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Should Food Be a Commodity?
Every second Monday something miraculous happens in my kitchen. One minute the cupboards are bare: the next minute groceries are delivered right on to the kitchen counters. I use Grocery Gateway, owned by Longos, to order groceries on the internet and have them delivered as they say, “right on to your kitchen table!” Fabulous!
This week, it occurred to me to wonder at the tremendous amount of human effort that had been involved in bringing such a rich harvest to my home. Grapes from Chili, oranges from California, tomatoes from Ontario: everything had been collected from such widespread parts of the world. I thought of the owners of the farms and orchards, the workers who had picked the crops, the transport people who had brought everything together to Toronto, Canada. Then there were the people who had made up my order, and those who had brought it to my door and delivered it with a smile. I felt grateful to them all, and willingly paid the price asked for such a service.
I hope all those farmers and people involved in producing such a richness of food, take a great pride in doing so. They are feeding the world, and without them we would all still be feverishly fending for ourselves. Without the farmers down through the ages, and all the builders, spinners and weavers, and others too numerous to mention, we would still be back in the caves. Human ingenuity and self-interest has brought us a long way!
These musing brought into my mind Adam Smith, my favorite moral philosopher and the father of economics. Neither a political or religious ideologist, nor an Utopian, he was a pragmatist, and concerned with striving to understand reality. The most famous of quotes from his work came into my mind. “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” When humans began to trade with each other and further exercise their self-interest, they took another giant step forward. Those familiar with Adam Smith can understand how free trade between individuals and regions advanced civilization. Wealth began to be built up, and life improved for everyone beyond imagining.
My mind moved on to the report on Reuters about the address Pope Francis gave in Rome to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) on Nov. 30. The Pope said that speculation in food commodities, market priorities, and greed for profits are undermining the global fight against poverty and hunger. He called on rich nations to share their wealth and denounced waste, excessive consumption, and unequal distribution of food. This address seems to be quite clearly stating that the present system of food production and distribution is not doing the job of feeding the hungry. It would appear that Pope Francis doesn’t agree with Adam Smith about self-interest motivating people to work, fueling the markets, and bringing needed and wanted goods to the buyers, including food. If food were not a commodity, and people prepared to pay for it, what would an alternative system look like?
The Pope has said at other times that capitalism is not a good system. It allows some people to become rich, while others remain poor, implying that those who become rich are greedy, and do so at the expense of others. There doesn’t appear to be any appreciation of the hard work needed to run any business, including farms. Food doesn’t appear by magic. It is not transported by wishful thinking. It is not marketed without any effort. Is all the work involved to go without reward?
The conference wasn’t all empty platitudes, divorced from reality. The outcome was the Rome Declaration on Nutrition which states that there is a need to implement coherent public policies across relevant sectors, from production to consumption. This sounds suspiciously like central planning. The dangerous ideas of Karl Marx have been proven not to work. Perhaps someone ought to explain this to Pope Francis. More regulation seems to be the message coming through from him.
What do you think? Is Pope Francis correct in saying that food ought not to be a commodity? Ought the food producers in our societies be controlled by central planning? Is it the right of every individual to be fed by others?
Published in General
Forgive me, but this makes no sense, especially when farm subsidies are below market-clearing prices. Then you get results from the bizarre, like farmers being paid not to grow crops, to the profoundly immoral, like the slaughter of six million pigs during the Great Depression.
Of all of the backward, ignorant, and immoral economic policies governments undertake, price controls on food are among the worst of the worst.
You are remembering correctly, Joseph. I do have a heart, even if I am a pragmatist. The Canadian Welfare System is not too abused, I would like to think. We do have a Conservative Party of Canada Government.
That is a different subject. The few people who are now still on our streets generally have problems with drug abuse, or mental ill-health. How Canada deals with them is to warehouse them in hi-rises, with a nurse in attendance to make sure they take their meds. They are free to be on the streets. If they are begging, they are selling “feeling good” to those who like to “give to the poor”. Even that is not a commerce-free enterprise.
Of course not. Food’s vital to my health and should be covered by my plan (the one someone else — my employer or the government — pays for). Sheesh!
If food shouldn’t be a commodity, should anything else be?
People seem to think that Pope Francis is an anomaly, but hasn’t the Vatican leaned towards socialist economic policy for years? During the cold war they opposed communism, but I’m guessing that’s because of communism’s hostility to religion, not because the Catholic hierarchy was big on property rights and freedom in general.
If the Pope called upon Catholics, Christians at large, or just human beings in general to reach into their own wallets and do more to help the poor, that would be perfectly legitimate. I wish, though, that he would stop urging governments to reach into my wallet in order to help the poor.
I don’t understand, why is that different? You asked:
Isn’t that what the Canadian welfare system does? People on the streets with drug or mental health issues will not starve, they will be fed. Who feeds them, who pays for their food? Others, taxpayers.
What am I missing, where is the difference?
