QCOSTARICA – The clearest example of how dangerous the concept of “food sovereignty” is, comes from the example of the famine that killed 14 million people in China during a failed attempt at self-sufficiency in rice production.
As pointed out in an editorial in the Nacion.com (Dec. 8) the Plan Nacional de Desarrollo (PND) – National Development Plan put forward by the President Luis Guillermo Solis administration, in the chapter “agricultural and rural development” involves a socialist vision of food production, now outdated all over the world, attempting even to raise to the rank of constitutional law the concept of food sovereignty.
The National Development Plan “… confuses ‘food security’ with ‘food sovereignty’, whose main connotation is the duty of to produce locally everything we eat.”
“… Producing items using organic processes without conventional pesticides or fertilizers, would result in increased costs and reduced production and would raise consumer prices, contradicting the claim of social responsibility.”
By contrast, the most rational and universally accepted concept of “food security” implies: “… the ability to provide food, agricultural and other products in adequate quantity and quality to meet the needs of the population, whether produced locally or imported from abroad. ”
“The experiences in attempts to obtain self produced food at affordable prices for the population have been real disasters, one of the most important occurred in mainland China, where the attempt to be self sufficient in rice production at affordable prices led to a famine causing 14 million deaths from starvation. Today China is imports rice from the third largest producer and exporter in the world which is Vietnam, which has obvious advantages in production. ” From the article Rural Development (in Spanish) on Ca.bi.com, published in October 2011.
“… Protectionism, we know, is a way to ensure inefficiency and delays in productivity. ”
Source: Nacion.com; Centralamericandata.com
