INFORMATION TO USERS

This material was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the original submitted.

The following explanation of techniques is provided to help you understand markings or patterns which may appear on this reproduction.

1.The sign or "target" for pages apparently lacking from the document photographed is "Missing Page(s)". If it was possible to obtain the missing page(s) or section, they are spliced into the film along with adjacent pages. This may have necessitated cutting thru an image and duplicating adjacent pages to insure you complete continuity.

2. When an image on the film is obliterated with a large round black mark, it is an indication that the photographer suspected that the copy may have moved during exposure and thus cause a blurred image. You will find a good image of the page in the adjacent frame.

3. When a map, drawing or chart, etc., was part of the material being photographed the photographer followed a definite method in "sectioning" the material. It is customary to begin photoing at the upper left hand corner of a large sheet and to continue photoing from left to right in equal sections with a small overlap. If necessary, sectioning is continued again - beginning below the first row and continuing on until complete.

4. The majority of users indicate that the textual content is of greatest value, however, a somewhat higher quality reproduction could be made from "photographs" if essential to the understanding of the dissertation. Silver prints of "photographs" may be ordered at additional charge by writing the Order Department, giving the catalog number, title, author and specific pages you wish reproduced.

5. PLEASE NOTE: Some pages may have indistinct print. Filmed as received.

Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 75-20,508

GARVEY, Lou Ann Benshoof, 1940- ECOLOGICAL THEORY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: THE CASE OF WHEAT.

The American University, Ph.D., 1975 Political Science, international law and relations

Xerox University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106

@ 1975

LOU ANN BENSHOOF GARVEY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ECOLOGICAL THEORY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: THE CASE OF WHEAT

by

Lou Ann. Benshoof Garvey

Submitted to the

Faculty of the School of International Service

of The American University

in Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree

of

Doctor of Philosophy

in

International Studies

Signatures of Committee: /i / / ' Chairman: / I'/* K/ j Dean of the School

/fy^U 2^ i%n < Date

1975

The American University Washington, D.C. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION: THE INTERNATIONAL SETTING AND THE WORLD FOOD CONFERENCE, 1974 vi

THE WORLD FOOD PROBLEM...... xi THE WORLD FOOD CONFERENCE: BEGINNING OF A SOLUTION?...... ixx

Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION: THE GIFT FROM CERES...... 1

2. THE ECOLOGY OF WHEAT...... 17

THE ECOLOGY OF WHEAT: PRODUCTION ...... 19

The "Natural" Wheat B e l t ...... 21 The " A rtific ia l" Wheat Belt: Man's Technological Partner ...... 25

THE ECOLOGY OF WHEAT: CONSUMPTION ...... 33

Land and Environment...... 35 Capital and Technology ...... 39

SURPLUS AND STARVATION: THE WORLD FOOD PROBLEM .... 42

3. BREAD ACROSS THE WATERS...... 47

GRAIN GOES GLOBAL: THE "BIG WHEAT DEAL"...... 50

Ecology, Trade, and P o litics: Prelude to the Wheat S a le ...... 50 Domestic Issues: Who Decides and Who P r o f i t s ...... 55

The transnational actor ...... 56 Problems of the national actor ...... 69

i i Page

DISCOVERING THE OBVIOUS: WORLD TRADE IN WHEAT...... 73

Increase in Wheat Trade ...... 75 Constancy of Supplier Nations ...... 76 Variability of Consumer Nations ...... 78 Interdependencies ...... 79 Policy Decisions ...... 79

4. THE ECOSYSTEM MODEL. ENERGY PRODUCTION, BALANCE, AND COUPLING...... 81

INTRODUCTION: ECOLOGICAL COMMUNITIES AS "ENERGY SYSTEMS"...... 83

NATURE'S FUEL: THE PRODUCTION OF ENERGY ...... 85

The Essential Base: Solar Input and Photosynthesis ...... 86 High and Low Productivity Ecosystems ...... 88

THE CONCEPT OF ECOLOGICAL BALANCE ...... 97

Order and Equilibrium --S tatistical Problems .... 98 The Economy of the Trophic System ...... 100

THE PHENOMENON OF COUPLING— FIRST PART...... 107

Characteristics of Heterotrophic Systems ...... 107 Coupling Mechanisms in Nature and Technology .... 109

THE DIMENSIONS OF GLOBALIZATION ...... 110

5. GLOBALIZATION OF THE ECOSYSTEM...... 112

INTRODUCTION: ECOLOGICAL COUPLING AND THE "SPACESHIP" METAPHOR ...... 112

MAN IN THE FOOD C H A IN ...... 115

The Energy Budget of Prim itive Man: Case Study of Kung Bushman ...... 117 The Energy Budget of Modern M a n ...... 123

Varieties of human response ...... 126 Abundant harvests, but where do they g o ?...... 130

The Paradox of Ecosystem Dominance: Man at the Top of the Food Chain ...... 133

i i i Page

THE PHENOMENON OF COUPLING—CONTINUED ...... 137

Phase I: Many Towns, Leading to E x p lo ita tio n ...... 138 Phase I I : Big Towns, Leading to Economic C o u p lin g ...... 142

CONCEPTS FOLLOW FACTS: GLOBALIZING ECOLOGY AND ECOLOGIZING POLITICS ...... 150

Globalizing Ecology ...... 150 Ecologizing Politics ...... 151

6. THE POLITICS OF ECOLOGICAL TRANSACTIONS ...... 152

"WHO AM I?" ACTORS AND BIASES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY ...... 154

Maximizer Paradigm: Balance by Power and Profit .... 156 The Ecological Paradigm: Balance through Redistribution of Energy Flows ...... 161

THE THEORY OF BINARY TRANSACTIONS ...... 166

The Chinese Box Model: Elementary Binary Transactions ...... 167

Individual locale ...... 169 Locale—d is tric t ...... 171

Transactions between Coupled Systems ...... 172

District—political system ...... 173 Political system—pol itical system ...... 176

Congeniality of Binary Transactions to Maximizer Model: Parable of the Misallocation of Wheat ...... 183 The Maximizer Model as a Threat to the System: Parable of the Commons ...... 187

THE NEED FOR ORCHESTRAL POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS ...... 190

7. ORCHESTRAL INSTITUTIONS AND THE WORLD FOOD PROBLEM ...... 195

HOW WILL ORCHESTRAL INSTITUTIONS EVOLVE: ON FUNCTIONALISM ...... 201

GLOBAL INSTITUTIONS: THE EVIDENCE ...... 208

REGULATION AND DISTRIBUTION: FOOD ENERGY AND THE FAO...... 215

iv Page

The Early Years: Coupling by Trade ...... 216 The Recent Years: Coupling through Redistribution ...... 221

THE WORLD FOOD CONFERENCE, 1974: DISCUSSION ABOUT A COMPREHENSIVE FOOD PROBLEM...... 225

Increased Agricultural Production ...... 226 World Food S e c u rity ...... 228

THE WORLD FOOD COUNCIL: DESIGN FOR A COMPREHENSIVE FOOD PROGRAM...... 234

CONCLUSION: THE LIMITS TO POLITICS ...... 242

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 252

v INTRODUCTION

THE CONCEPT OF "WORLD INTEREST" AND THE WORLD FOOD CONFERENCE OF NOVEMBER, 1974

There are an unprecedented number of p o litical actors in con­ temporary world affairs: nations, international organizations, multi­ national corporations, scientific and cultural transnational interest groups--all compete and cooperate in response to issues that arise 1 from an ever more interdependent world. This plethora of actors lead some observers to comment on the growing fragmentation of world society, a diagnosis reinforced by the surge of regional customs unions (such as

European Common Market) and by the increased ethnic strife of the past decade.2

Robert 0. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, eds., "Transnational Relations and World Politics," International Organization, XXV, No. 3 (Summer, 1971). ? This view is elaborated in Seyom Brown's New Forces in World Politics (Washington, D.C.: Brookings In stitu tio n , 1974). Brown summarizes the international system as follows: "The forces now ascendant appear to be leading toward a global society without a dominant structure of cooperation and co n flict--a polyarchy in which nation-states, subnational groups, and transnational special interests and communities would a ll be vying for the support and loyalty of individuals, and conflicts would have to be resolved primarily on the basis of ad hoc bargaining in a shifting context of power rela­ tionships," p. 186. An excellesnt review of regionalism as an alterna­ tive to either world society or anarchy is Peace in Parts: Integration and Conflict in Regional Organization by Joseph S. Nye (Boston: L ittle , Brown, 1971); for a summary of the upsurge in ethnicity, see Walker Connor, "Nation-Building or Nation-Destroying?" World P o litic s , XXIV, No. 3 (April, 1972), 319-55. Indeed, p o litic a l economist Gunnar Myrdal noticed this tendency to autarky almost twenty years ago. Heightened nationalism and attention to national integration, he suggested, meant that nations failed to observe the re a litie s of mutual interdependence; they were, therefore,

"d riftin g towards a destiny that the world has not charted in advance

3 and for which it has not been deliberately steering its course." The

World Food Conference of November, 1974 mirrors both this re a lity of divergent national interests, and at the same time, suggests a growing

4 "world interest" in questions of social and economic welfare. The present concept of world interest, we should note, arises out of world economic dislocations and differs, therefore, from the desires for peace and security that gave rise to the internationalism which followed 5 World War I. The problems of a polluted environment, decreasing natural resources, nuclear weapons, and a world-wide food scarcity cannot be solved by the individual nations.

For better or worse, each nation is locked in a global network of consumers and producers of food, fu e l, and the manufactured goods necessary to an industrial society. Individual nations, now living on

3 Gunnar Myrdal, An International Economy: Problems and Prospects (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), p. 300.

^The concept of "world interest" was f ir s t formulated by Kenneth Boulding in an a rtic le en titled "The Concept of World Interest," Disarmament and Economic Development, ed. Richard A. Falk and Saul H. Menlovitz, The Strategy of World Order, Vol. IV (New York: World Law Fund, 1966), pp. 494-516. 5 The classic critique of early twentieth century "idealistic internationalism" is E. H. Carr, The Twenty Year Crisis: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (1939; London: Macmillan, 1961). vi i i

what often is called "spaceship earth" can no longer attain positions of

complete self-su fficien cy; nor can they isolate themselves from problems

arising elsewhere. As A. H. Boerma, Director General of the Food and

Agriculture Organization of the United Nations summarized at the

opening of the Second World Food Congress, "Now that the problems caused

by man's in built selfishness have reached planetary proportions, we g shall be forced to deal with them . . . on a planetary scale."

It is both this growth of resource-related problems together

with the "planetary" nature of contemporary international economic and

political relations that prompted calls for a new world economic order.

The Sixth Special Session of the General Assembly articulated the call for a new world economic order in 1974. The United Nations

Assembly stated the problem as follows: "The gap between the developed and the developing countries continues to widen in a system which was established at a time when most of the developing countries did not even exist as independent states and which perpetuates inequality."

How did such economic (and, as we shall point out, ecological) dislo­ cation come about?7

This dissertation presents one theoretical perspective for dealing with these planetary problems--an ecological perspective of international relations. By using the term "ecological," I do not

C Keynote address at the Second World Food Congress, The Hague, Netherlands,, 16-30 June, 1970 by A. H. Boerma, Director General of Food and Health Organization, Report of the Second World Food Congress, Food and Health Organization of the United Nations, Vol. 1 (Rome, 1970), p. 110.

7Quoted in Science and Public Policy, I, No. 7 (July, 1974), 155; see also the U.N. Monthly Chronicle, XI, No. 5 (May, 1974). ix refer to the voguish accent on environmental problems but rather to the application of certain ecological principles that characterize simple, natural ecosystems to international issues. These principles revolve about the most essential dimension of any ecosystem--the flow O of energy through that system.

The following chapters examine the production of energy into high and low energy systems, the balancing of this energy, and the linking or coupling of energy from one ecosystem to other contiguous ecosystems. Although this framework could be used to examine any energy flow (fuel, for example) we shall refer here to the flow of food energy, f ir s t among simple ecosystems and then among complex societies. Food, which is formed as green plants use solar energy to produce glucose, remains the most essential resource for man's preservation.

Specifically, the references of the dissertation shall be to wheat, since of a ll the cereal crops wheat flows are the most prominent in international trade. Wheat is also symbolic of man's ties to the earth. Cultural historians such as Lewis Mumford note the significance of gestures of "breaking bread" and of biblical allusions to the "staff

9 of life." So I also use the example of wheat in a metaphoric sense--

O Harold and Margaret Sprout f ir s t suggested an ecological frame­ work for international relations in Man-Milieu Relationship Hypotheses in the Context of International Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Center of International Studies of Princeton University, 1956); and more recently in An Ecological Paradigm for the Study of International Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Center of International Studies of Princeton University, 1968). The concept of "energy" and energy flow, however, is not stressed in these works. The author owes her greatest debt to Eugene Odum's seminal work on ecology, Fundamentals of Ecolody (2d ed.; Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Company, 1969). g See, for example, Lewis Mumford, The Transformations of Man (New York: Harper and Row, 1972); Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man (Boston: L itt le , 1974). X

and have no intention, therefore, of minimizing the importance of other

cereals and feed grains (corn, soybeans, rice) to either food consumption

or food tr a d e .^

The World Food Conference reflects both the structural problems

in world food flows and the growing humanitarian concern about the wel­

fare of the world's poorest (and most numerous) citizens. Of course, a

conference is not an institution capable of solving these problems.

But the gathering is a signal, a vast beacon, if you w ill, portending

both the global dimensions of the food energy problem, and the kind of

planetary solution necessary to ameliorate i t . ^ In the next few pages,

we shall summarize b rie fly the dimensions of this world food problem (a

subject examined more carefully in Chapter 4) and id en tify some in te r­

national institutions which arose to deal with i t . Secondly, we shall

discuss the conference process in the context of the 1974 World Food

Conference.

Of course, the world food problem is part of other global

issues. Individuals such as FAO director Boerma emphasize that problems of food production cannot be discussed apart from other concerns:

I t would be fu tile and unrealistic to accept to discuss hunger and malnutrition in isolation from other evils of our age, such as the s tiflin g clamp of poverty, the flood

Although wheat s t ill dominates the international commodities trade, feed grains have become increasingly important on the world market. See R. E. Friend and G. R. B u tell, Production, Consumption and Trade of Coarse Grains, Economic Research Service, Foreign 272 (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, June, 1969).

^An overview of the conference can be found in United Nations, Preparatory Committee to the World Food Conference, Preliminar.y Assessment of the World Food Situation Present and Future, Document E/CONF.65/PREP (A p ril, 1974). of overpopulation, the paralysis of unemployment, the defor­ mities of trade. We must look at the economic and social problems of the world in their totality if we are to come to grips with them individually.12

To this l i s t one could add the p o litic a l dilemma posed by the need for

planetary solutions in a world of weak international institutions.

There is a growing need for strong international institutions to "orches­

trate" among producers and consumer groups and diverse p o litic a l

interests. We shall return to this theme of orchestral institutions

in the final chapter.

THE WORLD FOOD PROBLEM

The World food problem does not derive from a single cause.

Rather, the present food shortages are an outcome of a number of

changes in the politics and the social and economic development of

the world's nations. Hence, an important dimension of the ecological

framework--an emphasis on the relationship among a number of parts within any system--is useful in understanding the empirical aspects of

food production and consumption as well as the more theoretical linkages of food flows to p o litics. Though the food problem is complex, at the most general level, we can identify different interests among the developed nations (the usual producers of agricultural surpluses) and

the developing world which depends upon food imports.

P articularly in the decade of the 1960's, some developed nations such as Canada, the United States, A ustralia, and New Zealand

saw the food problem as one of over-production of certain foods

12 Boerma, p. 107. xi i

(cereals, for example, and dairy products) leading to surpluses and depressed prices on the world market. To these nations, then, the food 13 problem revolved about insufficient markets and high ta r iffs .

National agricultural and trade policies derived from these economic re a litie s . To offset low demand among paying customers, governments subsidized agriculture and initiated food aid plans whereby surpluses were contributed to poorer countries which would not otherwise be poten- 14 tia l customers in the world food market.

Aside from the conclusion of specific international commodity agreements (also discussed in Chapter 5 ), agricultural producers achieved only limited success in lib e ra liz in g trade and stabilizing the price of food products. The General Agreement on T ariffs and

Trade GATT had been established in 1947 to facilitate ta riff negotia­ tions on a multilateral basis and thereby to contribute to a freer and expanded world trade. Yet GATT showed l i t t l e interest in working out 15 the problems of agricultural trade. The Kennedy Round of interna­ tional trade negotiations held from 1964 to 1967 under the auspices of

13 F. 0. Grogan, International Trade in Temperate Zone Products (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1972). 14 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, National Grain Policies (Rome, 1973). For a thorough summary of the relationship between aid and food surplus see Robert L. Bard, Food Aid and International Agricultural Trade (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1972). 15 A number of authors present d iffe re n t views on GATT in section V of Foreign Agricultural Trade, ed. Robert L. Tontz (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1966), pp. 421-03; see also, Bela Balassa, Trade Liberalization among Industrial Countries: Objectives and Alterna­ tives (New York: McGraw-Hill. 1967); Harry Johnson, ed., New Trade Strategy for the World Economy (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969). Also: xi ii

GATT once again faced the trade portion of the world agricultural

products in furtherance of a significant development and expansion of world trade in such products."^

Regional markets were the chief obstacle to freer agricultural trade. The European Common Market, for example, tended to build the

internal agricultural sector (at a high cost) and denied entry to other more e ffic ie n t producers of fo o d s tu ffs .^ As food consumption rose in

the 1970's however, these problems of tariffs had fewer negative effects on agricultural trade. A diminishing food supply prompted a rise in food prices. In addition, new markets arose for agricultural goods--the Soviet Union, China, and much of the developing world.

But this boost to the agricultural trade of developed nations had only disastrous consequences for the developing nations who now had to compete for foodstuffs along with such wealthy customers as Japan.

Food aid from the United States and Canada, the result of previous grain surpluses, diminished. And attempts to increase their agricul­ tural self-sufficiency met failure as population increases in many 18 developing nations offset increases in agricultural production.

Karin Koch, International Trade Policy and the GATT 1947-67 (Stockholm: Almqvist & W iksell, 1969); Kenneth W. Dam, The GATT Law and International Economic Organization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.

^ F o r an analysis of the Kennedy Round see Ernest Preeg, Traders and Diplomats (Washington: Brookings In s titu tio n , 1970).

^See particularly the section on agricultural trade of Part 1, Towards an Open World Economy, Frank McFadzean (London: Macmillan, 1972); Theodore Geiger, "Toward a World of Trade Blocks," The Atlantic Community Quarterly, IX, No. 4 (Winter, 1971-72), 426-37. 18 Lester R. Brown and Erik P. Eckholm, "Grim Reaping: This Year the Whole World is Short of Grain," New York Times, September 15, 1974, Sec. E, p. 6, cols. 1-4. xiv

These food problems were articulated in a manner which

increased enormously the importance of food in world politics. Hunger,

trade imbalance, and food dependency, existed for many years as part of

the lamentable but nevertheless accepted re a litie s of insufficient

economic development. The growing importance of the "third world,"

through regional organizations and through such pressure groups as the

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) began

articulating the food issue as an urgent one. Then, too, with the

growing scarcity of world raw materials--many of these materials located

in the third world—developed nations were compelled to listen to the 19 hungry world's request for food and agricultural development aid.

The f ir s t UNCTAD program made only passing reference to the 20 world food aid program. The second UNCTAD meeting of 1970, however,

discussed the food problem in greater detail, particularly the need for

increased agricultural production in developing nations:

19 For one view of the growing influence of the third world, see C. Fred Bergson, "The Threat from the Third World," Foreign Policy, No. 11 (Summer, 1973), pp. 102-24; for the relationship between cold war doctrine and the importance of the th ird world, consult Robert A. Packenham, Liberal America and the Third World (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973), pp. 93-97. The growing influence of the third world as a pressure group often dates from the meeting of the "77" members of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Develop­ ment (UNCTAD), in 1964. For further discussion, see John Pincus, Trade Aid and Development: The Rich and the Poor Nations (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), pp. 76-85; also, Brown, pp. 103-106. Robert Walters, "International Organization and P o litical Communication: The Use of UNCTAD by Less Developed Countries," International Organization, XXV, No. 4 (Autumn, 1971), 818-35. 20 Proceeding of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Geneva, 33 March-16 June, 1964. Document E/CONF.46141. XV

While food aid is essential to sustain consumption con­ sideration may be given to the provision of aid to food production in developing countries. During the last decade, emphasis was placed on food aid rather than aid to agriculture. Such a course was probably inescapable in view of the pressure of surplus stocks. With the virtual disappearance of the surpluses, greater attention may be given to measures designed to raise the productivity of agriculture.2^

The UNCTAD conference papers voiced the now fam iliar refrain that an

increase in population in developing areas contrasted with the slower increase of agricultural production. Unless measures were adopted to deal with both population and food problems, the Malthusian prediction 22 would become a re a lity .

About 40 developing countries are net importers of food. These nations import 4i billion dollars worth of food a year. They must spend precious foreign exchange on needed foodstuffs. This means that they skimp on imports needed for further agricultural development-- specifically, for fertilizers, hybrid seeds, agricultural machinery, 23 and petroleum. Thus, the food problem becomes circular and continuing.

The world food problem always has been present. A continuing problem becomes a "crisis" however, when i t begins to destroy the given order of things. The order of things has been persistent hunger

21 Proceeding of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Second Session, New Delhi, 1 February-29 March 1968, Document TD/97, as quoted in H. D. Shourie, UNCTAD— I I : A Step Forward (New Delhi: Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, 1968), pp. 226-27. Shourie examines the UNCTAD proceedings on the food problem in Chapter Thirteen, "The World Food Problem," pp. 226-37.

22Shourie, p. 227. 23 Office of Economic Cooperation and Development; The Food Problem in Developing Countries (Paris: OECD, 1968). xvi with occasional occurrences of famine--but no major catastrophe equal, for example, to the plagues of thirteenth century Europe. Rather, the problem has been pernicious, insidious--malnutrition daily draining the vitality from men and nations in an unspectacular manner. The world food problem (as with so many social and economic i ll s ) did not become a "crisis" until, first, events suggested that catastrophe was a very 24 real p o s s ib ility , and secondly, until those parts of the world previously unaffected by food problems suffered shortages and rises in food prices.

