Underneath The Egyptian Revolution: The Politics Of Food
By Billy Wharton01 February, 2011
Countercurrents.org
So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the
time being. - Franz Kafka
Hidden beneath the
spectacular street battles that aim to force Egyptian dictator Hosni
Mubarak out of office is a trigger that exists in dozens of countries
throughout the world – food. Or, more specifically, the lack of it.
While commentators focus on the corruption of the dictatorship, or the
viral effects of the Tunisian moment or the something akin to an Arab
political awakening, the inability of the Egyptian regime to insure a
steady flow of food staples should be viewed as a critical factor
driving this seemingly spontaneous movement for freedom.
Egypt is far from an isolated case when it comes to
food shortages. Since 2008, rising food prices have resulted in 40 mass
riots throughout the globe and the United Nations reports that 37
countries currently face a food crisis. World prices for basic food
commodities such as corn, sugar and beef have all spiked in the last
year resulting, in many regions, in sharp reductions in food intake. The
governments of Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Indonesia, Brazil and the
Philippines all issued warnings in 2010 about impending food
shortages.(The Guardian, October 26, 2010)
What makes Egypt special in regards to food
shortages is the triple convergence of ecological devastation induced
harvest reductions, government corruption and ineptitude and a resulting
reliance on a global food market that is being inflated by global
environmental degradation and capitalist speculation.
The Nile River, the great provider of civilization,
sits at the core of the severe environmental decline in the region. An
over reliance on its resources combined with long-term negative effects
from damming projects have resulted in water scarcities and yield
declines in arable land. The resulting crisis has produced skyrocketing
prices for potable water – soda is now cheaper than water in many parts
of Egypt – and reductions in the planting of necessary crops. (BBC
Worldwide Monitoring, May 30, 2010)
In November 2010, just a few months before the
revolt, the Mubarak government announced severe restrictions in the
production of staple crops such as rice. The reduced rice production had
spiraling effects. Prices rose sharply, a key nutritional staple was
removed from the poor and, because rice is also a key export crop,
agricultural laborers were left jobless. All this was done via the usual
autocratic decree from Cairo. (The Citizen (Dar es Salaam) November 24,
2010)
The Mubarak government has, for many years, chosen
to manage the food crisis with an old combination succinctly summarized
by turn of the 20th century Mexican Dictator Porfirio Diaz’ slogan “pan o
palo” (bread or the stick). Instead of allowing workers to bargain for
wages that might meet the increased food costs, he repressed the labor
movement through a reliance on a police apparatus that had swelled to an
estimated one police operative for every 37 citizens. This, while
refusing for the last 26 years to raise the minimum wage. (AfricaNews,
June 23, 2010) Simultaneously, he attempted to create a state monopoly
on the production and distribution of low cost bread. When black market
activity threatened this monopoly, he had the military take over the
enterprise. (USAToday, April 30, 2008)
All of this created a dual food dependency for the
country. Egypt remained a main recipient of US aid, about $1.8 billion
annually, and developed a dangerous linkage to global food markets. This
link can be seen most clearly in the wheat market, where the Egyptian
state was forced to make mass purchases of wheat in order to satisfy
rising food demands and maintain social order.
This system seemed to work until Russia, the third
largest exporter of wheat, experienced its worst drought in 50 years in
2010. Prices skyrocketed on the global market and the Egyptian
government, the largest importer of Russian wheat, was forced, in August
2010, to pay $270 a ton for wheat that had cost $238 in July. (National
Post's Financial Post & FP Investing (Canada), August 5, 2010)
Although the government claimed, as late as the
middle of last year, that wheat self-sufficiency was its goal, the
country now relies on foreign markets for 40% of its consumption. And
the environmental limits imposed by the above mentioned water scarcity
on the Nile ensure that the lack of food self-sufficiency will rise in
the future. (UN Integrated Regional Information Networks (Nairobi),
October 11, 2010)
Though it was a critical strategy to maintain
political order, Egyptians do not live on wheat alone. Soaring bread
prices, lack of rice and water scarcity intersected with sharp increases
in the costs of other basic foodstuffs. This year, vegetable prices
soared 50% and meat and poultry increased by 28.6%. The tomato crop was
particularly poor this season with harvests declining as much as 75% in
some areas. (Reuters, October 19, 2010)
Consider then that the revolt in Egypt is more than
just a movement for political freedom. It may be one of the first
instances of a political movement that exposes the sharp limitations of
current global system of food production. The lack of food was the
trigger for this uprising, the severing of a final link with a deeply
authoritarian regime operating within limits imposed by its own
corruption and repression, the natural world and an exceedingly
unnatural global market for food.
One lesson that can be drawn from this moment is
that it is vitally necessary to create another kind of global system for
the production and distribution of food. No amount of democracy in
Egypt will solve their food crisis since, for the foreseeable future,
the country will be dependent on the global marketplace for critical
food supplies. Capitalist values built into these markets ensure that
they serve the profit interests of the big food conglomerates.
Ecological damage pushes further reliance on these same markets. A new
system anchored around socialist notions of global equity and ecological
sustainability would serve as a better companion to the demands for
political freedom being presented in Egypt and held by people living in
many other places in the world.
Billy Wharton is a writer,
activist and the editor of the Socialist WebZine. His articles have
appeared in the Washington Post, the NYC Indypendent, Spectrezine and
the Monthly Review Zine. He can be reached at [email protected]
http://www.countercurrents.org/wharton010211.htm
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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