St. Paul seems to come from the same premise in Romans:
If all of them were that efficient this would be reflected in the competitiveness of their real cost of production, measured in end cost to the consumer. Dependence on subsidies, and tariff and non-tariff barriers to the import of primary products, demonstrate that many farmers in the developed world are not competitive. (Consider sugar production in the US.)
imho subsidies are largely about securing rural votes, or propping up rural parts of the economy and society. Which are arguably reasonable goals, but could probably be achieved less destructively and certainly less opaquely and more honestly.
Right now you really don’t know how much (dollar value) you’re actually subsidising your farmers because (1) you don’t know how much more you have to pay for products at the store as a result of barriers to imports, and (2) you don’t really know how much you’re actually paying for each product, because some portion of your taxes goes towards its production as a direct or indirect subsidy before you ever see it on the shelf. I believe this opaqueness is a deliberate outcome of the policy – it’s a feature, not a bug.
I still argue that instead of giving vast amounts of aid that is often hollowed out by political corruption, and in fact can actually distort developing economies by fatally stunting whole classes of local producers, the developed world would do more to comprehensively end global poverty by opening its doors to free trade with the developing world. And that would be enlightened self interest, because in the long run we would all be better off.
Don’t look at me, I’m doing my bit.
He has a new fan.
I am talking here, as I think Adam Smith also does, of people who are not ideologists, but have a pragmatic world view. Every ideological system has people who believe at different levels, as it were. I was brought up at a time when everyone still went to church because it was expected, and who would have called themselves Christians. The reality was that most of them were pramatists who would do what they thought was best for them and their families, not what any outsiders told them they ought to do.
How differently each person looks at the world. What one person sees as a system where homo sapiens have come a long way in cooperating with each other to reduce poverty for everyone in the world, another person sees it as humans demonstrating their “fallen” condition by being utterly selfish.
Most people don’t have a devotion to charity and justice. They do what is good for them. This means that homo sapien survives.
Economics talks of Labour being part of the Capital of a business. Good business people look after the treasure that is their labour force because it is good for the business. It may also make them feel good, but that is secondary.
Many social studies have been done on the subject of helpfulness. People give because it makes them feel good.
Here is Wikipedia:
Why Do People Help?[edit]
Several theories of helping agree that, in the long run, helping behavior benefits the giver as well as the receiver. One explanation involves actions guided by “social economics”. This action is called the social exchange theory. It states that human interactions are transactions that aim to maximize one’s rewards and minimize one’s costs. We exchange not only material goods and money but also social goods – love, services, information status (Foa & Foa, 1975).
Which one are you?
Gödel’s Ghost I’ve exhausted myself ranting at those who complain about “speculators” that 1) they only complain when the speculator gains, and 2) they apparently don’t want price signals to be effective.
I’ve given up ranting about how it is those who know the least about economics, social science, political science, etc., who have the strongest opinions about everything.
Food as we buy it, is not technically a commodity is it? Isn’t food in a supermarket now a product, because it has been packaged and branded. Cereal has different costs. Total is getting pricey! Grain is the commodity.
I kinda always thought that things becoming commodities was a good thing as the market set the price, and cartels became really hard to pull off.
Am I wrong on that?
Gödel’s Ghost Forgive me, but this makes no sense, …
No forgiveness necessary, GG. I have no objections to anything I say being questioned or commented upon. That was very much a broad overview, not based on economics, and Wikipedia makes the same point under Agricultural subsidy:
Farm subsidies have the direct effect of transferring income from the general tax payers to farm owners. The justification for this transfer and its effects are complex and often controversial.
It struck me that the $3,000,000 or so it cost for the Food and Nutrition conference could have done a lot of good in buying goats, etc, to help feed “the poor”.
Zafar: I still argue that instead of giving vast amounts of aid that is often hollowed out by political corruption, and in fact can actually distort developing economies by fatally stunting whole classes of local producers, the developed world would do more to comprehensively end global poverty by opening its doors to free trade with the developing world. And that would be enlightened self interest, because in the long run we would all be better off.
Don’t look at me, I’m doing my bit.
My instincts all agree with what you are saying, Zafar, but I can also understand that this is a complex issue. Here in Canada we are wrestling with this very argument. The Conservative Government has taken off many food subsidies and controls, and is considering removing others. But if they do, and all the Canadian dairy farmers go out of business, is this good for anyone other than the American farmers. Does it really matter to me that I pay a $1 or even more for 2 pints of milk so that the milk suppliers can stay in business? It’s a difficult question.
By the way, I did my bit too by having only two children. I would have loved to have had more, but preferred to be able to take care of those two to the best of my ability. It has paid off!
That’s one argument, but is it the only argument? Earlier you said:
That suggests you view caring for such people as a question of compassion, that to not do so would be “heartless.” Is that not so?
So then it sounds like you don’t want food to be just a commodity either, with market forces determining prices and those unable to make a profit at the market rate forced out of business.