The world is used to the warnings of catastrophe. The atomic scientists, in an effort to curb the spread and increased use of nuclear weapons, put a doomsday clock on the cover of their monthly bulletin. Interest groups formed about other "crisis" issues; an unprecedented number of organizations formed to protect endangered species, advertise environmental dangers, halt hunger, abolish drug abuse, and so forth. Citizens had become inured to their reports.

Hence, the findings of the second Club of Rome convocation (a group which cautions against continued industrial expansion) raised only 25 momentary interest. Basically, the complicated computer analyses

24 The present food crisis may be dated from the press release by A. H. Boerma, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organiza­ tion of the United Nations, on September 10, 1973, convocating an emergency meeting of the International Wheat Council and the surplus grain nations in Rome on September 20, 1973. See citation and analysis in the M illing and Baking News, X II, No. 30 (September 11, 1973), 15, 72. 25 The shortages of food which began appearing by 1973 and 1974 came as a surprise to most observers of the world's future. In th eir book, Things to Come: Thinking about the Seventies and Eighties (New York: Macmillan Co., 1972), Herman Kahn and B. Bruce-Briggs expressed confidence in the development of new "miracle" rices and x v ii of the Second Club of Rome suggested the gravity--above a ll else--of the food problem. In the f ir s t scenario (present production and present aid patterns continuing) the food crisis in South Asia will far from lessen; i t w ill increase to unprecedented proportions. We can expect protein deficiencies up to 50 m illion tons by 1980. I f food imports are discontinued, catastrophe hits Southeast Asia about 1980 and peaks about 2000 with entire parts of the earth being eliminated by starvation 26 and hunger-caused disease.

Optimistic figures, however, also articulated their concern over the world food problem. Lester Brown, several years ago fa ir ly confident of the ability of technological innovation to increase food­ s tu ffs, became more pessimistic. In measured words, he warned that

Mexican wheats and sorghums. "As a result," they wrote, "we can confidently predict a world food surplus rather than shortage for the mid-seventies. A moderate world agricultural depression due to over­ production is much more lik e ly than a Malthusian famine caused by increased population outstripping agricultural land" (p. 154). These views were countered by the more informed analyses of men such as Georg Borgstrom, The Hungry Planet (London: Collier-MacMillan Ltd., 1972). nc These findings of the Fourth Club of Rome can be found in Mihajlo D. Mesarovic, "Four Options for Tomorrow," Science and Public Policy, I , No. 9 (September, 1974), 245-50. For a review of past systems analyses of food production, see Mike McLean and Mike Hopkins, "Problems of World Food and Agriculture," Futures, VI, No. 4 (August, 1974), 309-18. The major problem of computer projections about food, the authors, suggest, is that food is assumed to be already equally distributed. This applies to the findings of another Club of Rome Study, Dennis and Donella Meadows, The Limits to Growth (New York: Universe, 1972). For a more balanced view of food needs of developing nations, see B. Oury, "Estimation of Long Run Changes in Domestic Demand for Food in Lesser Developed Countries,” Economics Department Working Paper No'. 33, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 1969. x v iii

"several factors suggest that the world food economy is undergoing a 27 fundamental transformation and that food scarcity is becoming chronic."

Nobel prize winner Norman Borlaug, the scientist mainly responsible for

the agricultural changes resulting in the "green revolution," also spoke of imminent dangers. In 1961, the world grain reserve amounted to about 222 m illion metric tons of grain--enough to feed the world for

94 days. But at present, Borlaug emphasized, only 105 m illion tons remain, and considering the great increase in population since 1961, 28 this puts world food reserves at just 29 days.

The "crisis" aspect of the food problem can be attributed, iro n ic a lly , to increased global economic development, and secondly, to a number of accidental events which curtailed recent agricultural pro­ duction in a number of countries. The simultaneous increase in global wealth in the past decade led to increased consumption, and ultim ately to rising in fla tio n . People in many nations not only consumed more food than ever before, but they ate more costly food. (The production cost of cereal diets versus meat consumption is discussed in Chapter 3.)

Hence--due to consumption patterns as well as to the population trends

27 Lester R. Brown, "The Next Crisis? Food," Foreign Policy, No. 13 (Winter, 1973-74), 3. See also, Lester Brown and Erik P. Eckholm, "The Empty Breadbasket," Ceres, VII (March-April, 1974), 59-66. 28 "The Shrinking Margin," an interview with Norman Borlaug and Raymond Ewell, Ceres, VII, No. 2 (March-April, 1974), 56. This contrasts with Borlaug's cautious but more optimistic address to the Third International Wheat Genetics Symposium, "Wheat Breeding and Its Impact on World Food Supply," Proceedings of the Third International Wheat Genetics Symposium, ed. K. W. Finlay and K. W. Sheperd (Canberra: Australian Academy of Science, 1968), pp. 1-36. ixx already mentioned—we find a growing scarcity of foodstuffs and there- 29 fore rising prices.

Resource depletion and "accidental" crop failures added to the growing food problem. The cost of oil from the OPEC countries increased the cost of petroleum products essential in mechanized agriculture.

Higher petroleum costs also added to the already large f e r t iliz e r deficits, especially critical since new high-yielding varieties of 30 corn and wheat necessitated the use of nitrogenous fertilizers.

Shortages of pesticides, selected seeds, farm credit and water were also c r itic a l. And poor conservation practices lessened the produc­ tivity of millions of acres of formerly fertile cropland. Then, too, throughout the 1970's , droughts decreased harvests in South Asia,

Sub-Sahara Africa, the Soviet Union, A ustralia, Argentina, and other parts of the globe. Other protein sources such as the Peruvian anchovy 31 harvest dwindled.

THE WORLD FOOD CONFERENCE: BEGINNING OF A SOLUTION?

Much of the world's diplomacy is conducted through widely attended international conferences such as the World Food Conference

pQ Edmundo Flores, "Why There Is a C risis," Ceres, V II, No. 2 (March-April, 1974), 8-11; Sicco L. Mansholt, "Man or Pig?" Ceres, V II, No. 3 (May-June, 1974), 48-49. This relationship between wealth and food consumption (annotated in greater detail in Chapter 3 of the dis­ sertation) is explained in Chapters 1-4 of Borgstrom, pp. 1-69. 30 David Pimentel and others, "Food Production and the Energy Crisis," Science, CLXXXII, No. 411 (November 21, 1973), 443-48. 31 The recent problems of drought throughout the world are summarized in the previously cited Preliminary Assessment of the World Food Situation, pp. 12-19. XX held in November, 1974. Back in 1922, Norman H ill commented on what he called the "astonishing rate of increase" in international conferences.

Had he written The Public International Conference following World 32 War I I , Mr. H ill's astonishment would have increased s t il l further.

A United Nations report on the number of conferences of the organization's agencies over the period 1960 to 1966 revealed 2,000 to 2,400 in te r­ national meetings held annually in New York and between 4,000 and 4,300 held annually in Geneva. Meetings sponsored by United Nations' regional commissions increased from 770 annually in 1960 to over 1,120 in 1966.33

What is the outcome of these conferences and meetings? Clearly, opinion differs. Lloyd George recognized the criticism to the inter­ national conference at Versailles in 1923. He reported that "the gibers are beginning to say, Ah! Another Conference! Forty-five nations 34 and a thousand experts. What fo lly ! What extravagance!" And what would the gibers say to the years 1973 and 1974, years that saw the convocation of the world-wide environmental conference in Stockholm

32 Norman H ill, The Public International Conference (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1922). Most books on this subject appeared e a rlie r in this century. See: F. S. Dunn, The Practice and Procedure of International Conferences (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1929). A recent exception is Joseph M. A. H. Luns, Conference Diplomacy: An Introductory Analysis (Leyden, Netherlands! A. W. S ijth o ff, 1968), and UNESCO, "The Technique of International Conferences," International Social Science B u lletin , V, No. 2 (1953). 33 United Nations, Second Report of the Ad Hoc Committee of Experts to Examine the Finances of the United Nations and the Specialized Agencies, GA0R, Twenty-first session, Document A/6343/1966. 34 Lloyd George, as quoted in John Saxon M ills , The Genoa Conference (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1922), p. 18. xxi in 1972, the Salt talks in Helsinki, the population conference in

Bucharest, the Law of the Sea conference in Caracas, and now the world food conference in Rome?

The results of past conferences are often d iff ic u lt to evaluate, for as Thomas Wilson, an observer of these conference processes sug­ gests, the results are clouded by "ideological rhetoric of plenary meetings, the opaqueness of negotiated language in the documents that emerged, and by the paucity of hard decisions and commitments that can 35 be subjected to quantitative analysis." Yet the two preceding world food conferences (Congress I and I I ) did result in positive actions.

The programs in itia te d were not "orchestral" ones in the sense that they were capable of achieving a global balance in the production and consumption of food. But this was the intended direction of some of the programs that followed from the conference ( i f not of the inde­ pendent states or international organizations sponsoring them).

The f ir s t World Food Congress, held in Washington, D.C. in

1963, was concerned primarily with calling attention to the severity of the world hunger problem. Thus the major objectives were summarized 36 in Congress documents as "creating world interest and attention. . . ."

Historian Arnold Toynbee placed the food problem within the context of human history; Gunnar Myrdal drew attention to the difficulties of

35 Thomas Wilson, World Food: The P o litical Dimension (Washington, D.C.: Aspen Institute for Humanist Studies, 1974), p. 35.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, World Food Congress, a Report of the World Food Congress, Washington, D.C., June 4-18, 1963, Vol. 1 (Rome: FAO, 1963), Document 11.63/6600, p. 1. xx i i economic and social reform, and United Nations' leaders spoke on the 37 agencies' work towards solving the hunger problems.

The major United Nations' program designed to eliminate hunger had been the Freedom from Hunger Campaign launched in 1960 by Dr. B. R.

Sen, then director-general of the FAO. The objectives of the Freedom from Hunger Campaign included preparing information on the nutritional state and food needs of much of the world, educating farmers in modern agricultural techniques, and initiating action programs to demonstrate the benefits of irrig a tio n , hybrid seeds, and so forth. The f ir s t

World Food Congress (1963) was conceived as one part of the campaign.

As the Congress report explains:

In every movement there comes a stage when one has to pause and take stock of what has been done and to assess the adequacy of the efforts in relation to the character of the challenge. The Congress was timed to fa ll at the mid­ point of the five-year campaign. It was organized as a "people to people" meeting rather than a conference between governments.38

By the time of the f ir s t World Food Congress, one hundred and th irty - seven countries and territories were participating in the campaign.

As a congress aimed at "people" rather than governments, the

First World Food Congress could not hope to produce working machinery for grander food-problem solutions. Rather, the congress dealt in

37 Arnold J. Toynbee, "Man and Hunger: The Perspectives of History," Report of the World Food Congress: Major Addresses and Speeches, Vol. I I (Rome: FAO, 1965), 1-9; K. 6. Myrdal, "Food for Increasing Millions," Report of the World Food Congress, Vol. II (1965), 17-26, Document 17942/2.65/E.1/2500.

^World Food Congress (1963), Vol. 1, p. 4. xxiii generalities. It stressed the inter-connectedness of problems of development. And although this stress is now evident in most developing lite ra tu re , the emphasis was useful during the "decade of development" when most talk of economic change related to industrialization--which would, some economists thought, automatically trigger changes in the agricultural sector.

The congress also called for the "formulation of a world plan in quantitative terms which would be based on nutritional and economic development need and would indicate the type and magnitude of external 39 assistance needed." This recommendation led to the preparation of the Indicative World Plan for Agricultural Development prepared by the

FAO and presented to the FAO Conference of November, 1969.

The Second World Food Congress, held in the Netherlands in

1970, focused on the findings of the Indicative World Plan for

Agricultural Development and, in addition, specified what the new

Director General of the FAO, Addeke H. Boerma, called the "Five Areas of Concentration." The world food plan was quite specific in pointing out where action should be taken— to close the protein gap, to extend the use of high-yield cereals; to eliminate waste, both of land and of harvested food; to promote foreign exchange earnings and savings in developing countries; and, to "establish the right relationship 40 between population growth and food production." These Five Areas of

39 Quoted in Report of the Second World Food Congress, The Hague, Netherlands, June 10-30, 1970, Vol. I (Rome, 1970), Document MR/A6252/11.70/E /l/7200, p. 3.

^ Report of the Second World Food Congress, Vol. 1, pp. 125-27. xxiv

Concentration, part of the framework for the programming of the FAO, related to the Indicative World Plan for Agricultural Development.

This la tte r document was intended as a vast blueprint for food production 41 strategy looking forward to 1975 and 1985. But neither of these documents succeeded in formulating the kinds of institutions necessary to accomplish their objectives.

The real "crisis"in food production, outlined in preceding pages, made international action on a broader front necessary, and with this objective in mind, nations prepared for the 1974 World Food Con­ ference. This conference appears to differ in one subtle respect from the two former conferences. Previously, the participants tended to see the food problem as an ailment that could be solved by a continuing application of technology. John F. Kennedy, in his address to the

First World Food Conference, pointed out that starvation was not neces­ sary now that the world had the means to eliminate it--that we lack

"only the w ill." The green revolution seemed successful by the time of the Second World Food Conference of 1970, and although statements 42 about technological improvement were cautious, they remained optim istic.

The problems appeared more trenchant and d iffic u lt by 1974— solutions

^The Indicative World Plan is summarized in the Report of the Second World Food Conference, Vol. I I (Rome: FAO, 1970), Document MR/A6252/2.71/E/1/7200, pp. 129-38. 42 United Nations, Preparatory Committee to the World Food Conference, Preliminary Assessment of the World Food Situation Present and Future (A p ril, 1964), Document E/C0NF.65/PREP/6; United Nations, Aftab Ahmad Khan, Rapporteur General, "Draft Report of the World Food Conference" (November 12, 1974), Document E/C0NF.65/L.3/Add; United States Department of Agriculture, The World Food Situation and Prospects to 1985, Foreign Agricultural Economic Report No. 98 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1974). XXV

would require an agreed world food policy and large investments of

often scarce resources; solutions would necessitate a greater unselfish­

ness among the wealthier nations.

The major objectives of the World Food Conference rested not

in revamping national agricultural policies or formulating another

world plan for agricultural development (though, of course, these

remained essential). Rather, the two objectives of the Congress were

to (1) assure a world food supply through a global security system,

and (2) to implement plans for increasing production through technology

and agricultural investment. The problems were by now apparent, as

were a number of possible solutions. What was needed was the commit­ ment of nations to act upon this growing world interest of freedom from

hunger and to establish the necessary institutions.

The world food security system, f ir s t proposed by the FAO in

February, 1973, was conceived as a "coordinated system of national

reserve stocks of cereals in both developed and developing countries."

This objective requires the building of storage facilities in the developing countries and expanding existing grain facilities in many

of the developed nations. Part of food security is also seen as assuring maintenance of food aid programs to alleviate suffering in

the case of famine. From 1973 until mid-1974, available food aid diminished to about half of what i t was on average during the previous

ten years. This underscores the fact that food aid not only has to be xx vi increased but that it must be reorganized "on a more secure basis--with 43 supplies from donor countries planned [in advance]."

The conference sought to make few binding decisions. It focussed on the issues raised by world food problems. Hopefully, the discussion w ill reveal substantial "world interest" so that the formal machinery needed to implement conference objectives w ill evolve. The scepticism of some observers echo real strains, however, and as Michel

Batisse asserts, "The overall picture of the world's conventional food supply has never been bright at any time in history and is not bright today, but i t is probably in this area that the lim its of the earth, together with the limits of man's organizing ability are most con- 44 straining."

43 Lester R. Brown, "The Next Crisis? Food," Foreign Policy, No. 13 (Winter, 1973-74), 26-27.

^Michel Batisse, "Global Prospects for Natural Resources," Nature and Resources, X, No. 1 (January-March, 1974), 4. Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION: THE GIFT FROM CERES

The ancient Romans held festivals at seed and harvest time during which they offered gifts of wheat to Ceres, the goddess who with foresight and magnamimity f ir s t bestowed the cereal grain on manJ Her g ift, a member of the great grass family gramineae, is the cereal with the longest and most ceremonious heritage of cultivation. Archaeologi­ cal explorations of sites in the Near East--the e arlie st evidence of plant husbandry--indicate that by 7000 B.C. or so, man had begun to ? cultivate Emmer wheat and hulled barley. The cultivation of wheat spread throughout Mesopotamia, then to Egypt and Greece, and la te r to 3 Western Europe.

1 / ^ ' Henri Le Bonniec, Le Culte de Ceres a Rome des origines a la fin de la Republique (Parisi Klincksieck, 1958). 2 R. J. Braidwood, "The Agricultural Revolution," Man and the Ecosphere, ed. S cien tific American (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1971), p. 19; R. J. Braidwood and C. A. Reed, "The Achievement and Early Consequences of Food Production," Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology, XXII (1957), 19-31. See also, K. M. Kenyon, "Jericho and the Origins of Agriculture," Advancement of Science, XVII (1960), 119-131. 3 This is the history of wheat domestication suggested by the great Russian geneticist, Nikolai Vavilov in his The Origin, Variation, Immunity and Breeding of Cultivated Plants, trans. K. Starr Chester (New York: Ronald Press, 1951). See also, P. J. Ucko and G. W. Dimbleby, eds., The Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and Animals (London: Duckworth, 1969). The earlie st European works on agricultural history were completed by scholars such as Johannes Hoops who married the arts of history and archeology in Waldbaume

1 Five thousand year old grains of wheat, along with cakes of sorghum (durra) were discovered in the tombs of Egyptian pharoahs.^ In

Greece, where cereal supported the growth of the c ity states of Sparta 5 and Athens, wheat has been found in aceramic ruins. Grains sim ilar to modern varieties of wheat have been uncovered with remains from the g Stone Age in England, and--among l i t t l e cakes of coarse g rain--in the debris of prehistoric Swiss lake dwellings.^

The significance of wheat in establishing past civilizations continues in its contribution to present cultures of the world. Wheat has become the world's largest crop, a big jump from its incipient Q cultivation on the h ills of Kurdistan probably 10,000 years ago.

und Kulturpflanzen im Germanischern Alterthum (Strasberg, 1905), discussed in the work of Sir William Ashley, The Bread of Our Fore­ fathers: An Inquiry in Economic History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928). See also, Jack R. Harlan and Daniel Zohary, Science, C L III, No. 3740 (September 2, 1966), 1074-1080.

Soweth E. S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt (London: Parrish, 1961). Kilns for the drying of wheat have also been found in the kitchen-middens of predynastic wheat (circa 8000 B.C.). See J. B. Bury and others, eds., The Cambridge Ancient History: Egypt and Babylonia to 1580 B .C ., Vol. I (Cambridge: The University Press, 1923- 39), pp. 241-242. 5 R. J. Rodden, "Excavation at the Early Neolithic Site at Nea Nikomedia, Greek Macedonia, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, XXVIII (1962), 267-288.

Stuart Piggot, British Prehistory (1944; London: Oxford Uni­ versity Press, 1955); H. Helbaek, "Early Crops in Southern B rita in , Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, XVIII (1952), 194-233.

S tu a r t Piggot, Ancient Europe, from the Beginnings of Agriculture to Classical Antiquity (Chicago: A!dine, 1966), p. 25; see also, Don and Patricia Brothwell, Food in Antiquity: A Survey of the Diets of Early Peoples (New York: Praeger, 1969), pp. 94-98. O Robert J. Braidwood and Bruce Howe, Prehistoric Investigations in Iraqi Kurdistan, Studies in Ancient C iv iliza tio n No. 31 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). 3

Roughly two-thirds of the earth's cultivated cropland is planted in cereals. The area planted to wheat alone covers over 600 m illion acres, an area double that devoted to maize or ric e , its major com- g petitors among cereal crops. Whereas once grains merely supplemented primitive man's food supply, cereal crops now provide the major part of the diet for four-fifths of the world's population.^ And wheat accounts for over 59 per cent of a ll grains consumed d irectly as food.

(And how much more when one considers the large amounts used as animal feed, therefore indirectly contributing to man's diet!)

The story of man and story of grain are one, historian Heinrick 12 Jacob explained in Six Thousand Years of Bread. Grains are an essen­ tia l part of man's ecosystem, of his social and economic system, and increasingly, of his p o litical system. When we use the example of wheat in the following chapters, i t is not to suggest that other grains are unimportant to man (or even, in many instances, less important).

Rather, wheat exists as a kind of metanamous reference for all cereal crops. Since we are interested in the globalization of man's eco- system--of his increasing dependency on resources from far-away

Q Lester Brown, "Human Food Production as a Process in the Biosphere," Man and the Ecosphere, p. 75.

^In ternational Wheat Council, Trends and Problems in the Grain Economy, 1950-1970, Secretariat Paper No. 6 (London: In ter- national Wheat Council, 1966), p. 13.

^ In tern atio n al Wheat Council, Trends and Problems . . . , p. 13. For a comprehensive analysis of grain u tiliz a tio n , see the Monthly Bulletin of the Food and Agriculture Organization, October, 1965. 12 Heinrick Eduard Jacob, Six Thousand Years of Bread, trans. Richard Winston (Garden City, N.Y7: Doubleday, 1944). ecosystems, wheat is a fittin g metaphor. Over 20 per cent of the world's output of wheat is exported (only 4 per cent of rice reaches

the export market, and only 8 per cent of coarse grains move in world

tra d e .^

Until the nineteenth century, food commodities were only inci­ dental items in world trade. To be sure, there are notable exceptions recorded by adroit historians--the Roman spice trade, the English salt trade, the Russian grain trade . 14 But these were exceptions to the 15 usual trade in precious stones, metal, and manufactured products.

By and large, local areas or regions remained s e lf-s u ffic ie n t in food­ stuffs until urbanization, industrialization, and specialization 16 removed consuming areas from producing areas.

By 1970, agricultural commodities accounted for one-fifth of the value of total world trade. Seventy-five per cent of these com­ modities were in foodstuffs, most of it destined for urban concentrations.

In 1972, the dollar value of wheat and flour exports amounted to

13 S. C. Hudson, Future Market Outlets for Canadian Wheat and Other Grains, Special Study No. 11, Economic Council of Canada (Ottawa: Queens Printer, January, 1970), pp. xi-x ii.

14See, for example, James Innes M ille r, The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire, 29 B.C. to A.D. 641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969) and A. R. Bridbury, England and the Salt Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955). 15 This trade is recorded in J. W. Jeudwine, Studies in Empire and Trade (London: Longmans, Green, 1923) and in numerous studies on individual trade items as in J. D. Muley, "Tin Trade Routes of the Bronze Age," American Scientist, LXI, No. 4 (1973), 404-429.

