues. One very interesting thing is immediately apparent -- in none of the materials consulted for that case study was mention made of environmental pollution and destruction due to the spice trade. This was clearly different from the other cases under study, for that was their chief concern.
The lack of material on this topic could be the result of several factors. One is that the environment was not the pivotal concern it is today. For many along the Arab spice routes, as in most developing countries today, the primary concern was human survival, not the effect this survival had on the environment. More often than not, concern over environmental degradation in these developing countries is espoused from non-indigenous sources outraged at the destruction. Two is that the consequences for the environment were not observable during that period. Three is that the issue, at the time, did not bear enough significance to be mentioned, so that later scholars would have no records on which to base any theories. Finally, there is the idea that there simply was minimal damage done to the environment, not enough to warrant notice. It is this author's belief that this final theory is the reason behind the dearth of information on the effects of this spice trade had on the environment.
Principally, it is this author's belief that spice production was not done on the grand scale that industrialization has today made possible, so the raping of the region for that agricultural product was not nearly as severe. Such conjecture makes the case very interesting to students of trade and environment as it provides a historic microcosm of what were peoples' priorities. Were people historically as concerned about the environment as they are today? Is contemporary concern over the environment merely the product of reaping the results of centuries of environmental destruction? Or have environmental interest groups merely been more effective in voicing their concerns and gaining converts to the environmental cause?
It is clear in the cases of Philippine sugar, Columbian coca and poppy, South American coca, and Cote d'Ivoire coca, and through extrapolation to Indian tea that extensive environmental damage is a direct result of these crops' production. Much of this has resulted from the pesticides and fertilizers which are heavily utilized to increase the crop yield and speed at which it is ready for harvest. Such pollutants poison both the water and the land, leaving them untenable for future generations. In all of the cases researched, countries did not address the problem of environmental damage until the situation had reached critical proportions. This seems to indicate that financial concerns take precedence over environmental ones until the environmental ones become too great to ignore and directly threaten the financial considerations.
It is also apparent from all cases, except the Arab spice trade, that these agricultural products were being produced primarily for foreign consumption. Very little was making its way back into the local market. By contrast, in the Arab spice trade, spices were traded both within Arabia and beyond. The market was large enough for all who wished to take part, although profits would probably have been greater for those who traded larger routes for those could have charged higher prices for more exclusive goods. Still, the Arab spice trade did meet demand from its own people in addition to external demand.
Another interesting comparison amongst all the cases is their current income bracket as defined by the World Bank's World Development Report 1995. In it, all of the countries involved are still considered developing countries; that is, India and Cote d'Ivoire fall into the low-income bracket. Columbia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and the Philippines are termed "lower middle- income" countries, which still qualifies them as "developing". Only Sa'udi 'Arabia, the center of the Arab spice trade, breaks this dividing line, but it only reached as far as "upper middle-income". The point of this observation being that those countries relying on agricultural trade are not only destroying their country in the process, by degrading their environment and excluding it from possible use by future generations, but they are also not getting very far by doing so.
Comparing trade in legal versus illegal agricultural products serves as a useful parameter. The illicit trade of Columbia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru has an added incentive for producers not to worry about environmental preservation. Farmers cultivating poppy and coca live under constant threat that their crops will be found and destroyed. Thus, they have every incentive to work the land as hard as possible to produce the highest yield. No consideration is given to next year's crop, or even the next, because it quite probably will not be there.
IV. Policy
ImplicationsAlthough in the majority of the cases the problem has been well- defined and documented, corrective measures have yet to be established. Some serious measures have been undertaken, limiting imports of crops such as sugar and tea, but these have only served to make the exporting economy even more depressed and increasingly desperate to produce more of the crop. This has resulted in further destruction of the environment as the pressure increases. Thus, instead of finding alternative crops, the mad rush is on to produce more of the initial one.
Such import/export quotas (many of them imposed by Amero-European "developed" powers) have been the principle policy means of limiting production of certain crops, and subsequently containing the damage to the environment, under the assumption that less crop means less destruction and that they are proportionally related. It was also assumed that more restrictive quotas would force the producing economy to shift to another crop, which many examples, particularly the Philippines and India have been unable to do. Limits on tea and sugar production in these two cases have only served to further depress their economies, as alternatives have not been found. Again, this reiterates the questions of "Whose right is it to intervene to improve environmental problems?" and "Should environmental concerns take precedence over human survival?"
In two of the cases the crops are illegal to begin with, so there is little effect to be anticipated from placing further legal restrictions on them. The only conceivable alternative would be to encourage production of a substitute crop, but studies have shown that these would have assuredly lesser value. Perhaps, then the solution would be to focus on non-agrarian solutions. On the other hand, that too might not be entirely possible. Cocoa and poppy have become prime cash crops in Columbia, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador not because they cannot be produced elsewhere, but the power of local drug lords provides them with the security needed to continue to cultivate these crops. The real power to make these decisions lies in their hands, then, not that of the farmer who is merely working to survive so re-training the farmers would serve little good.
The overwhelming controversy is that of sustainability. Obviously current agricultural practices in Columbia, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Cote d'Ivoire, the Philippines, and India are making future agricultural activity untenable and unsustainable. However, these practices are enabling them to live, however marginally. The countries in question are all still developing countries, meaning that they understand such practices will not sustain them for the long term. But how to find alternatives? And who is to propose them -- local peoples, local governments, foreign entities? These are the questions that must be wrestled with and concluded for both parties -- the indigenous population and the environment -- to become sustainable.
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