I don’t believe that “Man” has “fallen” from some “perfect” condition. I believe that we are homo sapiens, a form of primate: often not too pleasant a primate at that. I think we can choose to follow the better side of our nature and cooperate for the good of all, but will do so only if it includes benefit to ourselves. Generally speaking, it seems to me we have done so, even if the picture is not too pretty all the time.
Business strategists don’t talk of win-win situations and deals just because they are morally good, but because it is better if everyone is happy. People work better if they are rewarded for the results of their labours.
I did say I am a pragmatist.
Och, of course, Joseph. But I have been closely in contact with these kind of people. I really do question whether society is crazy when it gives one man a quadruple heart by-pass, and another a liver transplant, to have them continue the lifestyle that made such medical procedures necessary. Both heavy alcohol consumers, they continued to destroy their bodies at taxpayers expense. It is always difficult to find a proper balance, isn’t it?
That was before the modern idea of a social contract. A citizen’s relationship to a king or emperor, however he came to power, is different than a citizen’s relationship to an elected official.
Honestly, I don’t see that there’s any way to avoid some humans ruling over other humans. It’s not like the folks in Congress care all that much what we think of them, so long as Republicans can say they are better than Democrats and vice versa. All they require for power is the slightest illusion of influence and fear of revolution.
The older I get, the less I think democracy is all it’s cracked up to be. Limited, local government is the real guard of freedom, and democracy (with universal suffrage, anyway) guarantees ever growing government.
The bishops are not unlike human beings in general throughout the world in doubting the reliability of private charity and wanting powerful governors. But the mindset is sad nonetheless.
When I was in business, and fighting market and political forces that were making it difficult, I did think how lovely it would be if the government would subsidize my business so that I wouldn’t have to struggle so hard. On the other hand, that is what the business world is about, and as with evolution of the species, so the weaker businesses would go under. If they can’t adapt, they are gone. So really and truly, now that you have me in a corner, I have to admit that food ought to be a commodity like all others. The Canadian milk producers would be forced to adapt, perhaps modernize, and hopefully they would survive.
I’m quite certain Pope Francis would agree with you on that. From the Catechism:
Aaron Miller: … The bishops are not unlike human beings in general throughout the world in doubting the reliability of private charity and wanting powerful governors. But the mindset is sad nonetheless.
This is so true Aaron. But I do find it understandable if one is living in a cloistered world, away from real life, that one could develop a feeling for “the poor”. At times I have felt the same thing, because my heart can be soft. The problem for me is that my hard head jumps in and starts asking too many questions.
It is good that Pope Francis is saying what he does, because it makes the rest of us have conversations like this one. It makes us clarify our own thinking, and face up to what we do think.
Which social contract theory? Hobbes was the first modern philosopher to expound the idea, and he said that monarchy is the best form of government and that any form of government is preferable to the “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” life in the state of nature.
Rousseau wrote a book called The Social Contract where he put forward the idea of the general will and favored direct democracy for small states and a benevolent monarch for large ones. He also wrote that man must “be forced to be free.”
Absolutely, because the Canadian (ex-)dairy farmers aren’t going to just sit around, they will end up producing something else (on farm or off). So the theory is that you will get cheaper milk and their replacement product – which they might be efficient enough at making that it would be sold in the US as well. Instead of just dividing up the pie and charging more for some slices than others to keep some pie makers in business, you would grow the pie.
We have a similar issue here in Australia – some small towns are dying because their economic underpinnings are withering away. (Foreign competition wrt products, greater mechanisation, the mining boom’s impact on the Australian dollar….) In the long run keeping unviable places and industries on life support by distorting the market with subsidies is unsustainable. How much better (and more straightforward) to use the same money to directly support individuals – who then can make decisions in their own best interests as to how to be most economically productive?
I am an unashamed statist when it comes to supporting individuals. I think the welfare state, universal health care, accessible education for everybody are really significant achievements. I am 100% okay with being taxed to pay for all this. But our ability to maintain all of these goods is a direct function of a healthy economy. Hamstringing parts of the economy in order to support individuals doesn’t make sense to me.
Zafar, it sounds like you’d fit right in at the Vatican or the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
It bugs me when people describe Pope Francis as a Marxist. The Catholic Church has long condemned Communism, defended the right to private property, and the key Catholic principle of subsidiarity is the antithesis of central planning. I’ve seen not a shred of evidence to suggest that the Pope or anyone else in the Vatican thinks the state should confiscate the means of production and run a centrally-planned economy. That assertion is nonsense on stilts.
On the other hand it’s clear that Pope Francis and many Catholic bishops around the world favor redistribution of the type you’ve just outlined, where the state taxes revenues generated by the private economic sector and uses them to ensure that every citizen has food, education, housing, and health care.
I’m not surprised that folks on Ricochet disagree with this, I just wish they would at least accurately describe and label the position they disagree with. It ain’t Marxism.