^ A . Harry Walters, Ecology, Food and C iv iliza tio n (London: Charles Knight, 1973); R. H. Buchanan and others, Man and His Habitat (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971). 5

$4,811,362,000 (half the value of all cereal exports ) . 17 Including both

commercial sales and large concessional shipments of grain by the

United States, wheat accounts for 60 per cent of a ll grain tonnage on 18 the international market.

Archaeological evidence indicates that other food crops were

harvested as well as wheat. Neolithic farmers cultivated peas, beans, 19 vetches, oats and le n tils at about the same time as wheat. Although

these other legume and cereal crops reappeared in many civ iliza tio n s ,

they never became as important in human consumption as wheat. Why, we 20 might ask, has wheat cultivation dominated man's agricultural history?

The prominance of wheat in man's food chain appears to have grown out of a series of cultural and economic decisions of many cen- 21 turies of farmers. It became, as we shall elucidate in the next

paragraphs, the "compromise" crop of temperate zone communities. The

grain exhibited an overall economy of production: the crop grew with

relative ease, and wheat provided both protein and sufficient

17Figures derived from the Trade Yearbook, 1972 by the Food and Agriculture Organization, XXVI, Document PP/E1131/TR/11.73/1/6400 (Rome, 1973), pp. 134, 188, 191. 18 International Wheat Council, Trends in Wheat Production, Consumption, Trade (London: International Wheat Council, 1966), p. 21. 19 Daniel Zohary and Maria Hopf, "Domestication of Pulses in the Old World," Science CLXXXII, No. 4115 (November, 1973), 887-894. 20 Even the domestication of animals took place in conjunction with agriculture (with the exception of the reindeer); see Carol 0. Sauer, Agricultural Origins and Dispersals (New York: American Geographical Society, 1952), pp. 19-20, 84.

21Ashley, pp. 1-5, 149-160. 6 22 calories for man's nutrition. Cultural preferences--particularly among the Greeks and Romans--for raised loaves of white bread rein­ forced the tradition planting wheat, and the grain spread from the 23 Mediterranean to the rest of Western Europe.

Once he le ft l i f e as hunter and gatherer, man needed a sub­ stitute for his meat and vegetable diet, a food with a sufficiently high energy or nutritional value. In la te r chapters we define the energy value of an ecosystem as the a b ility of the ecosystem to pro­ duce energy (food and fuel are the only kinds of energy naturally producted by an ecosystem). The usefulness of the energy product such as wheat and corn or o il and coal depends upon the success with which man incorporates this food into his biological system or fuel into his industrial system. Usually we are concerned with both the amount of energy produced and its quality--and we judge these compara­ tiv e ly across foods or fuels.

Wheat is a compromise between these two characteristics of an energy product. The yields are higher than many legumes (although the protein content is lower) and the protein content is high compared with that of other cereal crops.

The nature of certain food molecules, as we shall see in

Chapter Four, are such that they are more complex and costly for the ecosystem to produce, but also yield greater energy when consumed.

22 Wheat also seems to utilize radiation more efficiently than many other grain crops— see, Jen-Hu Chang, Climate and Agriculture: An Ecological Survey (Chicago: Aldine, 1968), p. 58; so we might suggest that it is also more efficient in an ecological sense.

^3Ashley, pp. 150-165; Sauer, pp. 20-31. 7

Such is the protein found in the cereal crops--particularly in wheat.

The protein molecule takes four times more energy to construct than a

carbohydrate molecule, for though proteins are derived, in part, from

carbohydrates through the formation of amino acids, these s t ill simple

compounds then combine with nitrates from the soil (and other sub­

stances as w ell) to form the highly complex protein molecule. This complexity can be seen in the formular for a typical protein, gliadin, 24 which occurs in wheat: C/36H1161 N 184O2O8 S3.

Although "costly" to construct, this protein is a necessary

part of man's d ie t, and is essential for his muscular growth and development of the nervous system.

Foods are divided into several categories according to botanical classifications which also reflect their nutritional composition. If we are to compare the nutritional value of wheat--using as an index the amount of protein it yields--we find that it cannot compare to meat, fish, and diary products, to the various pulses such as peas and 25 beans or to the oilseeds lik e soybeans or peanuts. Of the cereal crops, however, it yields the highest amount of protein--about 12 per

24 Yeshajahu Pomeranz, "From Wheat to Bread: A Biochemical Study," American Scientist, LXI, No. 6 (November-December, 1963), 683-691. 25 W. R. Aykroyd and Joyce Doughty, Legumes in Human N u tritio n , FAO Nutrition Studies, No. 19 (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1964); N. W. P irie , Food Resources: Conventional and Novel (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1969). W. R. Aykroyd and Joyce Doughty, Wheat in Human N u tritio n , FAO Nutrition Studies, No. 19 (New York: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1970). 8

cent of food intake, while m ille t and corn produce 10 per cent protein 26 and rice about 8 .

There is an inverse relation between yield and protein content,

not only among classes of food (vegetables, cereals), but also among

the various grains (corn, rye) and even among the varieties of particu­

la r grains--the hard wheats, high protein, low yield in g ), and the 27 soft wheats (low protein, high yielding). This illustrates, once

again, the kind of compromise man always must make in regard to his

environment; indeed, we find this compromise continually at work in

natural ecological communities.

Apart from nutritional factors, the agronomy of food crops

lim it what the farmer decides to plant. Wheat proved adaptable to

many temperate zone environments, perhaps more adaptable than any

other grain except barley. I t could not be planted in so cold a

climate as rye, so warm a region as rice, or so dry a land as m illet--

but s till, in a sufficient number of ecosystems so that its culti­

vation spread rapidly about the world. Then, too, the cultivation of wheat was fa ir ly simple. The wheat fie ld demanded more care than oats

or barley, but nevertheless sowing and harvesting the crop demanded 28 l i t t l e knowledge or care.

Cultural preferences for "white" rather than brown cake or

bread reinforced these factors of nutrition and economy, thereby firmly

Of. Of course, this explanation simplifies complex agronomical relationships. See Vavilov, p. 57.

^7Vavilov, p. 194. OQ Charles B. Heiser, Seed to Civilization (San Francisco: W. H. Freedman, 1973), pp. 73-87. establishing the dominance of wheat. Cereal grains f i t well into the

increasingly urban (or at least "settled") lives of the early agricul­

tu ra lis ts . Grains of wheat and barley could be transported fo r long

distances; moreover, townsmen could store the grain as security 29 against interrupted supplies or possible famine.

Additionally, due to the gluten—an elastic protein—within the grain kernel, wheat flour produced the finest bread of any cereal.

(In fact, no other cereal except rye permits the formation of a raised 30 "loaf" of bread.) The eating of d ifferent breads and cakes became a matter of class distinction. As venerable historian Sir William Ashley summarizes in his superb The Bread of Our Forefathers: an Inquiry in

Economic History, wheat competed with rye— and some places barley--as the cereal grain for bread in the Mediterranean and Europe, but

"wheaten bread evidently came quite early to be regarded as a mark of superior social position. As soon as that was the case, its use would 31 spread as the result of social ambition and imitation."

This distinction appeared early in Egypt, where wheat bread 32 was reserved for the upper classes. The distinction between brown- bread eaters and white-bread eaters formed part of the social history of medieval Europe. The association of wheat with class distinction

29 Jacqueline Murray, The First European Agriculture: A Study of Osteological and Botanical Evidence until 2000 B.C. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1970), pp. 86-89.

Pomeranz, pp. 686-687.

31Ashley, p. 164. 32 Walter B. Emery, Archaic Egypt (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1961), p. 243. 10

continued in medieval England--and even into eighteenth and nineteenth

century England. The differences among grains became incorporated into 33 lite ra tu re and even the corn law tracts.

This grain-class distinction continues as a consumption pattern

in the developing nations of the world today. As per capita income

rises, so do we see an increase in the amount of wheat consumed per

person. The class-consumption pattern changes again in the industrial

nations, where the more affluent families eat less white bread and more non-cereal food such as meat and fr u it.

Insufficient food in some parts of the world--and insufficient petroleum in others--account for a good share of the w riting on con­ temporary international issues. What food and fuel have in common is that together they form man's only energy sources. The production of food, p articu larly, is basic to all subsequent energy (indeed i t forms the base of fossil fuels). Hence, we refer to wheat as an illustration of the kinds of transactions that take place among men and the various ecosystems of the world.

But apart from this concrete linkage of man to agriculture, and to the cereal crops in particular, there is another relationship between food, on the one hand, and international relations on the other: both the production of food and the conduct of international

33 Ashley, pp. 2-12; see also, William Edward Mead, The English Medieval Feast (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1931), pp. 66-69.

34 Food and Agriculture Organization, The Economic Relationship between Grains and Rice, Commodity Bulletin Series 39 (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1964). 11

relations can be understood best within an ecological framework that

emphasizes energy flows. The production and consumption of wheat

appears in the next few chapters as an example of the kind of energy

flows that occur at a ll ecological levels--from local wheatfields to

transfers of energy among nations.

Chapter 2 on the ecology of food systems describes how the physical environment is altered by man to form agricultural systems.

Prim itive agricultural systems such as the "swidden" slash and burn

fie ld system gave way to intensive "sawah" systems of cultivation in which man applied more capital and greater technology to reorganize his 35 fie ld s . Ecosystems were changed so as to produce more food for man:

Water, f e r t iliz e r and food plants themselves were shifted from one location to another, thereby furthering a growth of artificial farming systems which in themselves reflected the heightened complexity of the societies that developed them.

The ecological equation deals not only with the production of energy, but also with energy consumption. I t is this side of the equation— insu fficien t consumption and therefore energy surplus— that explains the importance of North American wheat in the world. F e rtile natural p ra irie , together with a sophisticated technological support resulted in the productivity of the North American Wheat Belt. Since neither Canada nor the United States can consume the amount of wheat they produce domestically, surpluses exist available for export to deficit or low-energy ecosystems.

35 These are anthropological terms. See Clifford Geertz, Agricultural Involution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963). Chapter 4 introduces the most publicized of these wheat transfers from North America--the 1972 sale by the United States of

11 m illion metric tons of wheat to the Soviet Union. This was the largest wheat transaction in the history of the world. The sale's unexpected economic and p o litic a l repercussions revealed the growing interdependency of various nations' economic, political, and eco­ logical systems. The transaction publicized the obvious--that wheat has been an important item in world trade in the past century; the patterns of this wheat trade are articulated following the discussion of the Soviet wheat purchase.

Chapter 5 makes e x p lic it the ecological principles which were implicit to the discussion of the first three chapters. "The Ecosystem

Model" describes how natural communities may be thought of as energy systems which continually receive and transform solar radiation.

Three concepts are emphasized: F irs t, the production of energy occurs in both high energy systems and low energy systems, but in low energy systems— due to environmental drawbacks or to inordinate consumption needs this energy production is insufficient to meet consumption requirements. Secondly, therefore, the production of energy must be balanced by the consumption of energy. This takes place through the interchange of energy (energy flows) through many ecosystems. The problem of balance also works its e lf out in the con­ cept of the trophic system. The trophic system—which explains how energy is channeled through an ecosystem--!ends new insight into the world food problem. Third, a discussion of the phenomenon of coup­ ling suggests the mechanisms by which energy production in one eco­ system is linked to another ecosystem through transfers of energy. 13

These exchanges of energy among ecological communities occur continually

in nature, but they are exaggerated in a r t if ic ia l, human communities.

Chapter 6 describes the "Globalization of the Ecosystem," or how the continual linking of ecosystems led to the conception of a

"spaceship" earth. This section develops the idea of man in the food chain, elucidating how the energy budget of prim itive man, repre­ sented by the Kung bushman, differs from the more demanding energy budget of modern man. The increase in human population meant that man had to find more food; he continually altered the earth in his efforts to produce food for more hungry mouths. Man's gradual change of physical ecosystems made him the dominant species in almost every world ecosystem. There exists a paradox, however, to this ecosystem dominance--to man's eating on the pinnacle of the trophic pyramid: though dominant as a species, man's unbalanced allocation of food resources results in inadequate food for much of the world's population.

To understand how the global linkages among ecosystems pro­ gressed, we turn to the intervening variable of urbanization and illustrate how two distinct phases of urbanization led to ever more distant couplings between man and his food supply. We begin to see as well "clusters" of linkages which are expressed as the echelon of integration. That is to say, exchanges of energy occur in the locale, in the district, nationally, and then with global distribution.

The concept of "spaceship earth" was popularized by Kenneth Boulding in "The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth," Environ­ mental Quality in a Growing Economy, ed. Henry Jarrett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966), pp. 3-14, and by Barbara Ward in Spaceship Earth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966). 14

Chapter 7, the "P oliticization of Ecology," shows how the

gradual globalization of energy is accompanied by a kind of reorgani­

zation and regulation of energy flows--in other words, by politization.

These energy flows are primarily binary in form--in other words they

occur as a series of dyadic exchanges from one ecosystem level to

another. These levels of interchange, described in the Model of the

Chinese Box, take place between the individual and his locale, the

locale and the larger d is tric t, among d istricts (which comprise the

nation), and across p o litic a l systems.

The binary flow of energy, we posit, has facilitated the

development of a maximizer paradigm of p o litic s . This paradigm--which emphasizes the primacy of power or utility--focuses on the institutions

that couple energy from one system to another. Hence we can under­

stand the historical importance of the nation-state and also the growing influence of transnational economic institutions.

More numerous energy transactions, the result of increasingly complex societies, make the binary mode of energy transfer--with its emphasis on institutions maximizing their p o litical power of economic

u tility --in c re a s in g ly in e ffic ie n t. The interdependency of nations and ecosystems--the result of the globalization of energy flows--stimulates the need for new kinds of balancing institutions.

The present control of the world by maximizing institutions

(i.e. nations and multinational corporations) also raises certain moral questions. There is , therefore, a normative thrust to this disser­ tation. The result of maximization is the unequal distribution of resources. Given the dimensions of the world food problem, we are particularly concerned with the unequal distribution of food. Of 15 course natural disasters and therefore hunger and starvation occurred in the past. But these were assumed to be the natural givens of human existence--the result of man's inability to control his natural environment. There was, therefore, no moral imperative to assume responsibility for human suffering.

The ecosystem model points to the problem and to its solution-- but it is not, in itself, the solution. Let us explain further. The ecosystem model allows us to see the need for energy production, for the coupling (linking) of energy from one ecosystem (or group of often a r t if ic ia lly bound ecosystems which comprise the nation) to another, and for the ultimate "balancing of this energy." But the balance which occurs in the natural ecosystem is enormously costly: individuals and species are but expendable figures of a large evolutionary design.

One is reminded of T. H. Huxley's devastating critique of evolutionary ethics, in which he reminded his audience that "there is a general consensus that the ape and the tiger methods of struggle for existence 07 are not reconcilable with sound ethical principles." And yet this describes the modus operandi of the institutions dominating the international arena.

There is a need for a new perspective to politics, then, one that emphasizes the ecological rather than the maximizing way of viewing the world. This ecological paradigm calls for the design of new institutions to coordinate (and at times to replace) the binary

37 T. H. and J. S. Huxley, Touchstone for Ethics (New York: Harper and Row, 1947), as quoted in Theodosius Dobzhansky, Mankind Evolving: The Evolution of the Human Species (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969), pp. 340-341. in s titu tio n s --to rationalize and to humanize them. These are what we call "orchestral institutions," which at present have evolved only crudely and insufficiently in the form of international organizations.

The aspirations of such orchestral institutions (though not the per­ formance) is represented by the November 1974 World Food Conference and in its proposed organization, the World Food Council. Chapter 2

THE ECOLOGY OF WHEAT

As we shall see, the ecological equation requires attention to two aspects of any energy transaction--production and consumptionJ

The following chapter explains how the factors of agricultural produc­ tion apply to form "natural" and "artificial" wheat belts. For if

Ceres distributed Emmer and Eikorn wheat over the natural countryside, thereby providing food for man, the arts of Minerva--who fostered technical s k ill and invention--reorganized the indigenous grain fields into fieldsystems of extraordinary fertility. This marriage of tech­ nology with ecology can be seen in the wheat farming on the plains and prairies of the United States and Canada. For not only is the

North American Wheat Belt a fecund natural system, but, in addition, it benefits from an extraordinary input of capital and technology made 2 available by societies at high levels of development.

The f ir s t concern of this chapter is the sheer production of food energy; the main references shall be to the farming of wheat.

Hhe ecological dimensions of production and consumption are covered in Chapter 4 of the dissertation. 2 Labor, though an essential factor of production, is not con­ sidered here. The ecological emphasis gives primary import to the inherent quality of the ecosystem. See S ir Joseph Hutchinson, Farming and Food Supply (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), p. 13. See also, Edward H. Graham, Natural Principles of Land Use (London: Oxford University Press, 1944), pp. 46-52.

17 18

Here we see the importance of naturally rich ecosystems, but emphasize

that even fe r tile ecosystems are lim ited by the same environment that

gave them productivity. Unreliable weather or unexpected disease can

eradicate the harvest of the most fertile basin. Therefore, at the

present stage of civilization, productive food systems must combine

the best of nature's endowments together with the a r t if ic ia l support

contributed by a technically advanced society. The lack of this tech­

nical support accounts for the major problem of agricultural systems 3 in the developing world.

Yet this combination of both natural and a r t if ic ia l design for

productivity suggests only part of the definition of what we shall explain in Chapter 4 as a "high energy system." A high energy system must product a food surplus. I t is this surplus that accounts for the

United States and Canada's pride of place as international grain pro­ ducers. This surplus arises from the imbalance of production with the second term of the ecological equation--consumption. It is an eco­ logical imbalance, then, that accounts for America's crucial position in wheat trade, and reciprocally, for the growing impact of interna­ tional wheat trade on these nations' domestic p o litic s . In other words, the grain nations' prominence depends as much on their customary

3 Workshop on Global Ecological Problems, Man in the Living Environment (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press for the In stitu te of Ecology, 1972), pp. 15-19. See also, Lester R. Brown, By Bread Alone (New York: Praeger, 1974), pp. 19-23, 217-219. W illard W. Cochrane, The World Food Problem: A Guardedly Optimistic View (New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell, 1969), pp. 182-187; A. T. Mosher, Getting Agriculture Moving (New York: Praeger for the Agricultural Development Council, 1966). Rockefeller Foundation, Progress Report: Toward the Conquest of Hunger, 1965-1966, Program in the Agricultural Sciences (New York: The Rockefeller Foundation, 1966). 19 d iffic u lty in marketing all grain within the North American borders as i t has on the typical per acre output of wheat. Therefore, the key to understanding the world grain trade lies in the concept of the surplus, and the concept of the surplus is best understood in terms of the ecological model.

This need to balance production of energy with consumption of energy w ill be brought together in more formal terms in Chapter 4,

"The Ecosystem Model," and Chapter 5, "The Globalization of the

Ecosystem."

THE ECOLOGY OF WHEAT: PRODUCTION

Wheat is adapted to a wider range of clim atic conditions than any other crop, except, perhaps, barley. Varieties of wheat are grown in regions extending from the frozen tundras of the North to the southernmost tips of Africa, Tasmania, and New Zealand. Wheat has been grown at Fort Yukon, Alaska--just south of the Arctic Circle-- and even within the Arctic Circle in parts of the Soviet Union. The grain grows at the equator on the high plateaus of Ecuador and

Colombia, at 14,000 feet above sea level in Tibet, and below sea 4 level in the Imperial Valley of California.

Wheat does not flourish equally well in all of these regions, however. The bulk of world production occurs in North America,

Europe, temperate southern hemisphere countries, the Soviet Union, and China. Due to geographic variance, wheat is not equally adapted

4 R. F. Peterson, Wheat: Botany, Cultivation and Utilization (New York: Interscience, 1965). 20 to a ll of the areas within these regions. I t grows best in moderately dry temperate climates. More sp ecifically, regions with a cool moist spring merging into warm, bright, dry harvest periods are best—but the various kinds of wheat, as we shall point out, differ somewhat in th e ir requirements.

We may divide the wheat growing nations—and areas within these nations— into those which are natural grain producing systems and those which are a r tific ia l grain producing. (These are relative distinctions, of course, made for comparative purposes.) Those

"natural" wheat ecosystems occur in the areas with the proper s o il, r a in fa ll, and temperature— for example, a portion of the plains of southern Russia, the Danube, the central plains of the United States and Canada, the Columbia River basin, the Pacific Northwest, northwest

5 India, north central China, Argentina, and southeast Australia.

These areas are naturally productive, and once given technical sup­ port, they become surplus "high energy" ecosystems— unless, of course, these productive systems are populated by large numbers of consumers.

A rtific ia l wheat ecosystems are those characterized by less adequate growing conditions. Unless special wheat varieties are introduced—and often even then--these systems must be improved by man through irrig a tio n , chemical fe r tiliz e r s and careful agricultural practices.

^Albert F. H ill, Economic Botany: A Textbook of Useful Plants and Plant Products (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1952), pp. 301-303. The "Natural" Wheat Belt: Environmental Givens

A rich food-producing ecosystem, as we mentioned, requires adequate temperature and sunlight, moisture and nutrients. Since most of the globe populated by man receives some sunlight, the major limiting factors to food-production are insufficient water and nutrients.® Thus, Sir Joseph Hutchinson, a noted English authority on agriculture, introduces his recent treatise on Farming and Food

Supply by the statement that "climate and soil are the two major natural factors dominating the practice of agriculture."^

The combination of temperature and r a in fa ll, often referred to as "climate" determines which plants grow in particular locations g as well as the ease with which these plants can be cultivated by man.

Temperature and sunlight determine the length of the potential growing season. In the tropics, therefore, plant growth proceeds throughout the year, while in higher latitudes a cold season lim its growth progres­ sively until in the arctic and antarctic regions one finds little g natural vegetation at a ll. Wheat, for example, needs a growing season of at least 90 days--and intense sunlight is most necessary as the seed germinates.

C Leslie Symons, Agricultural Geography (New York: Praeger, 1967), pp. 21-27. 7 Hutchinson, p. 13.

Q Gerardo Budowski, "Climatological Data and Natural Vegeta­ tion," Agriclimatoloqical Methods, Symposium on Methods in Agroclima­ tology (Paris: United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organization, 1968), pp. 97-100.

9J. A. S. Watson and J. A. More, Agriculture (11th ed.; London, 1962), pp. 31-33. 22

Water supply must be not only su fficient for crop growth, but reliab le enough so that successful food crops can be grown almost every year. A successful wheat crop requires at least 9 inches of water--but more than 30 inches often is detrimental. Good farming depends, therefore, upon either adequate seasonal ra in fa ll or a sub­ stitu te water supply through irrig a tio n systems . 10 The amount of water needed in a farmer's fie ld depends upon both the amount of sunlight in the ecosystem and the structure of the growing plants.

Under intensive sunlight, the water evaporates before it can be used by the plant. The shape of the leaves and the root systems of some plants facilitates—or hinders--the plants retention of water . 11

The calibration of water and sunlight must be just right.

One specialist suggests, therefore, that the grain fields of southern

England need the following amounts of rain: A p ril, 2 inches; May, 12 3£ inches; August, 3 inches. Wheat crops of temperate climates require 300 pounds of water (this is 35 to 40 gallons) to produce one pound of organic matter. Therefore, for every harvested pound of wheat--which w ill produce one loaf of bread--2,000 pounds (250 gal- 13 ons) of water is required!

10Herbert Addison, Land, Water and Food (London: Chapman & Hall, 19-5), pp. 1-35, 233-37.

^Hutchinson, pp. 16-18; P. E. Rijtema, "Derived Meterologi- cal Data: Transpiration," Agroclimatological Methods, pp. 55-67.

^Addison, p. 24. 1 ? Georg Borgstrom, Harvesting the Earth (New York: Abelard- Shuman, 1973), p. 64; see also, D. Hi 11 e l , Soil and Water (New York: Academic Press, 1971). 23

In addition to adequate sunlight and moisture, a productive ecosystem depends upon rich soil deposited in gentle topography.

There is a relationship, of course, between the amount of sunlight and rainfall of an area and its soil characteristics. Even more important, however, is the nature of the paternal rock structure from which the soil derives. Some surfaces contain more of the minerals needed in plant development than in others. The most important of 14 these plant nutrients are nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

Sandy soils may be deficient in most of these requirements, while volcanic soils are rich in all of them. The best soils for wheat are clays and loams, although a lig h t sandy soil can be u tiliz e d . Lime is 15 essential to the grain, as are the three elements mentioned above.

In addition, the calibration of water, sunlight, and soil must be uniquely suited to the needs of specific plant varieties (or vice versa). Kinds of wheat are so d iffe re n t--in environmental requirements and in yield—that some experts suggest that the cereal should be con- 16 sidered two separate grains. There are at least 20 separate species of wheat. The famous Russian botanist and geneticist Nikolai Vavilov points out that this means there are more than 400 heritable

^Kermit C. Berger, Sun, Soil and Survival: An Introduction to Soils (2d ed.; Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972), pp. 167-205.

^Robert W. Schery, Plants for Man (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972), pp. 417-23. 1 fi Georg Borgstrom, Too Many: A Study of Earth's Biological Limitations (London: MacmiTTa7Tri969yrTprT7^W! Since winter wheat is able to build up a root system during the fa ll, it shows a higher yield than spring wheat. A sim ilar difference exists between the high yields of irrigated lowland rice and the low yields of highland non­ irrigated rice. 24 morphological and physiological characteristics which can combine in many directions "giving us the theoretical opportunity for millions of possible combinations ." ^ 7 These many varieties of wheat react differ­ ently to th e ir environments. Wheats in Central Asia, for example, ripen only at high temperatures, while the northern Russian variety can ripen at low temperatures. Again, northern forms of wheat favor high moisture throughout the vegetative period, while the varieties 18 of Central Asia are drought resistant a fte r the "boot stage."

Plant development and productivity, then, is intimately related to all three of these factors--to sunlight, moisture, and soil charac­ te ris tic s . Careful husbandry takes a ll of these natural attributes into consideration. For years, as the traditional children's rhyme suggests, man accepted these "givens" of nature. He planted the seeds, and with his work done, he surveyed the land:

Do you or I or anyone know How oats and beans and barley grow? First the farmer sows his seed, Then he stands and takes his ease, Stamps his feet and claps his hands, And turns around to view the land. Waiting for a partner, Waiting for a partner. Open the ring and take one in.

There is a fatalism to this view of farming, a fatalism we find reflected in many of the early books on agriculture. In 1662, for example, Thomas Fuller wrote in his Worthies of England that "It is 19 not the husbandman but the good weather that makes the corn grow."

17Vavilov, p. 265. 18Vavilov, p. 194.

^ E ric L. Jones, ed., Agriculture and Economic Growth in England, 1650-1815 (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1967), p. 5. 25

Man's Technological Partner: The "Artificial 11 Wheat Belt

The fanner continued to depend upon good weather. But, in

addition, he did receive a partner—one which allowed him to work

fewer hours and s t il l reap larger harvests. This partner arrived in

the form of technology. With more money and knowledge to invest i t wisely, the farmer could use the products of industrial society to

increase yields on already cultivated land and to extend his fields to otherwise unproductive lands. In either case, the increase in food

supply followed from a change in the composition of the ecosystem—a borrowing from one system in order to enrich another.

We see two stages in man's a b ility to change the productivity of the ecosystem. The first farmers began to reorganize their eco­ system, using ingenuity to a lte r patterns of planting, for example, and importing f e r t iliz e r from nearby ecosystems. These changes were gradual. The improvements in plane husbandry came in small increments, 20 but the sum of these improvements brought increased harvests. In the present century, however, man not only further recognized his ecosystems, but he also learned how to reconstitute them. The genetic and chemical alterations of the ecosystem—made possible by

20 I t is these gradual changes in agricultural efficiency which are referred to as the "agricultural revolution." Of course, it was not a revolution at a ll, but an evolutionary process of small improvements. See V. Gordon Child, Man Makes Himself (New York: New American Library, 1955), and Carol 0. Sauer, Agricultural Origins and Dispersals (New York: American Geographical Society, 1952). 26

an industrial society with advanced scientific expertise--produced an 21 agriculture d iffe re n t in kind from that of previous centuries.

The reorganized ecosystem. Man changed the natural community in order

to direct its productive energies to providing food for human con­

sumption. The f ir s t farmers practiced a slash and burn or swidden

agriculture, whereby they cleared the forest for a field and then

burned the area to fee i t of weeds and debris. When poor soil and

weeds diminished the harvests--usually after a few years--the farmers

abandoned these fields for new forest clearings. As the villagers

moved on to new locations, the old fields returned to their former

jungle or forest vegetation. Early farmers altered but did not per- 22 manently reorganize th eir ecosystems.

Gradually, however, farmers began developing agricultural

techniques to augment the f e r t i li t y of th e ir croplands. They

increased productivity of the farmland by borrowing from the envi­

ronments of neighboring ecosystems. The subsequent reorganization,

therefore, took place over a number of ecosystems, with the farmer

bringing additional water or nutrients or even new plants to his land

21 This is often referred to as the "second" agricultural revolution--referring to changes introduced by the coming of industrial society. See Carlo M. Cipolla, The Economic History of World Popula­ tion (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1962), pp. 51-62; see also, Chapter 7, "Two Agricultural Revolutions," in Hugh N icol, The Limits of Man. An Inquiry into the Scientific Bases of Human Population (London: Constable, 1967), pp. 60-72. 22 R. Carneiro, "Slash-and-Burn Agriculture: A Closer Look at Its Implications for Settlement Patterns," Men and Cultures, ed. Anthony F. C. Wallace (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, I960), pp. 229-34. Johannes Iverson, "Forest Clearance in the Stone Age," Man and the Ecosphere, ed. Scientific American (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1971), pp. 36-31. 27 from other systems. This intensive farming--characterized by careful 23 husbandry--is often referred to as "sawah" cultivation.

Capital formation allowed the farmer to reinvest in the field.

The plow, the harness, oxen and horses--all aided the farmer in this process of reorganization. Of course this capital formation and the beginnings of modernization were themselves the result of building agricultural surpluses which followed from continual improvements in 24 the sawah model of cultivation.

The problem of drought stimulated one of the in itia l appli­ cations of capital and knowledge to agriculture. The first hydraulic engineers seem to have been the Egyptians, but the idea of importing water into the fields by irrigation works quickly diffused to Assyria, 25 Babylon, Carthage, Greece and Ita ly . In Egypt the farmers learned to control the waters in the swamps and marshes laid bare by receding floods of the Nile, thereby developing a form of agriculture made

23 See particularly, Clifford Geertz, Agricultural Involution: The Process of Ecological Change in Indonesia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963). For other classifications of field systems, see Harald Uhlig, "Fields and Field Systems," Man and His Habitat, ed. P. H. Buchanan and others (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), pp. 93-125.

24 / See Colin Clark, Conditions of Economic Progress (2nd ed.; London: Macmillan, 1951); Simon Kuznets, Toward a Theory of Economic Growth (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968), pp. 19-31; Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962). 25 Lynn White, J r ., Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford: The University Press, 1973), pp. 36-70. See also, G. E. Fussell, The Classical Tradition in West European Farming (Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Press, 1972), pp. 47-81, and B. H. Slicher Van Bath, The Agrarian History of Western Europe, trans. Olive Ordish (London! Edward Arnold, 1963). S. R. K. G lanville, The Legacy of Egypt (Oxford: Clarendon, 1942). 29

belonging to other farmers) which in itself demanded a change in the 29 nature of land ownership.

The use of f e r t iliz e r , f ir s t from domesticated animals and then from fossil fuels, again enhanced the yields of crops. The high farm productivity that took place in the Netherlands in the sixteenth century is related to the farmer's understanding of f e r t i li t y transfer.

Farmers in the hinterlands of Flanders and Braband used city manurial 30 wastes and peat ash from city fireplaces to enrich their soils.

Here once again, an increase in food productivity resulted from an increased complexity in the society as a whole (urbanization) as well 31 as in the complexity of the agricultural fieldsystem.

These incremental steps by generations of farmers toward improving the productivity of the ecosystem paid o ff. Production estimates prepared by historian V. H. van Bath, indicate the higher yields of wheat that followed from the farmer's reorganization of his ecosystem. The yields of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were about 9 or 10 bushels per acre, while yields increased to 975 kilograms in the fifte en th century, and again to 1312 kilograms in the

29White, p. 73; Uhlig, p. 111. 30 A. Harry Walters, Ecology, Food & C ivilisation (London: Charles Knight, 1973), p. 112. 31 Nicol, pp. 50-59. See also, E. F. Heckscher, The Conti­ nental System: an Economic Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), G. E. Fussell, The Classical Tradition in West European Farming (Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Press, 1972). sixteenth century; by the nineteenth century yields reached 2280 kilo- 32 grams per hectare--almost a tripling of the original yields.

Reconstitution of the ecosystem. The yields of the past century far

surpass those increases made over the span of seven centuries. Farmers of the industrialized nations extended sawah cultivation with a new

intensity. Ecosystems are not only reorganized, but they are recon­ stituted with materials made possible through industrialization.

A r tific ia l farming systems are constructed through changes which take place at the molecular level. Whereas fertilizers entered the yeoman's fields in the form of manure, now chemical fertilizers replenish the soil. Plants were transferred from one continent to another, but now these plants themselves change form at the genetic level under sys- 33 tematic plant breeding. Intensive care in an artificial greenhouse system--the wedding of technology and knowledge to intricate proce­ dures for better farming--account for the spectacular yields in modern agriculture. The use of fossil fuels accounts for much of this success. For every calorie of food produced on a modern farm, there has been an input of a calorie of fu e l.3^ Hence, under the guidance of man, food systems of long ago return to increase the pro­ ductivity of contemporary ecosystems. In the United States in just

32 B. H. S. van Bath, The Agricultural History of Western Europe, A.D. 500-1800 (London! Edward Arnold, 1963).

33Sauer, pp. 19-20; Nicol, pp. 215-25. 34 Eric H irst, "Living Off the Fuels of the Land," Natural History, LXXXII (December 1973). Chapter 6, "The Energy We Eat," Carol and John Steinhart, Energy: Sources, Use, and Role in Human A ffairs (North Scituate, Mass.: Duxbury Press, 1974), pp. 65-88. 31 twenty-five years the yields of the corn belt increased from around 35 40 bushels per acre in 1945 to around 80 bushels per acre in 1968.

The development of hybrid plants exemplifies the kind of basic revisions man makes as he further adapts his ecosystem to food use. He changes the genetic characteristics of plant seeds in order to increase the protein content of grains, to render plants disease and drought resistant, to ensure higher yields, and even to a lte r the palatability of plants. Here we see man doing in years what nature does over centuries--substituting hybrid varieties for the plant species that might have emerged in the ecosystem due to natural selection.

We find in modern society, then, a complexity which further enhances the complexity and productivity of agriculture. Substantial non-agricultural populations form an e ffic ie n t market for food products: Scientists, seed companies, fertilizer plants--all gear 37 themselves to increasing the productivity of the farmers' fie ld s .

35 "Grain Farming," in Paul W. Pates, The Farmer's Age: Agriculture 1815-1860 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962), pp. 156-99. S. H. Wittwer, "Research and Technology: U. S. Food Supply," Research for the World Food C risis, ed. Daniel G. Aldrich, Jr. (Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1970), p. 81.

P. C. Mangelsdorf, "Genetic Potentials for Increasing Yields of Food Crops and Animals," Proceedings of National Academy of Science, LVI (1966), pp. 370-75. 37 Ray A. Goldberg, Agribusiness Coordination: A Systems Approach to Wheat, Soybean and Florida Orange Economies (Harvard: Harvard Business School, 1968); Ray A. Goldberg and J. Davis, A Concept of Agribusiness (Boston: Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, 1957). 32

In the United States, for example, of the total cost of input (land,

labor, cap ital) in producing an acre of food, 70 per cent accrues to

the technology and knowledge provided by the industrial society, and 38 only 30 per cent to the use of land and the costs of farm labor.

The production side of the food equation, as we have seen,

involves man's reorganization and reconstruction of his ecosystem. The

productivity of cropland is limited by natural "limiting factors"--

sunlight, moisture, and plant nutrients. With capital and technology

as his partners, however, the farmer can minimize the adverse effects

of these limitations. Indeed the history of agriculture is a mosaic of incremental adjustments leading to the reorganization of the eco­

system. The farmer reorganized across ecosystems by borrowing water

and nutrients from neighboring communities; and he reorganized within

the ecosystem through the use of new agricultural tools and techniques.

Finally, in accord with the industrial developments of the twentieth century, the farmer has borrowed again--not merely nutrients from a

neighboring natural community, but expertise and design from the

a r t if ic ia l community. He has reconstituted his ecosystem on a d if ­

ferent level of organization: on the microlevel of the plant and soil this meant changes of molecular structures; at the macrolevel of farm and society, this meant a greater dependency between food producer and

38 Marion Clawson, America's Land and Its Uses (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press for Resources for the Future, 1973), p. 92. 33

industrial society. Industrial society now had the edge on production. 39 Who would consume the surplus?

THE ECOLOGY OF WHEAT: CONSUMPTION— THE NORTH AMERICAN WHEAT BELT

In terms of the larger world ecosystem, i t matters not only

where (and how much) of a particular food is produced, but how much

is consumed within the immediate area or remains as "surplus" available

for export to other ecosystems. The global flows of wheat originate

only in those ecosystems with a surplus of wheat. These surplus eco­

systems do not necessarily coincide with the largest wheat producing

areas. In fa c t, of the top four wheat producing countries only the 40 United States is a surplus producer.

To be a surplus system, a nation must product more wheat than

disappears through domestic consumption. This means that a wheat

exporting nation must have a small population in proportion to har­

vests (as in A u stralia), extraordinarily high yields (as in the United

States), or some combination of both (as in Canada). Only the United

States, Australia, Argentina and Canada have consistently produced more than domestic requirements of wheat in the past fifte e n years, with the exception of Argentina, the nations producing wheat surpluses

39 An excellent summary of this process appears in Erich W. Zimmerman, World Resources and Industries (2d ed.; New York: Harper, 1951), pp. 147-55. 49 Donald E. Anderson and C lair W. Cudworth, Trends in the Flow of Wheat Exports in the World Market, Agricultural Economics Report No. 56 (Fargo, N.D.: Agricultural Experiment Station, North Dakota State University, August, 1967), pp. 5-7. See also, Medappa Madappa Chottepanda, "Analysis of International Wheat Markets" (unpublished Master's thesis, University of North Dakota at Fargo), p. 1. 34 are relatively wealthy, which means that the proportion of their diet received from cereal crops is less than it is in regions with a lower 41 per capita income. More of the food of high-income populations comes from meat and dairy products. Therefore, some developed nations con­ sume d irectly less of the wheat they produce per capita than do some of the wheat importing nations.

Domestic requirements of wheat are produced by re la tiv e ly few countries--Bulgaria, Italy, Spain, Tunisia, Turkey, and in some years, the Soviet Union. Wide fluctuations occur in the production of Italy and the Soviet Union, mainly because much of th eir wheat is grown in 42 " a r tific ia l" ecosystems. Usually, however, the above nations are able to match patterns of production and consumption. Other nations, such as mainland China, Algeria, Iran and Pakistan were s e lf-s u ffic ie n t in wheat up to the 1960's but could not increase production rapidly enough to meet the increasing consumption requirements of larger populations and greater affluence. The regular wheat importers--the consumer nations--include B razil, Japan, West Germany, the United 43 Kingdom, China, and often the developing nations of A frica, South­ east Asia, and Latin America.

41 Chottapanda, p. 32. 42 Chottapanda, p. 32. See also, Lazer Volin and Harry Walters, Soviet Grain Imports, ERS-Foreign 135 (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, September, 1965), and Lazar Volin, A Survey of Soviet Russian Agriculture, Monograph No. 5 (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, 1951). 43 Chottapanda, p. 32. 35

The United States and Canada are illustrative of nations with both production and consumption patterns that fa c ilita te the accumula­ tion of large agricultural surpluses. Both nations have rich soils.

Both have large stretches of gentle topography. In addition, in both countries one finds evidence of the extent to which modern agriculture not only develops on the sawah patterns, but extends and even goes beyond i t . Owing in large measure to these factors, even naturally marginal ecosystems (particularly in Canada) become productive.

Perhaps more important than the productivity aspects of the

United States--Canadian wheat belt, the consumption patterns of each nation are such that the populations do not consume all of the grains that they produce. Although yearly wheat production varies, the United

States wheat surplus is two to three times domestic consumption, and 44 Canada usually produces four to five times what the nation consumes.

Land and Environment

Most wheat-producing nations are comprised of a number of wheat ecosystems, some "natural" or better suited to wheat production than others. The richest areas compromise between high yield and high protein content, and they produce harvests with great reliability.

The hard, high-protein wheat is grown in the cooler climates and there­ fore thrives best in the United States, Canada, Hungary, and the 45 Soviet Union. This is the most desirable wheat because of its

44 Leroy L. Blakeslee, World Food Production, Demand and Trade (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1973), pp. 92-94.

45Vavilov, pp. 197-98. 36

bread-baking and nutritional qualities. The "soft wheat," used mainly 46 in crackers and cookies, is grown in Australia and Argentina. We see here, then, the kind of clim atic s u ita b ility that leads to kinds of specialization in production.

Canada and the United States both illu s tra te the compromise often made between a constancy of food supply and the quality of that supply. The United States exhibits a large variety of climates, and produces, therefore, a large variety of wheats. Due to the differences in the ecosystems in which the wheat is produced, yearly averages of

U. S. wheat are about the same: the production of wheat is constant 47 and re lia b le . As we see described below, however, the qua!ity of this wheat is also variable.

In Canada, on the other hand, a ll wheat producing areas have sim ilar clim atic conditions, though of course the topography and soil conditions of some provinces are better than others. Due to the simi­ larity of climatic conditions (and therefore of risk) among the eco­ systems, we find a v a ria b ility in production. This is compensated by 48 extremely high quality.

The range of climates and topography of the United States allows farmers to grow a larger variety of wheat than anywhere else

46 See A. R. Callaghan and A. J. M illington, The Wheat Industry in Australia (London: Angus and Robertson, 1956). Recently Australia also has been producing some hard wheat. 47 V. P. Timoshenko, World Wheat Production: Its Regional Fluctuations and Interregional Correlations, Wheat Studies of the Food Research Institute (Stanford: Food Research In s titu te , Stanford University, 1942), pp. 323-44. 48 Duncan Alexander MacGibbon, The Canadian Grain Trade (Toronto: MacMillan, 1932), pp. 478-85. 37 in the world; indeed, the climatic differences often demand that he does so. Over 200 varieties of wheat are produced in the United

States, but five basic classes predominate. The f ir s t of these is hard red winter wheat, a bread wheat that is grown on the great plains west of the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains and from the Dakotas to Texas. This wheat is sown in the fa ll and makes some preliminary growth before cold weather arrives. The protein content of the grain varies, but the milling characteristics are good. This wheat com­ prises more than half the wheat exports from the United States.

Secondly, hard red spring wheat, produced in the northern states where winters are too severe for fall-sown wheat to survive, is sown in the spring as soon as the ground is workable and i t grows continu- 49 ously until harvest. This wheat commands a higher price on the market, because of its uniformly high protein content and excellent milling and baking characteristics. Grown in North Dakota, South

Dakota, Minnesota and Montana, i t comprises 10 to 15 per cent of U. S. wheat exports.

Third, soft red winter can be found in the eastern third of the United States. The rainfall is more reliable in this district,

49 J. R. Magness and others, Food and Feed Crops of the United States, Interregional Research Project IR-4, IR Bulletin No. 1 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, June 1971), pp. 218-19. All of the following wheats with the exception of durum are called "common wheat" of which there are about 200 varieties, 100 of them now cultivated in the United States. The United States and Canada are the only two suppliers of hard red spring wheat in the world trade. North Dakota is the leading producer. See Clyde R. Keaton, Competition in the Grain Market of Western Europe, Foreign Agricul­ ture Service (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agriculture Service, May 1962), p. 3. 38

and yields are high; however the protein content of the wheat is low,

and it is used therefore as flour for cake or crackers. From 5 to 10

per cent of United States exports are of this class. Fourth, we find

white wheat, a wheat of much the same quality as soft red winter.

Again, we find high yields but low protein content. The wheat is

grown in moist (often humid) areas of the Pacific Northwest, and to

a lesser extent in California and Michigan. About 20 per cent of

exports--particularly to the Far East--are of this class. Fifth,

durum wheat, the hardest of all United States wheats, grows in the

northern area of hard red spring wheat, and prim arily in the Dakotas.

This wheat provides semolina for spaghetti, macaroni and other pasta

products. About 5 per cent of total wheat exports are comparised of durum w heat.^

Including all classes of wheat, the United States produced between 20,000,000 and 25,000,000 metric tons of wheat each year between 1969/73. The average yield was 33 bushels per acre. Taking

1971/72 as an average year, we find that wheat remaining in the United

States after domestic consumption (carryover stocks) accounted for 50 per cent of the combined surpluses available for export by the five 51 leading export countries.

In terms of quality, however, the United States wheat fa lls behind Canadian wheat and much of Russian wheat. We refer here

^G reat Plains Wheat, In c ., Wheat: USA (Washington, D.C., Great Plains Wheat, n.d.), pp. 6-7. 51 International Wheat Council, World Wheat S ta tis tic s , 1971, 72, 73 (London: International Wheat Council, 1971, 72, 73). 39

particularly to the protein content of the wheat, which except for

North Dakota wheat, is not particularly high. There are other problems 52 as well, which show up in the grading of wheat. In fact, in 1968/69

Japan put a temporary suspension on purchases of wheat from the United

States due to sprout-damage in shipments.

In Canada we find less variety in kinds of wheat produced--or

in the quality of the grain, which is universally high. Only two main

classes of wheat are grown, and there are hard red spring wheat and

durum wheat.

Drought and the tendency to rapid soil exhaustion is the chief

plight of Canadian agriculture. Precipitation varies from region to 53 region as does the level of evaporation. The first irrigation

projects were installed 60 years ago, and by now almost a ll Canadian

wheat farms receive additional water supplies. The use of irrigation,

however, generated another problem, that of top soil loss. I t is

estimated that the grain producing p ra irie lands have lost h alf of 54 their original humus.

Capital and Technology

The technology that produces this agriculture is different in

scale and kind from that which existed in industrial nations thirty

52 Andrew B. Bellingham, "Wheat Marketing in Major Exporting Countries: How Their Grading Practices Compare," Contrasts in Marketing in Major Wheat Exporting Nations (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agriculture Service, August 1971), pp. 71-234.

^F. B. Watts, "Climate, Vegetation, Soil," Canada: A Geo­ graphical Interpretation, ed. John Warkentin (Toronto: Methuen, 1969), p. 82. 54 Borgstrom, Too Many, pp. 113-14. 40 years ago, and which exists even today in the developing nations.

Capital and technology are present in every phase of the agri-

industrial complex— from the development of new seed varieties to the manufacture of fe r tiliz e r s , to the complex storage, transportation, and marketing facilities available in the industrialized world.

Indeed, sufficient capital and technology can compensate for the deficiencies in the other two factors of production--land and labor.

(The new synthetic foods from substances such as hydrocarbons are a 55 case in point. )

But this entire agricultural complex depends upon the availa­ b ilit y of energy— inanimate energy from fossil fuels which is used to increase the production of plant energy. Fossil fuels provided the means for both the mechanical and the molecular revolutions in agri­ culture. The f ir s t impetus to North American agriculture came from improved machinery exhibiting greater diversity and more power- 56 shellers and reapers and threshers. Indeed, as elsewhere in society, 57 modern agriculture owes a debt to Henry Ford.

But the other components of contemporary agriculture also require energy—for the production of f e r tiliz e r s , for example. The total agricultural investment is large, whether calculated in dollars

55 C. A. Shacklady, "Protein from Paraffins," New S cien tist, XLIV, No. 668 (September 25, 1969), 5. 56 See Robert L. Ardrey, American Agricultural Implements (New York: Arno Press, 1972) and G. E. Fussell, Farming Techniques from Prehistoric to Modern Times (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1966). 57 See Ronald M. Wik, "Henry Ford's Tractors," Agricultural History of the United States of America, XXXVIII, No. 2 (April 1964), 79-86. 41 or in calories of energy. In Canada, for example, over the last 30 years the value of agricultural machinery and implements increased from a half billion dollars to 4.5 billion dollars; one-half billion of this 4.5 billion is spent for fossil fuels. The total energy required for each acre under cultivation in Canada is 3.55 x 10^

BTU's.^ In the United States in 1971, 5,530 a irc ra ft flew 1.4 m illion hours and treated about 91 m illion acres of farmland in the

United States with spray, dust, seed, and f e r t iliz e r . These a irc ra ft used 38.5 million gallons of gasoline and about 325 thousand gallons of jet fuel.

Authorities differ as to how many calories of fossil fuel is required to produce a calorie of food energy, although studies now have disspelled the fear that more calories are spent in agricultural production than is harvested in food energy. Yet i t does take approximately three calories of fuel to produce one calorie of cereal food energy on an e ffic ie n t United States farm. And indus­ trialized food production requires between 5 to 10 calories of fuel to result in one calorie of food. (For each calorie of fuel provided in primitive cultures, 5 to 50 calories of food--depending upon theeco- 59 system and nature of fieldsystem--are obtained! )

58 C. G. E. Downing and M. Feldman, "Energy and Agriculture," Proceedings, Canadian Farm Economics, IX, No. 1 (February 1974), 24-31. 59 Carol and John Steinhart, Energy: Sources, Use, and Role in Human Affairs (North Scituate, Mass.: Duxbury Press, 1974), pp. 65-87. See also, Agricultural Production Efficiency (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1975). American agriculture uses approximately $11.5 billion of capital per year, Business in Brief (Chase Manhattan Bank), No. 113 (December 1973), p. 4. 42

THE WORLD FOOD PROBLEM: SURPLUS AND STARVATION

On the North American continent (and in other developed areas

as well) good land aided by enormous investments of capital and tech­

nology has produced agricultural surpluses which in some years are

viewed as the industrialized world's food problem. The fact that

large wheat surpluses--and other food surpluses as well—existed until

1972, and that in the same time period world hunger did not diminish,

indicates a missing "balance" between producers and potential consumers c r\ of food. (As we shall point out, even without the surplus—given d ifferent distribution of food energy within the trophic pyramid and 61 among socio-economic classes— no one need go hungry.) The fact that

these surpluses existed only in the developed nations suggests another

imbalance within the lesser developed nations themselves— a continual struggle between food production and population. Even the substantial

investments in technology which gave rise to the Green Revolution,

increasing food production in the poorer nations through new varieties of wheat and rice and the use of irrigation, and fertilizer, failed to produce su fficien t food.

We merely introduce these problems of surplus and starvation in this chapter. This so-called world food problem, reflecting world ecological imbalances and demanding a p o litic a l solution, comprises a

fin "Surplus and Shortage: The Paradox of World Food Supplies," Barclays Bank Review, XLVI, No. 2 (London, 1971), 29-31.

*^See J. C. Abbott, "The E fficien t Use of World Protein Supplies," Monthly B ulletin of Agricultural Economics and S ta tis tic s , XXI, No. 6 (1972), 1-8. 43

CO leitm o tif throughout the dissertation. In 1950 acute shortages of

wheat existed on the world market. But by the mid-sixties "burdensome

surpluses" had accumulated. Like other commodities, the bushels of

wheat moved in the world market according to price--but even at the

below-production-level cost of $ 1.68 a bushel, the developing nations

(potential consumers) could not afford to buy. From 1952/53 to 1953/54

alone, the carryover stocks of the United States, Canada, Australia and

Argentina increased from 134 million tons to 46i million tons--four

times the previous year's level. During the last decade, world wheat

stocks above the normal carryover ranged from 10-20 m illion tons.

According to the International Wheat Council, these amounts represent

investments of between $500-$!,000 m illion without taking into account

storage costs, losses due to deterioration or interest charges.

By 1972, however, world grain surpluses had been severely

lowered due to climactic conditions and agricultural mismanagement;

these "lean years" characterized by high commodity prices are des­

cribed more specifically in the last half of the next chapter. Lester

Brown and Erik Eckholm summarized the state of world grain a v a ila b ility as of 1974:

Between late 1972 and early 1974, world food prices rose rapidly in response to the growing excess of demand over available supplies and the decline of food reserves. Wheat

CO See also J. H. Lowry, World Population and Food Supply (Maidenhead: Edward Arnold, 1970); N. Choucri and R. C. North, "Some Policy Implications of Population, Resources and Technology," World P o litic s , XXIV (1972), 80-122; Georg Borgstrom, "The Food- Population Dilemma," Science and Public Policy, I, No. 12 (December 1974), 406-12.

/TO International Wheat Council, Trends and Problems in the World Grain Economy, Secretariat Paper No. 6 (London: International Wheat Council, 1966), p. 5. 44

and rice prices trip led and soybean prices more than doubled. In 1974 soaring food prices are contributing to the two- d ig it in fla tio n which now affects almost every nation. High food prices and shortages are an inconvenience for affluent societies and individuals, but they place poor nations and the poor within nations in a dangerous predicament. When global food reserves are low, the capacity of the interna­ tional community to provide r e lie f and respond to emergencies such as droughts or crop failures is greatly diminished.64

Those most affected by these shortages, of course, were the poor--both 65 within nations and among them.

There is nothing new about the world food problem. I t is not,

as Geoffrey Barraclough observed, a "sudden a fflic tio n which descended upon us out of a blue sky in 1973." The history of man records not only triumphs over natural disasters, but also chronic hunger through

famines, plagues, and industrial dislocation. Given the long range of history, however, we can identify two aspects of the present food crisis that touch only modern man. First, much of present world poverty and hunger is the result of industrial growth and its conse- fi7 quent dislocations. Friedrich Engles noted the hunger and n u tri­ tional deficiencies within the British working class in the last cen­ tury. One could find in the energetic quality of the food consumed in England a descending poverty scale "until on the lowest round of

^ L ester Brown and Erik Eckholm, "The Empty Breadbasket," Ceres, VII, No. 2 (March-April, 1974), 59-66. gc Dudley Jackson, "The Third World Food Ir is is ," New Society, May 17, 1974, pp. 381-82; A. G. Leeks, "World Food Shortage," Proceedings of Canadian Farm Economics, IX, No. 1 (February, 1974), 11-17.

^Geoffrey Barraclough, "The Great World Crisis, I," The New York Review of Books, XXI, Nos. 21-22 (January 23, 1975), 20-29. CJ This simplifies a complex set of events described in Carlos Cippola, An Economic History of World Population (Harmondsworth, Middlesex! Penguin, 1962). 45

the ladder, among the Irish, potatoes form the sole food . " 68 The

British working class of the twentieth century might eat better, but

the plights of poverty have been transferred to the now industri­ alizing, third world.

Secondly, although man in e a rlie r centuries accepted chronic hunger with resignation as a kind of "given" of nature, modern man views the world food problem with alternating optimism and pessimism.

He does not see the food problem as a "given" but as a consequence of productivity. Therefore hunger could be conquered i f man would pro­ duce more food and fewer people. Optimism thus arose with the promises of the green revolution and with the increase in a whole array of tech- 69 nologies capable of increasing food supply. But as we shall explore in the final chapter, man's in a b ility to use these solutions to a lle ­ viate hunger through altered trade and greater sharing contributed to pessimistic predictions about resolving the food problem.

In the following chapter, we examine one international wheat transaction—the sale by the United States of 11 million tons of wheat

CQ Friedrich Engles, The Condition of the Working Class in England in R. Tannahill, Food in History (New York: Stein and Day, 1973), p. 329. 69 K. C. Abercrombie, "Changing Views on the Man-Food Relationship," Ceres, IV, No. 2 (1971), 23-26; B. Nanus, "The World of Hunger: A Management Challenge," Columbia Journal of World Business, V I, No. 1 (1971), 51-58; Edwin Reubens, "The Food Shortage Is Not Inevitable," Challenge, XVII, No. 1 (March-April, 1974), 48-52; Colin Clark, Starvation or Plenty? (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1970); see particularly Chapter 7, "Science Fiction Come True," pp. 161-72. 46

to the Soviet Union. This transaction represents the imbalanced nature of international food transfers in present international trade. The sale severely lowered grain surpluses, foreshadowed the rising demand in world grains, and instituted a "global politics of food scarcity." Chapter 3

BREAD ACROSS THE WATERS

The Old Testament records the sale by Josias (he must have gained the f ir s t "corner" on the grain market!) of 500,000 bushels of wheat to the Pharoah . 1 The United States sale of wheat to the Soviet

Union in 1972, however, dwarfs this biblical exchange. The trans- 2 action covered 11 m illions tons of wheat. This amount represented

30 per cent of the average annual United States wheat production during 3 the previous five-year period. Eleven million short cons of wheat equals 404 m illion bushels, which, i f baked into loaves of bread and placed at the equator would encircle the globe four times!

^0f course, the Old Testament figures are not in bushels; this is the estimate given by the United States Department of Agriculture. 2 U. S ., Congress, Senate, Committee on Government Operations, Subcomnittee on Investigations of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Russian Grain Transaction, Hearing, 93 Congress, 1st Sess., July 20, 23, 24, 1973, Part I (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1973). The best review of the wheat sale appeared in four articles by John Fialka in the Washington Star-News on October 29, 30, 31 and November 1, 1972. See also Joseph Albright, "Some Deal," New York Times Magazine, November 25, 1973. Other less important articles include, "Campaign Fodder; Trade with Russia," Time, September 18, 1972, pp. 19-20; W. F. Richenbecker, "Chaff about Wheat," National Review, November 24, 1972, p. 1300; "Economics of the Wheat Deal," National Review, October 27, 1972, pp. 1168-69; "Great Grain Robbery," Nation, October 16, 1972, pp. 324-25.

■^Clifton B. L u ttre ll, "The Russian Wheat Deal--Hindsight vs. Foresight," Review, Eighth D is tric t U. S. Federal Reserve Bank, St. Louis, Missouri, IV, No. 10 (October, 1973), p. 2.

47 48

By a curious coincidence, the transfer of wheat illustrated not only the interdependency of global economics and food systems, but the linking among world ecosystems as w ell. For much of the wheat purchased by the Russians turned out to be a hard winter wheat with a

4 genetic history that traced back to the variety called Turkey Red.

Bushels of Turkey Red seed wheat were brought to Kansas by Mennonite

5 farmers from Crimea and eastern Russia in the 1870's. Up until this time, no wheat grew in Kansas, but the Turkey Red proved to be rust and drought resistant; by the end of the century it grew in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Texas and Oklahoma.

For reasons analyzed in late r chapters, such a large grain sale impacts on many levels: Due to the interrelationship of world ecosystems, any large grain transfer affects other national conmodity markets, particu larly when grain surpluses are scarce .7 Then, too, with the increasingly close correspondence between contemporary domestic and foreign relations, an unanticipated event (the crop fa ilu re ) in one nation creates policy issues in the other ( i . e . , how would the sale of wheat to the Soviet Union affect national security?

^James Trager, Amber Waves of Grain (New York: Arthur Fields, 1973), pp. 74-78. 5 James C. Mai in , Winter Wheat in the Golden Belt of Kansas (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 1944), pp. 249-250.

^Trager, pp. 78-79.

7Anneliesse K. Binder, "Commodities: Grains in Change," Ceres, VII (March-April, 1974), 17. 49

How much grain can be exported without substantially altering domestic O food prices?).

The sale affected the farmer at the local level--in both the

Soviet Union and the United States. At another level of transaction, the sale highlighted the role of the international grain brokers who serve as the institutional mechanism through which wheat (in many Q nations, at least) transfers from seller to buyer. The wheat nego­ tiations also strained the confidence of the American public in the efficiency of national government agencies--the Department of Agri­ culture in particular. Lastly, the absorption of such large quantities of grain by the Soviet Union adversely influenced the welfare of other nations that depended on wheat imports to feed th eir people.

The f ir s t part of the chapter presents a general overview of the "big wheat deal" that transpired in the summer of 1972--empha- sizing the role of transnational commodity brokers. The second half of the chapter places this transaction in the context of the global wheat trade.

O Cooperative Programme of Agro-Allied Industries, Consultation with Agro-Industrial Leaders, Report of Conference of September 1974, Toronto, Canada (United Nations, Industry Cooperative Program, September 26, 1974). Document DD1: G/74/89. g There is little written material on the grain exporters. The problems of national interest often involved in the commodity sales, however, are revealed in an early report of the Federal Trade Commission, Methods and Operations of Grain Exporters (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, May 16, 1922). 50

GRAIN GOES GLOBAL: THE BIG WHEAT DEAL

Grain sales occur because some ecosystems produce surpluses while other ecosystems do not (at least not dependable). The "big wheat deal" was no exception. The wheat ecosystems of the Soviet

Union, less re lia b le in grain production than those of North America, failed to produce the required harvest in 1972. Due to both artificial and natural inputs into wheat production (Chapter 2 ), surpluses in the

United States were high. However, world demand for grain was increasing at unprecedented rates. The second half of the chapter examines some of the reasons for this increase. Following the wheat sale to Russia, therefore, the increased scarcity of grain reserves sent food prices spiraling. This increased demand for grain led to what has been called "the global politics of scarcity"^--secret negotiations among buyers and sellers, primarily in developed nations, for the allocation of wheat and feed crops.

Ecology, Trade, and P olitics: Prelude to the Wheat Sale

As we mentioned earlier, there are two sides to the ecological equation--production and consumption. Due to unusually good weather,

United States wheat reached record production in 1972. This abundant harvest added to the already existing grain surplus, and by midsummer, stocks of grain soared to 23 m illion tons of wheat and 50 m illion tons of feed grains. Yet consumption of wheat in the United States was not

^Lester R. Brown and Erik P. Eckholm, "Grim Reaping. This Year the Whole World Is Short of Grain," New York Times, September 14, 1974, Sec. E, p. 6, cols. 1-4. 51 increasing due to the inelasticity of demand for grains in nations with a high gross national product.

The wheat production in the Soviet Union in 1972, however, was not good. This misfortune came as no surprise to authorities on

Soviet agriculture, for the history of Russian food crops reveals unstable production, especially in food grains. There exist surpluses of some cereals in one year, and deficits in other years; an excellent crop may be met with disastrous failu res, as happened in both 1963 and

1972.^ Therefore, as John Butler emphasizes in The SovietUnion,

Eastern Europe, and the World Food Markets the Russian market for grains is uncertain:

Hence, the Soviet Union intervenes in the world market only when its own agricultural production fails to meet requirements or when it has an exportable surplus which i t needs to turn into hard currency to finance purchases of plant or equipment from the West. Its intervention depends on basic needs which in turn are directly con­ trolled by the volume of food production in the B lo c J 2

Wheat production is uncertain not only because of the weather, Butler asserts, but because of the inefficient Soviet marketing system and 13 the inadequacies of government planning structure.

The major climatic problem in the Soviet Union is drought. At d iffe re n t times of the year in 1972, drought harmed the wheat crops of

11 Lazer Volin, A Survey of Soviet Russian Agriculture, Agricul­ tural Monograph No. 5 (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, 1951); Leslie Symons, Russian Agriculture: A Geographic Survey (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1972), pp. 175-78; 258-72. 12 John Butler, The Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the World Food Markets (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964), p. x i i i . 13 Butler, p. xiv. See also, Leslie Symons, Agricultural Geography (New York: Praeger, 1967), pp. 148-69. 52

both the Ukraine and the Volga region. The previous year, a drought

in the Ukraine had le ft much of Russia's winter wheat crop without its

usual protective cover of snow. The severe winter froze up to 30 per

cent of the wheat in the fields. An unusually hot June, on the other

hand, with little moisture, meant that dry air blew off the Kazakh 14 desert, destroying another 3 to 10 per cent of the wheat crop. The

output for 1971 had been 98,760,000 metric tons of wheat; in 1972 15 the harvest decreased to 85,950,000 metric tons.

At the same time that production of wheat in the Soviet Union

was dwindling, the nation's grain consumption was increasing.

Reflecting a government policy to improve the diets of the people,

the Soviet five-year plan called for a 23 per cent expansion in meat

and poultry production, 31 per cent increase in eggs, and 15 per cent

increase in milk. This additional need for feed grain as well as for

bread meant that the Soviet Union could not afford to lose the crop 16 and maintain its production schedule. The government decided to buy

grain on the world market.

The Russian government confirmed a contract with Canada that

allowed the government to purchase five millions tons of the Canadian

14 Fialka, Washington Star-News, October 29, 1972, Sec. A, p. 11, c o l. 1. 15 International Wheat Council, World Wheat Statistics, 1973 (London, 1973). 1 fi Speech by Carroll Brunthaver, U. S. Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, as reported in Wallaces Farmer, February 10, 1973, pp. 42-43. Some observers believe the Russian decision to buy grain reflected the government's memory of the 1970 Polish riots when workers protested food shortages. See Robert Keatley, "Soviet Faces Woes in Paying for U. S. Grain," Wall Street Journal, December 8 , 1972. 53 wheat crop'J 7 additional amounts were purchased from Australia, France,

Sweden, West Germany and Romania. The largest grain purchases, how­ ever, came from the United States, from whom the Soviet Union pur­ chased 11 million tons of hard winter wheat. The total dollar value of grain purchases from the United States came to over $1.2 billion.

Wheat accounted for $600 million of this total, while feed grains came 18 to $400 m illion and purchases of soybeans to $135 m illion.

Given the record surpluses of United States wheat, the assumption would be that the United States government would welcome sales to the Soviet Union. Surpluses alone, however, do not determine global food flows. They are also a matter of p o litic s . "In a general sense," Jo2ef Wilczynski writes, "politics is responsible for the 19 direction in which wheat moves in East-West trade." The Cold War limited trade between the Soviet Union and the United States until the 20 1960's. In the wake of the Berlin and Cuban missile crises of the early 1960's, however, the Soviet grain harvest was destroyed by

17U. S. Senate, Russian Grain Transaction, p. 15; Grain and Feed Journal, August 9, 1972, p. 6. 18 U. S. Senate, Russian Grain Transaction, pp. 17-21.

^ Jozef Wilczynski, The Economics of East-West Trade (New York: Praeger, 1969), p. 262. 20 Samuel Pisar, Coexistence and Commerce: Guidelines for Transactions between East and West (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970), pp. 75-111; William Diebold, J r ., "Trade Policies Since World War I I , " Foreign Agricultural Trade, ed. Robert L. Tontz (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1966), pp. 29-37. 54 drought. For the f ir s t time the Soviet Union turned to the United 21 States market to make up the d e fic it.

Secretary of State Dean Rusk agreed to sell wheat surpluses, but only with the understanding that they could not be shipped to Cuba.

During this year (1963-64) the United States supplied 22 per cent of

Russia's import needs. The following year (1965-66), a small shipment 22 by the United States comprised 2 per cent of Soviet food imports.

The imposition of a 50-50 shipping rule by the Kennedy administration, however, limited efforts in the 19601s to liberalize agricultural trade to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Purchasers of United States agricultural products were required to ship at least half of purchased foodstuffs on United States vessels. This requirement discouraged sales, since the shipping cost on American freighters is much higher than the rate of foreign vessels.

Formulators of United States trade policy in the 1970's endeavored to expand foreign trade, not only to supplement dwindling foreign exchange, but also to alleviate the nation of burdensome agricultural surpluses. President Nixon rescinded the 50-50 shipping clause in 1971, thereby making commodities more reasonable to foreign buyers. He also suspended the requirement that United States companies selling products to the Soviet Union must first apply for special

21 Stephen C. Schmidt, East-West Trade in Wheat: Present and Potential (Urbana: University of Illin o is , Department of Agricultural Economics, September, 1973), p. 4. See also, Lazar Volin and Harry Walters, Soviet Grain Imports, ERS-Foreign 135 (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, September, 1965).

22 Schmidt, p. 4. 55 23 export licenses. This same year, the Soviet Union purchased feed grain from the United States—-25 m illion bushels of oats, 75 m illion 24 bushels of corn, and 35 m illion bushels of barley.

President Nixon's trip to Moscow in the spring of 1972 raised hopes among United States farmers and grain exporters for an expanded grain trade with the Soviet Union. The stage had been set for easing future grain sales between the two nations. There remained the prob­ lem of credit, but in the summer of 1972 the two governments concluded 25 a mutually acceptable credit agreement.

Domestic Issues: Who Decides and Who Profits

Most commodity sales generate l i t t l e interest among the general public: few become a matter of international politics. Therefore, the curiosity aroused by the wheat sale to the Soviet Union was unprece­ dented in the history of world trade. The initial publicity gave way only months later to more sober considerations of various domestic issues highlighted by the sale. The ensuing debates over the wheat sale revolved about the accountability of two institutions that link the energy produced in one ecosystem (the simple wheatfield) across national borders to distant systems. The transnational economic

^Tontz, "U. S. Trade Policy," in U. S. Trade Policy, pp. 36-38. 24 Schmidt, p. 4; Fred R. Lowell, The Wheat Market (Kansas City, Mo.: Keltner Statistical Service, 1968), pp. 188-89, 252-53. or Agreements recorded in the Grain and Feed Journal, July 26, 1972, p. 6. I describe these problems of p o litic a l "coupling" in greater detail in Chapter 6. A good introduction to the problems of multinationals is Raymond Vernon, Sovereignty at Bay (New York: Basic Books, 1971); see also Big Business and the State (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974). 56

institutions provide the first of these links. Their prominence in

domestic and international economy make them of increasing interest

to p o litical analysts. Although large corporations in the so-called

agri-industrial complex--fertilizer manufacturers, food processors,

farm machinery companies— loom much larger in the production and export of world food, i t was the action of these international grain brokers that figured in the Russian wheat transaction.

Secondly, the wheat sale raised questions about the effective­ ness of the national government, the final allocator of energy

resources, in protecting national interest. Within the United States, the functions of these two institutions are supposedly complementary: while the government supplies information about market conditions and regulates transactions in energy, the large economic enterprises under­ take the physical process of linking products among the various levels of the system (from the local field to the terminal elevator, and so forth) and increasingly across the national border to foreign eco­ systems.

The transnational actor and the politics of secrecy. The negotiations leading to the wheat sale to the Soviet Union in 1972 were conducted in a manner peculiar to the United States commodity trade. When large transfers of primary products take place in most nations, as we men­ tioned above, the trade (at least within the nation) is conducted by pc semi-autonomous commodity boards. In the United States, however,

pc Andrew B. Bellingham, "Wheat Marketing in Major Exporting Countries: How Their Export Operations Compare," Contrasts in Marketing in Major Wheat Exporting Nations (United States Department of Agriculture, August, 1971). For an excellent comparison of the 57

both domestic and international transfers of grain are conducted 27 by private international grain brokers. This arrangement highlights an issue of contemporary international p o litic s --th a t of the role and

political effect of transnational economic institutions on world poli- 28 tics. The next few pages review the role of these institutions in

the "big wheat deal."

A style of trade negotiations took place between the United

States and the Soviet Union that reflected the secrecy which some nations--the Soviet Union in particular--maintain about their crop conditions and food stockpiles. "Food is a weapon," former Soviet

Minister for Foreign A ffairs once said, revealing an attitude in which 29 food supplies are viewed as a subject of national security. Addi­ tio n a lly , the free market economy makes for another kind of secrecy, a corporation secrecy--the withholding of information about purchase requests or sales among highly competitive firms. Hence the interna­ tional grain brokers, whose margins of p ro fit depend upon the pennies per bushel made in an uncertain market, did not offer news of the sales to one another (giving the Soviet Union a distinct advantage); they

U. S. system as opposed to that of commodity boards, see the Appendix to Chapter 5 in Primary Commodities in International Trade, by John Wilkinson Foster Rowe (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1965), pp. 56-65. 27 William G. Tomek and Kenneth L. Robinson, Agricultural Product Prices (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973), pp. 215-76. 28 See Robert 0. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Transnational Relations and World P olitics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973). 29 Quoted in Wilczynski, The Economics of East-West Trade, p. 263. 58 gave only sketchy information--what was legally required--about the 30 sales to the United States Department of Agriculture.

Two government teams negotiated the sale for the Soviet

Union--one led by Soviet Foreign Trade Minister Nikolai S. Patolichev, and the other headed by Nicolai Belousov, President of Exportkhleb, the Soviet trading organization that exports wheat during most years.

The "sellers," on the other hand, were five international commodity exporters. Continental Grain Company of New York played the largest role, but substantial purchases were made also through C a rg ill, the 31 Louis Dreyfus Corporation, Bunge, and Cook Industries.

The success of Continental owes to the efforts of the company to open trade with the Soviet Union back in 1963. Continental

President Michel Fribourg won the good will of the Russians by ingeniously finding an ingenious way to skirt the 50-50 shipping rule 32 mentioned e a rlie r. By receiving subsidies from the American govern­ ment for the grain sold to the Soviet Union, the grain company was able to absorb some of the high transportation cost. In November, 1971

on Lester R. Brown, By Bread Alone (New York: Praeger, 1974), p. 230. As a matter of fa c t, this "secrecy" reached cloak-and-dagger proportions: There were secret meetings between Soviet o ffic ia ls and U. S. grain exporters in New York hotel rooms, and a mysterious and still unidentified telephone caller leaked news of the sale to the M illing and Baking News, throwing the commodity market into disarray. Rumors grew suggesting that the Soviets were paying for these large grain imports by manipulating the United States future market. See Trager, pp. 38-67. Also, R. D. Wennblom, "Who Knew the Russians Were Coming?," Farm Journal XC (November, 1972), 19-20.

U. S. Congress, Senate, Russian Grain Transactions, pp. 19-20.

See Robert Sheehan, "Proprietors in the World of Big Business, Fortune, June 15, 1967, pp. 178-83. 59

Continental again sold the Soviet Union grain--900,000 tons of surplus barley and oats and 2 million tons of corn. The negotiations between

Freibourg and Belousov actually began the previous summer on a yacht o ff Corsica. This friend ly business relationship paid o ff handsomely in the summer of 1972 when Belousov once again contacted Freibourg to buy grain.

Since the Russian officials insisted that the negotiators for the various export companies keep a ll trade arrangements secret, the companies were not in a good bargaining position. None of the grain dealers knew how much grain the Soviet Union was buying or how many exporters were negotiating for the sale. Even large corporations under these conditions of secrecy were at a disadvantage when dealing 33 with a national buyer the size of the Soviet Union. Even so, i t is doubtful that all of the firms lost money on the transactions.

Continental, at least, made a sizeable profit.

Private food-commodity exporters have existed for several centuries--long before the birth of the large petroleum companies.

Only recently, however, have these firms become large, world-wide, and influential. This partially explains why the international grain brokers are some of the least publicized of the multinational corpora­ tions. (Except in the tropical empires of the European nations, surplus food did not exist in large quantities until well into the present century; this earlier trade in sugar and spice was regulated by the guilds and by the crown.) The earliest of these grain exporters

33 Interview with Richard Herder, Vice-President, 9th Federal Reserve Bank, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 24, 1973. 60

established a pattern of trade that was to become endemic to the

business in international food flows. Cargill Corporation refers to

the company's status in various countries around the world as one of an "im m igrant.Indeed, the private international exporters have

been perpetual immigrants, changing agents and home offices to f i t the ever-changing pattern of food surpluses and deficits about the world.

These corporations reflect the two characteristics that by definition establish them as multinational corporations of signifi- cance--size and global distribution. Four exporters account for up to 90 per cent of the export volume leaving the United States-- 35 Continental, C a rg ill, Bunge, and Dreyfus. Since most of these firms--with the exception of Cooke Industries--are owned by single families it is difficult to ascertain their exact size and capital worth and cash flow. (As they are not accountable to stockholders, there are few public records of th e ir transactions). We can, however estimate the magnitude of th e ir operations. In 1971, Continental 36 Grain had 2,500 employees and totaled sales of over $3 billion.

Observers estimate that the sales of Cargill must be approximately the same and those of Bunge close behind. I f we compare gross annual sale of these companies with the gross national product of various

34Interview with Ron Johnson, C a rg ill, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 25, 1973. 35 Ray A. Goldberg, Agribusiness Coordinator: A Systems Analysis of the Wheat, Soybean and Florida Orange Economies (Boston: Harvard University, Graduate School of Business, 1968), p . 74.

"The Incredible Empire of Michel Freibourg," Business Week, March 11, 1972, pp. 84-87. 61 countries, we discover that in terms of annual wealth, the exporters compare with some of th e ir c lie n t nations--Ireland, North Korea, 37 Algeria, and Morocco.

The firms are not only large, but they are established throughout the world. The d efinitio n of a multinational firm used by most experts (o rig in ally suggested by a Fortune survey of 1966) is a company which operates in at least four different countries. The large international exporters maintain agents in at least 80 dif­ ferent countries.

About 40 per cent of all commodity sales of Cargill,

Continental and Dreyfus are in wheat. Corn, soybeans, and a few other grains comprise the remaining sales. But the exporters do more than handle grain. Indeed, th e ir usefulness and v e rs a tility depend upon the companies' wide range of related a c tiv itie s . Bunge operates flour mills in Argentina, textile plants to utilize cotton, crushing plants to produce o ils , bagging production to package flour and

OO grains. The company also imports and mines materials for fertilizer.

Continental Grain is composed of at least 100 separate companies, including a bread baking company, dog food production, real estate in

Europe, Africa, North America and South America, Argentine super­ markets, and interest in the Israeli Overseas Shipholding Group, Inc.

This diversification of production--a result, in part of business transactions at various levels--explains why the large grain

37 Lester Brown, World without Borders (New York: Random House, 1972), p. 215.

OO Bunge Corporation (New York: Bunge Corporation, n .d .), pp. 3-10. 62

exporters (like most multinational corporations) are referred to as

"integrated" firms. These multiple transactions of the multinationals

have ecological significance. In the following chapter we shall

introduce the concept of "coupling" among natural ecosystems; this

refers to the constant transfer of energy from one ecosystem to

another contiguous ecosystem (perhaps in the form of soil erosion or

scattered leaves). The exchange of energy from one system to another

is called a binary transaction; we pursue the idea of binary systems

in Chapter 6. The integrated business firm coordinates a number of

different binary transactions. The firm links energy among artificial,

man-made systems in much the same way that rivers or the wind couple

energy between natural ecosystems.

The operations of these international firms may be more

clearly understood if we examine the part the exporters play in all

vertical levels of the flow of one commodity--wheat--from the United

States to other parts of the world. The trade in wheat, the food com­

modity with the largest dollar share of world trade, is suggestive of

the complexity of a ll food energy transfers. Since most of the surplus

(and therefore exportable) wheat comes from the United States, the fol­

lowing paragraphs examine the international exporters as they transfer wheat from the United States abroad.

The multinational exporters operating within the United States

ultimately rely on over 1, 000,000 privately-owned wheat farms and over 930 commercial farms within the United States to supply them with wheat. The exporters own very few of these farms. Their access to

grain begins at the level of the country elevators. There are 10,000 elevators of which the exporters own about 10 per cent and establish 63

contact with many more. Usually the manager of the country elevator

sells his grain to one of about 200 grain commission firms, which

serve as intermediaries in transferring the grain from the country

elevators to terminal elevators (of which there are 654). The multi­

national exporting firms perform 25 per cent of the commission merchant

functions and own 25 per cent of the terminal elevators. The inte­

grated commodity exporters move 75 per cent of the wheat exported from

the United States. Growth s ta tis tic s suggest that these exporters

consistently absorb a larger share of the functions at each level; by

1980, for example, economists project that the exporters w ill absorb

30 per cent of the business of commission merchants, own 30 per cent

of terminal elevators, and export 80 per cent of all agricultural com- 39 modi ties from the United States.

In the United States these exchanges of food energy (at all

levels) take place within the marketplace. Exporters purchase grain

in both "cash" markets and "futures" markets. These markets are

centered in the National Grain Exchanges, both in the United States

(Chicago, Minneapolis and Kansas City) and abroad (Buenos Aires, Hamburg,

Rotterdam). The marketplace supposedly balances supply and demand by means of price. However, in most countries, much of the balancing is

39Goldberg, pp. 27-36. Keith 0. Campbell, "National Commodity Stabilization Schemes: Some Reflections Based on Australian Experi­ ence," International Explorations of Agricultural Economics, ed. Roger N. Direy (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press), pp. 55-63; Conrad Gislason, "How Much Has the Canadian Wheat Board Cost the Canadian Farmer?," Journal of Farm Economics, XLI (1969), 185-96. G. A. Hiscocks and T. A. Bennett, "Marketing Boards and Pricing in Canada," Canadian Farm Economics, IX, No. 3 (June, 1974), 15-18. 64

provided by national governments. In the United States, the government

established a price support for wheat, and until fall of 1972 offered

concessional terms in storage, and pays wheat subsidies to exporters who ship wheat abroad. In some nations, such as Canada and Australia,

the government sets the original marketing price--and the exporters 40 handle the grain only at the level of international exchange.

Do the multinationals balance the production and distribution of energy? There is debate among scholars of both international economics and international relations about the ultimate influence of the multi­ national corporation in the global economy. This debate deals f ir s t of all with the "erosion" that takes place in the power of the nation state as the multinational corporation usurps many of the nation's economic functions. The second issue often discussed is the m ulti­ national company's role in disseminating technology and wealth about the globe. Let us examine both of these issues in relation to the exporting grain firms responsible for the sale of United States grain to the Soviet Union.

In The Fortunes of the West, Theodore Geiger conjectures about the future state of international relations. Referring to the power relationships among actors in the international system, he suggests that there probably will be "much greater blurring of the distinction between the government and the private organizations com­ prised in the economy and the other major institutional systems than

^Vernon, pp. Ronald E. Muller, "National Instability and Global Corporations: Must They Grow Together?," Business and Society Review, No. 11 (Autumn, 1971), pp. 61-72. Some scholars feel differently; see W. A. P. Manser, The Financial Role of Multinational Enterprises (New York: John Wiley, 1973), pp. 155-56. 65 41 now exist." This blu r--o r "sovereignty at bay" as Raymond Vernon aptly phrases it--results from the confluence of two trends: the first is the modern nation-state's increasing role in economic and financial responsibilities which range from protecting natural resources and redistributing income, to "stabilizing" measures in the monetary sphere--either to curb in flatio n or promote development.

Secondly, at the same time that the nation has become increasingly interested in matters of resources and resource distribution, the 42 multinational corporations have grown in size and in complexity.

They may transfer large investments from nation to nation in response to changing interest rates, inflationary trends, or investment oppor­ tunities, thereby curtail any single nation's ability to completely 43 control monetary s ta b ility . As Lester Brown summarizes, "there is no universal set of rules governing the interface between these two 44 dominant sets of institutions."

In the case of the wheat sale of 1972, the multinational corporations abetted a policy that ultimately appeared to be contrary to the interest of the United States. The exporters--protected from loss by a Wheat Export Subsidy paid by the United States government--

^Theodore Geiger, The Fortunes of the West (Bloomington, Ind.: University of Indiana Press, 1973), p. 256. 42 Judd Polk, World Companies and the New World Economy, Background Paper No. 1 (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, October, 1970). 43 For a Canadian example, see M elville Watkins, ed., The Battle for Control of Our Economy (Toronto: New Press, 1970). 44 Brown, p. 223. 66 sold American grain for amounts often below the world price. The

Russians paid between $1.60 and $1.65 per bushel for their wheat 45 purchases. The United States, due to its surpluses of wheat, essentially set the world price at $1.63 per bushel by agreeing to pay exporters the difference i f domestic prices went above this level.

This Wheat Export Subsidy in it ia lly was designed to help the United 46 States sell wheat on the international market. The idea was that since domestic price supports make United States wheat more expensive than wheat grown elsewhere the government must subsidize exports to make them competitive on the world market.

With larger grain demands on the world market, the domestic price--and the world price—for wheat and other grains should increase.

Indeed, once news of the Russian purchases reached the general public, the cash and future's prices for wheat arose immediately. Yet the

United States government s t ill paid wheat subsidies on the exported grain at $1.63 a bushel until after the exporters had sold extra­ ordinarily large amounts of wheat. This is not to suggest that any

"illegal" action on the part of the exporters. But in light of 47 national interest, the actions were impudent. While at least one

45 C a rg ill, "Cargill Reveals Loss on Wheat to Russia," state­ ment issued by C a rg ill, November 2, 1972; Letter to Cargill from Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co., C ertified Public Accountants, Minneapolis, Minnesota, November 1, 1972, pp. 2-3.

AC Don F. Hadwiger, Federal Wheat Commodity Programs (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1970), pp. 259-60. 47 Comptroller General of the United States, Russian Wheat Sales and Weakness in Agricultural Management of Wheat Export Subsidy Program, Report to the Congress (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, July, 1973), pp. 2, 25-26. 67

private exporting firm garnered substantial profits from the wheat

transactions, the consumer who bought his bread at the supermarket

found that he had to pay a higher price not only for bread but for other products as w ell.

Food prices in the United States increased by about 20 per cent the year a fte r the wheat sale. The Jackson Commission Hearings of the United States Congress found that much of this increase could be traced to the massive grain purchases. Economist Barry Bosworth of the Brookings In stitu tio n estimates that 15 of the 20 per cent increase would not have occurred i f i t had not been for the increase in ag ri­ cultural exports . 48

This is not to argue that the wheat sales should not have taken place. I t is merely to suggest that the trade transaction might have been conducted more in the national interest i f i t had been closely supervised by the government. Recognizing this to be the case, various experts on agricultural trade proposed a revision of controls governing the export of commodities, and the United States 49 Congress has already passed several laws to this effect.

4 0 U. S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Government Operations, Russian Grain Transaction, pp. 224-28. See also, Dale E. Hathaway, "Food Prices and In fla tio n ," Brookings Papers in Economic A c tiv ity , No. 1, ed. Arthur George Pery (Washington, D.C.: Brookings In s titu tio n , 1974), pp. 85-90; John A. Schnitter, "The 1972-1973 Food Price S piral," Brookings Papers in Economic A ctivity (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1973), p. 4. 4Q Address by Dr. Leonard W. Schruben before the Canadian and American Agricultural Economics Association en title d , "Grain Marketing Methods in the U. S.: Theory, Assumptions and Approaches," Edmonton, Canada, September 10, 1973. Reprinted in the M illing and Baking News, September 11, 1973, pp. 13, 1 , 34, 38, 47. 68

The adverse effect that multinational corporations might have on national sovereignty, advocates argue, is more than compensated by the beneficial effects that follow from the corporations' dissemina- 50 tion of technology and wealth throughout the world. Undoubtedly the international commodity exporters provide a service in distributing food energy (and at times manufacturing i t ) in many parts of the world.

Their accumulated knowledge of markets, alternative models of trans­ portation-^ barge, truck, rail, and various classes of vessels--is 51 probably unequaled. Much of th e ir impact follows from the size of their investments. The international commodity exporters, along with such food processing companies as General M ills and Pillsbury, fe r­ tilize r manufacturers, and veterinary pharmaceuticals comprise what is known as the "agri-business" complex. In 1967 the total world output of the foreign owned subsidiaries of these companies reached

$240,000,000,000 almost double the $130,000,000,000 of total exports 52 of the major industrial countries of that year.

Any beneficial consequences of the multinational firm are serendipitous to its real function of maximizing products for the company itself. The firm cannot, therefore, play a major role in balancing the world food flows. The food crisis of 1972/73 serves as a case in point. The lowering of the United States surplus by the

50 Brian Quinn, "Technology Transfer by Multinational Companies," Harvard Business Review (November-December, 1969). 51 Goldberg, Agribusiness, pp. 73-76.

CO Ray A. Goldberg, "Facts and Forecasts for Breadstuffs," The Southwestern M ille r Breadstuffs Seminar, 1972 (Kansas City: Sosland Publishing, 1972), p. 21. 69 massive Russian purchase meant that world wheat surpluses h it a new

low. The low grain supplies among the usual surplus nations appeared all the more grave in light of other problems in world agriculture.

Argentina's wheat crop yielded less than expected, and export sales were being restricted by early 1972. Pakistan and Bangladesh, due to war, and bad weather, required larger imports. Summer monsoon rains reached India la te , and the dry weather damaged crops. Drought con­ ditions reduced grain production in Australia, China, and West Africa.

Additionally, changes in the Humbolt currant resulted in a small 53 anchovy harvest o ff the coast of Peru.

Problems of the national actor: economic transnationalism and bureaucratic politics. "One of the major functions of the state,

Seyom Brown states in a recent Brookings Institution study, New Forces in World Politics, "in addition to protecting a national community from external attack, economic exploitation, or cultural subjugation has been to demarcate the boundaries of the national market and sustain 54 the rule of access to and behavior within that market." At times this means that the nation-state protects private interests (including those of the multinational firms). It means also, that the nation

53 See the following: Hathaway, p. 85; Schnittker, p. 501; Lester Brown, "The Next Crisis? Food," Foreign Policy, No. 12 (Winter 1973-74), pp. 10-12; C. P. Idyll, "The Anchovy Crisis," S cien tific American, CCXXVIII, No. 6 (June, 1973); Jean Mayer, "Coping with Famine," Foreign A ffa irs , L I I I , No. 1 (October, 1974), 98-120. 54 Seyom Brown, New Forces in World Politics (Washington, D.C.: Brookings In s titu tio n , 1974), p. 144. 70 redistributes social and economic benefits to its citizens. Govern­ ments accept the responsibility for providing basic necessities to their populations. The most basic of all amenities, of course, are the provisions of energy--primarily food energy, but also fuel energy.

The national market, therefore, is altered by various monetary devices (tariffs, price controls, export restrictions) to further this welfare of national citizens. The growth of economic transnationalism, described in previous paragraphs, hinders the nation in effectively controlling its goods: the monetary devices are not effective in light of the easy transfer of capital and assets by multinational firms. Seyom Brown, for example, suggests that the growth of large bureaucracies--giant administrations needed to deal with expanded social and economic functions--add to the nation's lack of control in 55 foreign policy matters.

Bureaucracies are particularly inept at dealing with decisions at the juncture of national and international politics, a theme sug- 56 gested in Graham Allison's The Cuban Missile C risis. The wheat sale highlighted the weakness in the decision-making procedures of one government agency in particular--the Department of Agriculture. Who within the national government made the decisions to support huge sales through subsidies to the commodity exporters? How were these decisions made?

55 Seyom Brown, pp. 150-62. 56 Graham Allison, The Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston! Little, Brown, 1971); see also the review of this book by Harrison Wagner, "Dissolving the State: Three Recent Perspectives on International Relations, International Organization, XXVIII, No. 3 (Summer, 1974), pp. 561-72. 71

One of the major functions of the Department of Agriculture is to provide information about the state of agriculture around the world to both farmers and grain brokers. These reports allow farmers and brokers to judge the extent of world food demand by evaluating the success of harvests elsewhere about the globe. This allows the farmers (and the department) to set both price and production schedules. But prior to the sale to the Soviet Union, this info r­ mation regarding eastern European wheat crops never reached the pub- 57 lie; as a matter of fact, the information was suppressed. More importantly, information did not reach the levels within the Department of Agriculture where the decisions as to wheat export subsidies were . 58 made.

A second responsibility of the Department of Agriculture is to guard the national larder. In other words, by harboring sufficient surpluses of grain, the government assures processors of a constant supply of flo u r. Yet no one appeared to be monitoring the wheat sales to determine whether national welfare might be undermined by unexpec­ tedly large sales. United States agricultural history prompted o ffic ia ls to view problems in terms of grain surpluses rather than 59 d e fic its .

57 Although primarily about Great B ritain, Ian Stuart's Information in the Cereal Market also explains the function of the United States Department of Agriculture in providing information on agriculture (London: Hutchinson, 1970), pp. 279-98.

CO For some unexplained reason, the Soviet information on Soviet crop conditions was marked classified. See Burt Schorr, "Secret Study: U. S. Suppressed Data that Might Have Aided Farmers in Grain Deal," Wall Street Journal, September 14, 1972. 59 Comptroller General of the United States, pp. 2-3. 72

The search for just who in itia te s and carries out policy decisions has interested generations of political observers. In the case of the wheat sale to Russia, the exporting firms negotiated a ll grain transactions. But these firms dared not sell at the low world price i f the United States wheat export payment would not be main­ tained. One journalistic account portrays how this decision was made:

It is one of the organizational mysteries of Washington's huge Government agencies that major decisions often wind up being made by minor figures. So i t was that President Nixon and his chief advisers had labored mightily over a period of months to persuade Russia to buy a few hundred million dollars a year of American grain on credit, succeeding fin a lly in the summer of 1972, but i t fe ll to Assistant Secretary Brunthaver to decide that it would be all right for Exportkhleb to purchase vastly bigger quan­ tity of grain than anyone had anticipated, and most of it at an artificially low price. This decision was at the core of the Soviet grain deal as i t eventually became a wrenching problem for the American economy.60

Food prices rose. And the subsidies that the government eventually paid to exporters to cover the sale of wheat to Russia totaled over

$300 million. The Department of Agriculture and the exporting firms supported the actions that they had made during the sale. The o ffic ia l report and review by the Comptroller General of the United States, however, cited negligence in both the Department of Agriculture's admin- 61 istratio n of wheat subsidy programs and in its communications systems.

60Joseph Albright, "Some Deal," New York Times Magazine, November 25, 1973, p. 84. 61 Comptroller General of the United States, p. 26. 73

DISCOVERING THE OBVIOUS: WORLD TRADE IN WHEAT

The various questions raised by the "big grain deal" between the United States and the Soviet Union prompted scholars to reexamine the patterns of world food trade, particularly trade in commodities such as wheat which account for such large percentages of total trade.

Although the exports of the producing nations suggest which nations contain rich "high energy" food producing systems, the destination of the export does not necessarily reflect actual patterns of need or cp best pattern of supply. Some of the intervening economic and poli­ tic a l variables w ill be discussed in Chapter 6--fo r example, the role of trade barriers in altering patterns of trade, and the manner in which economic underdevelopment lowers the bargaining power of those CO nations who need food but cannot pay for i t .

At this writing, the world grain economy, due to a confluence of factors with differen t origins, seems to be undergoing major changes.

There are, of course, the accidental factors mentioned before--drought, erosion, poor soil conservation practices--that add to the world food d e fic it. The droughts of Central Africa appear to be caused, in part

cp See, for example, "The Riddle of Rice; or How the Most Advanced Countries Have Been Supplying the World's Poorest People with the Most Labor Intensive of Basic Commodities," National Grind!ay's Review, XX, No. 1 ([London], February, 1974), 5-7.

CO Therefore we find the perhaps economically sound--but cer­ tainly ecologically inefficient—situation in which "low energy" nations such as India export foodstuffs. See A. K. Tejani, "Export Potential of Indian Food Specialties," Journal of Industry and Trade, XXIV, No. 9 ([New D elhi], September, 1974), 46-47. 74

at least, by the growth and overgrazing of cattle herds.In many

parts of the world, however, droughts appear at intervals of from 20

to 30 years (and this can be recorded for centuries) due to as yet 65 unexplained clim atic factors. North America is approaching this

"drought period" which--when and i f i t occurs--will have severe fifi effects on world grain economy. Grain in storage must be sufficient to cover these accidental and sometimes largely unforeseeable phenomena.

Other factors restructuring demands for food energy are some­ what sim ilar to those that precipitated the increased worldwide demand for fuel (thereby creating temporary shortages). Increased employment and affluence of a wider segment of the international economy-- triggering in fla tio n and higher food costs as worldwide food con- fi7 sumption increased. More people of the world are eating more meat, greatly straining the world supply of animal feed (mostly cereals) and fertilizer. We shall explain in the following chapter the ecology of food chains--how a large energy "cost" is extracted as plant food is transferred into meat and dairy products.

In the next few pages we explore the dimensions of change in the world wheat trade: f ir s t , although world trade in wheat has

fid Science and Public Policy, I , No. 9 (September, 1974). 65 Alan R. H. Baker and J. B. Harley, Man Made the Land (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1973), pp. 13-21. fifi Lester Brown, "The Next Crisis? Food," p. 22; see also, V. P. Timoshenko, "V ariab ility in Wheat Yields and Outputs," in World Wheat Production (Stanford: Food Research In s titu te , Stanford University, 1942).

67Hathaway, pp. 85-90; Simon Harris and Tim Josling, "The Revolution in World Commodity Markets," The Round Table, No. 254 ([London], April, 1974). 75

increased, the nature of this exchange differs from the trade of a decade ago; second, there is a constancy in the high-energy ecosystems that "supply" wheat for world trade; while, th ird , in contrast to the reliability of supplier nations, there exists a variability in the demand for wheat by consuming nations; and fourth, the trade in wheat becomes one of p o litic s , i f not in the short run, in the long run.

Increase in Wheat Trade

Although there has been a 3 per cent increase in the trade of wheat over a ten year period (1960-1970), the nature of recent trade 68 differs from that of a decade ago. Except for the large shipments to the Soviet Union, the trade is taking place over shorter distances.

In other words, with the exception of large and unexpected sales, the 69 linkages among various parts of the world have become shorter. This is largely due to the growth of regional institutions such as the

European Common Market, which has expanded its capacity as a grain producer.

Although in tonnage much of the wheat shipments were in the form of food aid, these concessional shipments--particularly those of the United States Food for Peace program--have diminished; while com­ mercial exports from the U. S. reached $20 b illio n in 1974, conces­ sional shipments dropped below $1 b illio n . 70

68 P. W. H. Weightman, "Cereals," International Trade in Temperate Zone Products (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1972), p. 71. 69 Borgstrom, Harvesting the Earth, p. 135.

70Steven Rosenfeld, "The Politics of Food for Peace," Foreign Pol ic y , No. 14 (September, 1974), pp. 17-34. See Robert L. Bard, 76

Constancy in Supplier Nations

Few nations produce a surplus of wheat. As we noted previously, the United States, Australia, France and Argentina and Canada account for 80 per cent of a ll world shipment in wheat. Although the yearly output among the usual wheat suppliers varies, and there are always unexpected wheat surplus countries each year, the pattern is rela­ tively stable.7^

The fluctuations can be described as follows. The Soviet Union is usually a net exporter of wheat. Most of this wheat surplus she 72 exports to satellite nations in East Europe and Sino Asia. The amount of Russian surplus depends, to a large degree, not only on the variability in the productivity of the ecosystems of the Soviet Union, but also on the political decisions made by the government--particu- la rly on whether or not to raise the nation's level of meat and dairy consumption, which in turn, necessitates an increase in domestic grain consumption. The Soviet Union exported about 50 m illion bushels of wheat yearly to Western Europe, B razil, and the United Arab Republic at the close of the decade, compared to 10 m illion bushels to these 73 countries at the beginning of the decade.

Food Aid and International Agricultural Trade (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1972); Hugh L. Ken Keenle.yside, International Aid: A Summary (New York: James H. Heineman, 1966, pp. 159-86.

7^International Wheat Council, Trends and Problems in the World Grain Economy, 1950-1970, Secretariat Paper No. 6 (London: International Wheat Council, 1966), pp. 4-5.

70 See Roger E. Neetz, Eastern Europe's Agricultural Develop­ ment and Trade: Patterns and Perspectives, FAER No. 64 (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Department of Agriculture, July, 1970). 73 Robert Philemon Bratland, "World Wheat Trade Projections for 1975 and 1985" (unpublished Master's thesis, North Dakota State 77

Secondly, we find fluctuations in the agricultural production 74 of the European Common Market. By giving producers the assurance of an expanded market and more stable prices, the conmon market has stimulated a greater application of technology and encouraged increased wheat production. Since 1965, the EC has consistently been a net exporter of wheat, though its net trade surplus is small--around 80 75 mil 1 ion bushels.

This does not mean that the EEC does not import wheat. Wheat imports are some of the largest in the world.

Here we see again the import of wheat class or variety and pattern of trade. Almost a ll of the wheat produced in the common market countries is soft wheat which offers high yields (hence German wheat yields are twice those of Canada) but has poor baking charac­ te ris tic s .

Other fluctuations occur mainly in the increase or decrease in production in Canada, Australia, Argentina and the United States.

The great latitude these nations have in increasing or decreasing the amount of wheat produced can be seen by the fact that the total area under wheat in Canada, Australia and Argentina averaged 50.1 m illion acres between 1960 and 1962; by 1968, however, the total was up to

70.4 m illion acres; and in 1970, the wheat acreage under cultivation

University of Agriculture, Fargo, North Dakota, January, 1968), pp. 50-52.

^S tanley Andrews, Agriculture and the Common Market (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1973). 75 International Wheat Council, World Wheat Statistics, 1973 (London: International Wheat Council, 1973), pp. 30, 39. 78 76 was just h alf of 1969! Production in these countries was up 52 per

cent during these same years, indicating a greater application of 77 agricultural technology through use of fe r tiliz e r s .

V a ria b ility in Wheat Demand

Because of the great v a ria b ility in wheat production throughout

the world from year to year, the number of buyers and the amount of

grain they request changes from one harvest to another. The two con­

secutive years of monsoon failure in South Asia in 1965 and 1966, for

example, meant that for these years India--always a net importer of 78 grains--depended on even additional supplies from elsewhere. Again,

the crop failure in the Soviet Union meant that the Soviet Union

imported large amounts of wheat in 1971 and 1972 even though she had

been a net exporter two years e a rlie r. The needs of the Peoples

Republic of China also vary from year to year, although China is always a net grain importer—and usually imports more grain than any other 79 nation in the world.

76 Edwin Reubens, "The Food Shortage Is Not Inevitable," Challenge, XVII, No. 1 (March-April, 1974).

^Leroy L. Blakeslee and others, World Food Production, Demand, and Trade (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1973), pp. 93-94. 78 Trevor Drieberg, "The Lessons of the Drought," Ceres, VII (March-April, 1974), 15.

^H erbert Dyke, "Will China Get Part of Our Feed Grain Market?," Wallaces Farmer, October 14, 1972, p. 8 ; Audrey Donnithorne, China's Grain: Output, Procurement, Transfers and Trade (Hong Kong: Economic Research Center, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1970), pp. 1-4. Only during the 1950's did the Chinese fail to import grain; during this time better transportation and internal control plus good crops allowed the government to transport grain to the coastal cities. The grain import program began in 1961 following several years of agricul­ tural disaster. 79

The Interdependencies

The wheat trade must be understood in terms of the broader

food-ecology of the world—particularly in relation to other grains.

It matters, too, what class of grain is produced and exported, since

especially in the case of wheat, the difference between hard wheat and 80 soft wheat is so great as to render then different grains. There­

fore, Germany is a net exporter of wheat, but since this is a soft

wheat, the nation must also import hard wheat for bread. A decline in

the production of a feed grain such as corn or soybeans may mean that wheat is used as a substitute. The kind of wheat produced determines who will buy the grain. A low protein wheat—such as that usually

produced by Australia—yields more per acre but sells for less on the world market; the buyers, therefore, are nations with few dollars such

as China.

Policy Decisions

Ultim ately, the amount of grain produced and purchased depends

upon p o litic a l decisions. For the producer country, wheat production

stems from the kind of farm subsidies that stimulate growth and sales of wheat; i t depends upon the kind of trade agreements made among the various nations—whether or not trade may be permitted within or with­ out common markets, the kind of preferences given by .the industrial countries to developing countries.

Most of these decisions are national ones—they are made in the self-interest of particular nations or groups of nations. This

80 Georg Borgstrom, Too Many: A Study of the Earth's Biological Limitations (London: Macmillan, 1969), pp. 47-49. 80 is true for food aid programs--which allow surplus nations to distribute commodities to poor nations who in any event would not be 81 potential customers for their products. This both eliminates costly storage expenses and, by lowering stocks, maintains higher world prices for cereal grains.

But in the next decades the critical decisions about how much wheat should cross the waters--at what cost to both producing and consuming nations--requires consideration by public in addition to private institutions. Transactions similar to the United States grain sale to the Soviet Union have too great an effect both within the con­ tracting nations and in the world at large to allow them to be made by private individuals in secret conferences in Manhattan. The world grain problem is critical. Until recently, the world has had major reserves of food--both the stocks of grain held in the principal exporting countries, and in addition cropland that governments held out of production. The combination of these two reserves represented

222 m illion tons of grain in 1961. This represented a reserve equal to 95 days of world consumption. By the end of 1974, the cushion had 82 declined to 26 days of reserve food supplies. We return to a dis­ cussion of these problems and their possible p o litic a l solutions in

Chapters 6 and 7.

81 Contained in Food and Agricultural Organization, National Grain Policies (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1973). These problems are discussed in Robert L. Tontz, ed., Foreign Agricultural Trade (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1966). 82 Interview with Norman Borlaug, "The Shrinking Margin," Ceres, VII (March-April, 1974), 56. Chapter 4

THE ECOSYSTEM MODEL: ENERGY PRODUCTION, BALANCE, COUPLING

We now turn to a formalization of the previous material on the production and consumption of food energy in the form of wheat. The study of "ecology"--from the Greek oikonos (house) and logos (knowledge)

--is the search for principles whereby one can "put his house in order."

This metaphor refers to man's larger earth-home as well as to his per­ sonal resources. He must search for this planetary order through both time and space. The relationships among those who produce energy and those who consume i t are not immediately evident; often, too there are subtleties and an apparent randomness in the " fit" or correspondence of this community to its surrounding environmentJ

Behind the popularized ecological view of the world prevalent in conservation literature, stands a particular image of reality--the ecosystem model. The following chapter makes e x p lic it three dimensions of this model and suggests why the ecological perspective represents a useful way of looking at international relations. We discuss, first of a l l, the productivity of energy system; secondly, the idea of balance

^Much of this chapter owes to the excellent introduction to ecology by Eugene P. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology (2nd ed.; Phila­ delphia: W. B. Saunders Company, 1969). Another good text on the subject is Edward J. Kormondy's Concepts of Ecology (Englewood C liffs , N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969J!

81 82 within and among ecological communities; and th ird , the phenomenon of coupling or linking of ecosystems through exchanges or flows of energy.

The reader should keep in mind that we are working with a model of reality, an abstracted landscape in which all detail and ideosyn- 2 cracy or "noise" disappears. This is a simplified representation of a community of living organisms and their environment. The model includes, then, the mineral sub-stratum upon which organisms depend, plus any externally provided energy sources. Some real world ecosystems, of course, are more isomorphic with this model than others. The most

"ideal" of these ecosystems are the small, relatively autonomous, self- sustaining communities such as the pine forest, the patch of p ra irie ,

3 or the pond.

The main purpose of the model is not to em pirically describe any particular ecosystem, but, in the words of E. P. Odum, the father of modern ecology, to "emphasize obligatory relationships, interde­ pendence, and causal relationships" both within ecosystems and among 4 them. For the earth is composed of millions of these small, natural eco-communities, and even more a r tific ia l or man-made ecosystems. The key to the order within these ecosystems as well as to the intricate linkages that take place among them is in the flow of "free" energy--

2 See Chapter I I I in The Biological May of Thought by Morton Beckner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), pp. 32-54; also, Chapter 17, "The Ecosystem as a Practical Model" in Introduction to Ecology, by Paul A. Colinvaux (New York: John Wiley & Sons, In c., 1973), pp. 230-245.

Thomas C. Emmel, An Introduction to Ecology and Population • Biology (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1873), pp. 99-103. 4 Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, p. 11. 83 that gift from the sun which constantly propels, alters, and unites the various ecosystems of the earth.

INTRODUCTION: ECOLOGICAL COMMUNITIES AS ENERGY SYSTEMS

The single most important characteristic of these ecosystems is

5 that they are maintained by a constant flow of energy. This light energy both brings an ecosystem into existence and sustains its lif e .

Though an ecosystem usually contains several forms of energy--radiant energy from the sun, for example, and the kinetic energy from a water­ fa ll, ecologists are primarily interested in two forms of energy within the ecosystem: ( 1) the chemical energy produced through photosynthesis, described in the following section, and ( 2) the heat energy released by g living organisms in respiration and metabolism.

All energy, then, with the exception of nuclear energy, u lti­ mately comes from the sun. The plants of the ideal ecosystem transform this radiant energy into chemical and heat energy which is used to sus­ tain the community. When we speak of a "closed" community, or of an

"autotrophic community" we refer to an ecosystem which produces its own

5 The concept of energy flow provides the basis for Howard T. Odum, Environment Power, and Society (New York: W iley-Interscience, 1971), see particularly Chapter 3, "Power in Ecological Systems," pp. 58-102; D. M. Gates, Energy Exchange in the Biosphere (New York: Harper and Row, 1962); J. Phillipson, Ecological Energetics (London: Edward Arnold, Ltd., 1966); Paul Sears, The Living Landscape (New York: Basic Books, 1962), pp. 82-91.

J. H. Linford, An Introduction to Energetics (London: Butterworths, 1966), pp. 26-30, 39-51. See also, Paul Brandwein and others, Energy, Its Forms and Changes (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968). 84

energy. The "closedness11 requirement of the ideal ecosystem must be

understood, however, as a somewhat unrealistic if analytically useful

simplification. Few (if any) of the earth's ecosystems actually

approximate the conditions of material and energetic self-sufficiency . 7

There is a continual sh ift in materials and energy among the contiguous ecosystems. In fact, what John Storer suggests in The Web of Life about material exchanges among ecosystems is equally true for energy: there is scarcely a square mile of the earth's surface that O does not contain some ingredient from every other mile. By its very definitio n this energy is never at rest--indeed i t is this very quality of continual motion that unites the physical and biological concepts of energy . 9

But i f the f ir s t principle of ecology pronounces the constant flow of energy within an ecosystem, the second principle concerns the relatedness or interdependency among world ecosystemsJ 9 Since energy is in continual motion, calories enter and leave the small pond or forest and continually circulate about the earth. Some ecosystems, of course, are more closely knit than others (often these closely linked ecosystems are called a biome, of which the vast tundra would be an

7Ludwig Von Bertalanffy, "General System Theory--A C ritical Review," Modern Systems Research for the Behavioral S c ien tist, ed. Walter Buckley (Chicago: Aldine, 1968), pp. 18-19.

8John Storer, The Web of Life (1953; New York: New American Library, 1969), p. 18. Q Harold Morowitz, Energy Flow in Biology (New York: Academic Press, 1968).

10Kormondy, p. 113. 85

example);^ a degree of interaction, however, takes place between any 12 ecosystem and its neighboring communities.

Yet it is not, as we shall see, a matter of indifference how closely a given system approaches realization of the ideal of energetic

self-sufficiency. Indeed, the primary purpose of this chapter is to suggest the reasons why given ecosystems degrees of dependency on external resource supplies promises--or threatens--to become one of the main driving forces in modern international relations.

NATURE'S FUEL: THE PRODUCTION OF ENERGY

The earth is a consumer of energy from the sun--energy which the planet must convert, through the process of photosynthesis, into 13 usable form. Ecosystems d iffe r in their a b ility to transfer this lig h t energy into chemical and heat energy. They also d iffe r in the number of consumers that the system must support. This difference in an ecosystem's a b ility to produce energy introduces the distinction 14 between high energy systems and low energy systems.

11 Robert H. Whittaker, Communities and Ecosystems (New York: Macmillan, 1970). An excellent description of the biomes of North America appear in Victor E. Shelford, The Ecology of North America (Urbana: University of Illin o is Press, 1963). 12 Eugene P. Odum, Ecology (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), p. 10. 13 The most complete work on photosynthesis is E. I. Rabinowitch's Photosynthesis, I (New York: Wiley Interscience, 1945). 14 G. F. Sprague, "Increasing Crop Yields: Technical Measures for Increasing Productivity," Man, Food, and Nutrition, ed. Miloslav Rechcigl (Cleveland, Ohio: Chemical Rubber Co., 1973), pp. 92-98. 86

Even a highly productive system, however, can become a low

energy system i f the rate of consumption within the community is

greater than the rate of energy production. This need for balance

within the ecosystem (production of energy equaling consumption of

energy) illu s tra te s the need for correspondence among the parts of

ecological model.

These dimensions of the ecological model rest on a single

foundation--they originate and perpetuate through solar input and

photosynthesis.

The Essential Base: Solar Input and Photosynthesis

As the sun converts hydrogen into helium, substantial electro­

magnetic waves are released. This solar radiation--energy traveling

at or near the speed of 1ight--from--provides the necessary energy to

both heat the earth's environment and to drive the various ecosystems

by means of energy stored through photosynthesis.

Light energy comprises half of the solar radiation reaching

the earth's surface. Green plants, the only source of primary energy, 15 feed upon light with wave lengths between 500-760 millimicrons. In

addition, infrared or thermal radiation with wave lengths over 760 millimicrons (and felt as radiant heat) warm the earth's surface, thus 1 fi increasing the habitability of parts of the earth.

15 A. P. Hughes, "The Importance of Light Compared with Other Factors Affecting Plant Growth," in Light as an Ecological Factor, ed. by Richard Bainbridge and others (Oxford: Blackwell S cien tific Publications, 1966), p. 131. 1 fi Howard H. Seliger and William D. McElroy, Light: Physical and Biological Action (New York: Academic Press, 1965), pp. 41-45. 87

Although the sun's energy reaches the earth's outer atmosphere

at a constant rate known as the solar flux, more than half of this

energy is depleted as i t passes through the troposphere.^ But even

with this "scattering" and reflection of light from the earth into

outer space, meteorologists estimate that the value of the sun's energy 18 on earth is two calories per square centimeter per minute.

The amount of energy at any particular spot on earth, however,

varies: it varies seasonally because of the elliptical orbit of the earth around the sun, and it varies diurnally because of the earth's continual rotation. The solar radiation of Spitzbergen, therefore, reaches over 1000 calories per square centimeter per day during the month of June, but its annual average is very low since most of the year the c ity receives very l i t t l e solar radiation. Areas about the equator,on the other hand, maintain high levels of solar radiation throughout the year, averaging over 800 calories per square centimeter 19 per day throughout the year.

Given the appropriate amount of light, the plants of the various ecosystems can convert radiant energy into stored chemical energy through a process known as photosynthesis. The autotrophic cells of green plants receive the energy from sunlight and with the heightened electron charge of this energy the plant cells incorporate atmospheric carbon dioxide and water into glucose. Of course, some of

17 Jen-Hu Chang, Climate and Agriculture: An Ecological Survey (Chicago: Aldine, 1968), pp. 4-6. 18 Kormondy, p. 7. 19 Chang, pp. 4-22; Kormondy, pp. 7-9. 88 this energy is used by the leaves of the plant in immediate respiratory needs. So i t "consumes" part of its own energy in a process which is the reverse of the photosynthetic reaction. The respiratory activity releases the energy stored in the chemical bonds of the plant's complex molecular structure, absorbing sufficient oxygen to produce "heat" and in the process returning carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The heat is often expressed as "work"; i t occurs as the re la tiv e ly chaotic, 20 speeded-up random motion of molecules in the surrounding a ir.

Only a small amount of usable lig h t energy is actually used in the photosynthetic process. E. I. Rabinowitch, in the d e fin itiv e work on photosynthesis, estimated that about 2 per cent of lig h t energy is 21 actually converted by plants.

High and Low Productivity in Ecosystems

The productivity of an ecosystem, Eugene Odum c la r ifie s , is the "rate at which energy is stored by photosynthetic and chemosynthetic a c tiv ity of producer organisms (chiefly green plants) in the form of 22 organic substances." We may regard an ecosystem as high or low in energy content, then, depending on the amount of energy accumulated in a given locale, or more importantly, on how quickly the region may produce new crops of energetically-charged matter.

?n Morowitz, pp. 1-21. 21 An ordinary fie ld crop converts less than 1 per cent of solar radiation; under optimum conditions, corn converts only up to 1.5 per cent of solar radiation. Chang, pp. 57-58. 22 Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, p. 68. 89

We can illu s tra te the difference in energy production of high

and low energy systems by comparing the gross primary productivity

(total rate of photosynthesis, including organic matter used up in

respiration) of a cross-section of communities. The various communities

illustrate differences in degree of energy productivity, with the high and low energy systems forming the boundaries of the model. Both the

in fe rtile open ocean and the desert ecosystem produce l i t t l e energy-- about 0.5 grams per square meter per day. The coral reefs at the opposite end of the continuum, produce 18 grams per square meter per 23 day, while moist grassland produces about 9 grams per day.

High energy systems: basic principles and human application. The highly productive system is not only sufficient in energy, but often

"exports" surplus energy to neighboring systems. The agricultural runoff from rich farmlands, for example, suggests this generalization.

It becomes apparent, however, that not all of the productive systems are useful to man. A polluted stream--perhaps altered by the previously 24 mentioned agricultural wastes --produces about 57 grams of energy per 25 square meter per day: An intensively farmed sugar cane fie ld harvests

18 grams of energy while the highest yields from a wheatfield are 4 grams per day! Obviously man could not survive on the energy production of a polluted stream, and for nutritional reasons made

Odum, Ecology, p. 46. 24 Odum, Ecology, p. 46. 25 Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, p. 72.

26W. S. Woytinsky and E. S. Woytinsky, World Population and Production (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1953). 90 e x p lic it below, he could not exist for long on the carbohydrate calories of sugar cane.

We must now explore what principles in general make high energy systems productive and what factors in particular determine the usefulness of the ecosystems to man.

Ecologists use the term limiting factor to describe those aspects of the environment that determine growth and reproduction 27 within a system. The idea of the lim iting factor accounts for the general productivity of the ecosystem. The subject of lim iting factors is a complex one, for each ecosystem exhibits peculiarities derived both from the organization of the community (which has its own influence over what can or cannot be produced in the ecosystem) and from the com­ binations of natural forces, such as wind and water currents. The major limiting factors, however, are indisputably the amounts of sun- 28 light, water and nutrients (minerals) supplied to the community.

Let us give an example. Justus von Liebig, a German agricul­ tural chemist, discovered over a century ago that he could increase crop yields by supplying the nutrient (nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur) 29 present in the least amount. Generally, this means that a wheatfield

^Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, pp. 88-140; W. B. Clapham, Natural Ecosystems (New York! The Macmillan Company, 1973), pp. 61-64; Arthur S. Boughey, Ecology of Populations (Toronto, Ontario: The Macmillan Company, 1968), pp. 1-4. PR C. A. de Vries, "Increasing Crop Yields--Relative Potential of Specific Crops by Region and/or Country," Man, Food and N u tritio n , ed. Miloslav Rechicigl (Cleveland: Chemical Rubber Co., 1973), pp. 113-25. 29 Colinvaux, p. 974; Boughey, pp. 2-4. 91 with high phosphorus but low nitrogen content would produce l i t t l e unless nitrogen were supplied to the soil in sufficient quantities.

Eventually, greater amounts of nitrogen would make no difference.

But another lim iting factor of the environment enters in to lim it further yields of wheat (perhaps there is too little water, or phosphorus in relation to the nitrogen). The role of limiting factors is one of "too much" or "too l it t l e " of any of a large number of factors that contribute to plant growth. With too much sun, the plant leaves lose moisture faster than they can u tiliz e i t ; with too l i t t l e sun, no photosynthesis can take place; too much water and the soil is leached of its nutrients.

Indeed, there is a c irc u la rity to the continual appearance of a new limiting factor. This is called the principle of the holocoenotic environment, an observation first articulated in 1927 by another German 30 ecologist, Karl Friedrich. I f one factor is changed, either in the environment (land, water, sunlight) or in the ecosystem community

(composition of plants and animals) all other factors will change as w ell. The fact that each component of the ecosystem can impact on one another makes the community very susceptible to change. The limiting factor becomes a triggering factor, initiating a chain 31 reaction that reverberates through the ecosystem. An irrig atio n ditch in the desert, for example, eventually w ill remove surrounding sagebrush to make room for willow trees for marsh grass. Likewise,

on W. D. B illin g s, Plants, Man, and the Ecosystem (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing, 1970), pp. 9, 36-37, 136.

■^Billings, pp. 37, 106, 142. 92 something from outside the community may become the triggering factor, completely changing the ecosystem. Here we have the fam iliar example of the deforestation which takes place due to radioactive fallout or the destruction of wheat crops due to the infestation by wheat-stern rust.

In the principle of the limiting factors and of the holocoenotic environment, then, we see the relationship between productivity of the ecosystem and the need for "balance" and "order" within the components of the community--concepts to be discussed shortly. At the micro-scale of the ecosystem--the level of the growing plant--light, water, and minerals must be in balance just as the ecosystem's producing sectors and consuming organisms must cooperate toward achievement of an overall 32 balance in output and uptake. Optimum conditions—which again under­ score the central importance of "balance"--are lik e ly to produce a highly productive system.

We must reserve the concept of "high energy system" for those ecosystems that remain useful to man for long periods of time. This means that the high energy ecosystem must be capable of reorganization, of simplification, and rationalization. It means also that the quality of the food produced must be of sufficient energetic value to support man, a caveat to be explored in the following section.

Quite simply, high energy systems may be conceived of as eco­ systems with agricultural potential. S ir Joseph Hutchinson defines land with agricultural potential as "land in which a new balance can

op The principle of balance is illu s tra te d in Hughes, pp. 133, 141; see also, George L. Clarke, Elements of Ecology (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1966), pp. 16-18. be struck between climate, soil, and vegetation that is useful to 33 man." General as this definition may appear, i t does lim it the

number of ecosystems that we may define as having a "high energy" 34 potential.

The tropics receive large amounts of light, and therefore one

could expect a high rate of photosynthesis and stored food calories

in tropical ecosystems. Yet these communities tend to be low energy

systems, for they cannot be reorganized easily or quickly. Once the

vegetation is removed from a tropical community, i t takes long periods

of time (sometimes up to 40 years) for the ecosystem to accumulate 35 sufficient nutrients to repair its growth. This low regenerative

capacity is due to the large amounts of rain which percolate through

the s o il, thus washing away necessary nutrients. The excess of water

therefore limits the total amount of solar energy which may be fixed.

Desert regions, like the tropics, typically receive ample amounts of

sunlight. Often, too, they contain the minerals necessary for lif e .

33 Sir Joseph Hutchinson, Farming and Food Supply (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), p. 25. On the need for simplifi­ cation (and the problems this e n ta ils ), see Marston Bates, "The Human Ecosystem," America's Land and Its Uses, ed. Marion Clawson (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press, 1971).

^E rich W. Zimmerman, "The Nature of Agriculture," World Resources and Industries (2nd ed., New York: Harper & Bros., 1951), pp. 17-90. 35 Robert F. Inger and others, eds., Man in the Living Environment, The In stitute of Ecology (Madison, Wisconsin: The Univer sity of Wisconsin Press, 1972), pp. 173-82; P. W. Richards, The Tropical Rain Forest: An Ecological Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966); Mary McNeil, "Lateritic Soils in Distinct Tropical Environments: Southern Sudan and B ra zil," The Careless Technology: Ecology and International Development (Garden C ity, N.Y.: The Natural History Press, 1972), pp. 591-608. 94

The well-known lim iting factor here is watei— but water is in short OC supply rather than, as in the tropics, in excess.

In addition to reorganization, high energy ecosystems must be

capable of great simplification--an increase in the primary trophic

level (green plants) and the expulsion of all consumers (insects,

animals) other than man. Man must remain as the primary consumer.

This eliminates from our definition as high energy systems several

extremely productive communities--mangrove forests, tropical estuaries,

and coral reefs. I t seems that a close symbiosis between numerous

organisms may be necessary in these complex systems--great diversity

of producers and consumers are necessary to maintain high productivity 37 on the reef to prevent losses of material from the system.

A high energy community is also an area that can be ration­

alized. By this we mean that farmers must know how to allocate

resources on a particular piece of land in order to produce the most

food energy. This process of rationalization works across ecosystems

as well as within them, which illustrates once again the continual

process of ecosystem coupling as urban man produces his food. Crops

often grow best in environments d ifferen t from those in which they

evolved, for within their own ecosystems there are often competing

organisms to lim it th eir dominance. Examples are the transfer of the

rubber plant from the Amazon to Southeast Asia, of sugar cane from

O C H. E. Dregne, "Surface Material of Desert Environments," Deserts of the World, ed. by R. McGinnies and others (Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 1968), pp. 285-377. 37 Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, pp. 76-77; see also Clapham, pp. 119-20. 95

Southeast Asia to the Caribbean, the potatoe from the Andes to

Ireland . 38

Even a reorganized, highly rationalized energy system may not be su fficien tly productive of the rig ht kind of energy to sustain man.

We alluded to the highly productive systems of sugar cane and reed swamps. This subject of human nutrition tells a fascinating story of its own, one that cannot be explored in detail here. We must emphasize, however, that the lim iting factors in a human-food producing system are d ifferen t from those for, say, a community of koala bears. Man must receive not just calories but calories of sufficient quality to maintain his reproduction and growth. This means he needs not only carbohydrate 39 calories (the most prevalent), but also protein and certain nutrients.

Since a calorie of protein is a more complex molecular struc­ ture than that of a carbohydrate, i t takes more in itia l energy by the ecosystem to produce it. At least 2,000 pieces are fit into each molecule of the more than sixteen amino acids which compose the pro- 40 tein in the body.

og Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov, The Origin, Variation, Immunity and Breeding of Cultivated Plants, trans. K. Starr Chester (New York: The Ronald Press, 1951), p. 229. See also, Carroll P. W ilsie, Crop Adaptation and Distribution (San Francisco: Freeman, 1961); H. L. Edlin, Man and Plants (London: Aldus Books, 1967). 39 C. N. Robinson, Fundamentals of Normal Nutrition (New York: Macmillan, 1968); Odum, Environment, Power and Society, pp. 121-22; Nevin S. Scrimshaw, "Ecologic Factors Determining Nutritional State and Food Use," Alternatives for Balancing World Food Production and Needs, ed. Iowa State University Center for Agricultural and Economic Development (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1968), pp. 35-50.

40Linford, pp. 202-203. 96

The production of protein rich foods--pulses, oilseeds, and some varieties of cereal--requires an ecosystem with adequate water and sunlight, and most importantly, the nutrient nitrogen. Of course, legumindus plants can make use of atmospheric nitrogen by means of symbiotic bacteria in their roots. Since some ecosystems have more nitrogen in them than others, they provide a better base for the produc­ tion of man's food. Even with fertilizers (which have increased the world's ecosystems protein yields by a third) some soils cannot hold the nitrogen, and therefore produce poor food crops. The soil loses the nitrogen in the denitrification processes of soils, through leaching or through the feeding of soil bacteria, fungi, and insects.^

Low energy ecosystems. Low energy systems are those ecological communi­ ties that produce l i t t l e energy through the process of photosynthesis.

We mentioned the desert ecosystems in this regard, and high altitude regions may be included as well. Sometimes this low productivity is due to extremes of temperature, and sometimes to other limiting factors, such as poor soil quality (insufficient nutrients), too little water, or (in the case of high altitudes), exposure to ultra-violet rays. Of course these low energy systems may become high-energy systems. In the case of the desert, man may produce o il--c a llin g forth the energy stored in fossil plants from long-ago photosynthesis.

A low energy ecosystem includes, as w ell, those communities that are "out of balance." By this, we mean that the consumers of the

41Kermit C. Berger, Sun, Soil, and Survival: An Introduction to Soils (end ed., Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972), pp. 134-35, 7, 14. 97

community require more food than the local ecosystems can supply. This

is the case with metropolitan areas. Densely populated urban centers

are characterized by high ratios of consumption to production, and

here originates most of the demand for food and fuel. Since a popu­

lation in New York or Calcutta eats more than the cities themselves

can supply, most of the food energy for th e ir urban citizens must be

produced elsewhere. This requirement ties the city to the agricul­

tural hinterland which produces the population's food, thus balancing

the production-consumption ledger. The next section enlarges on this 42 need for balance within and among ecosystems.

THE CONCEPT OF ECOLOGICAL BALANCE

An ecosystem cannot maintain its usual organization with either

too much energy or too l i t t l e energy. In either case, the ecosystem would change, allowing more consumers or fewer consumers; the end result or new equilibrium would be a quite different community. This consequent change to effect an ecosystem balance--both with its environ­ ment and in terms of internal energy flow --in indicated in the process of ecological succession. Eugene Odum marks the beginning of modern ecology from the discovery of this concept at the beginning of the

42 This balance of the production-consumption ledger often is achieved at the expense of the larger "earth" ecosystem. See W. L. Thomas, J r ., ed. Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956); Barry Commoner, "Nature Unbalanced: How Man Interferes with the Nitrogen Cycle," Scientist and Citizen, X (January-February, 1968), 9-19; John P. Milton and M. Taghi Farvar, The Careless Technology (New York: Natural History Press, 1971); John P. Milton and M. Taghi Farvar, Gordon T. Goodman and others, eds., Ecology and the Industrial Society, British Ecological Society Symposium Number Five (New York: John Wiley, 1965). 98 century. Systematic studies of plant succession in Denmark and on the sand dunes of Lake Michigan led to the realization "that natural 43 communities change in an orderly way . . . This resulted, Odum points out, in the concept of a dynamic balance of nature which came to replace the older concept of a static balance of nature. When the community its e lf is stable (climax community), the principle of balance continues--but it is exemplified now in the flow of energy from energy producers through a series of energy consumers known as the trophic 44 pyramid. This balancing mechanism also operates among a number of ecosystems, lending s ta b ility to larger composites of ecosystems known as biomes.

Order and equilibrium: s ta tis tic a l problems. The organization of each ecological community is maintained so long as the ecosystem continually receives free energy from the sun. At f ir s t , young ecosystems are unstable: they produce too much energy, and there is a net annual accumulation of organic matter. That is , the annual production and import of the community is not balanced by the annual community consumption and export. These are the serai stages of an ecological community:

By and large, succession seems to be characteristic of the community itself; it results from the fact that the action of the community on the habitat tends to make the area less favorable for its e lf and more favorable for other sets of organisms—that is, until the equilibrium or c li­ max state is reached . . . pioneer communities often produce

43 Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, p. 257. See the discussion of ecological succession in Chapter 2 of Ramon Margalef, Perspectives in Ecological Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). 44 Clarke, pp. 459-63. 99

a great deal more organic matter than they consume; this excess organic matter ( i f not immediately "exported") may change the habitat physically as well as be a source of food, growth, or inhibitory substances which influence the composition of the community. Only a fte r the habitat has been modified as far as possible by organisms is i t possible for a community to become stab le.*5

Thus, the sand dunes studied by Shelford in 1913 showed a change in

the community from an ecosystem dominated by cottonwood beach grass

to a jack pine forest, to a black oak dry forest, and finally to a

climax as a beech-maple forest.^®

Of course, this order did not take place immediately. An

upland sere in the Piedmont region of Georgia studied by Odum and

Johnston, for example, took 200 years to progress from an area of

forbs through a community of grass and scrubs and to fin a lly reach its 47 climax as an oak-hickory dominated ecosystem. Nor, as we shall soon

see, does the "balance" of production and consumption in many stable ecosystems take place at a singular point in time. Since the life

cycle of green plants is often shorter than that of the herbivores that graze them, the energetic weight at any particular point in time

(though not over time) may be greater for the consumer than the producer.^ 48

45 Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, p. 259.

AC Now incorporated in V. E. Shelford, The Ecology of North America (Urbana: University of Illin o is , 19637^ 47 Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, pp. 262-63. 48 This occurrence of both s ta b ility and change in the "balanced" ecosystem leads to the following definition of a balanced ecosystem by Margalef: "... the a b ility of the system to remain reasonably similar to itself in spite of . . . changes." Margalef, p. 11. Thus the physical laws of particular ecological units tend to

be balanced in a grand ecological design, but a design with a paradox.

Consumption must match production, but this happens over long periods

of time--seasons, even decades. The order obtains by "chance and 49 necessity." It is a statistical order, so that the immediate

matching of consumption and production is one of probability. I f

this were not so, the earth would have remained unchanged, for as

J. H. Lonford succinctly states in his Introduction to Energetics

with Applications to Biology, "A system which does not lose or gain

energy w ill remain unchanged, and any change in a body of material has

its origin in some type of related change in another part of the 6n physical world.

The Economy of the Trophic System

We described as the f ir s t dimension of our ecological model

the nature of productivity within an ecosystem. Quite simply, the

community is composed of producers that make energy available (plants) 51 and consumers who, in turn, feed upon the energy produced. Addi­

tio n a lly , the production must match consumption i f we want to assure

some sort of stability or order within the system.

In a stable ecosystem, the equilibrium or order is worked out--both through time and in space--in the flow of energy through

49 The terms are those of Jacque Monod, Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology, trans. A. Wainhouse (New York: Knopf, 1971).

^ L in fo rd , p. 25.

51Rezneat M. Darnell, Ecology and Man (Dubuque, Iowa: William C. Brown, 1973), pp. 46-48. 52 the trophic system. The economy of the trophic system is such that

the ecosystem's scarce resource--food energy-eventual ly is distributed

throughout the community in such a way that production matches

consumption. However since energy is "lost" in the respiration and

maintenance of the plants and animals that compose the various levels

of the food chain, the energy at the top of the system of consumers 53 is always less than that at the primary level of production. This

energy loss is significant to man since he lives at the top of the

trophic pyramid. The next few paragraphs show how this balancing

mechanism works its e lf out through the trophic system and indicates

the change that takes place in the ecosystem when energy balance is

not maintained.

An example: the trophic economy in a lake system. Consider the kind

of small and geographically isolated community which the ecosystem

model was originally devised to describe—a geologically "young,"

isolated fresh-water lake. Even in a new and hence exceedingly pure

lake, a field ecologist could record some photosynthetic activity as

indicated by the community's production of algae. Algae and other 54 waterborne plant l if e , in turn, serve as food for the fish.

The fish , by eating the biomass produced at the base of the

trophic pyramid help rid the lake of an overproduction of algae. For

^Kormondy, pp. 22-24. 53 See the section entitled "community energetics" in Kenneth E. F. Watt, Ecology and Resource Management (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), pp. 36-38.

^ D . K. M ills , An Introduction to Freshwater Ecology (Edinburgh Oliver & Boyd, 1972), pp. 11, 27-28. 102 years the lake may remain in the kind of balance previously described, a delicate balance determined by regional drainage (from which the lake receives its nutrients), lake depth, and a few cold-water bottom fish such as trout. In time, however, the lake becomes shallower, eutrophic—literally filled with "good food"; its plankton population 55 is denser, as is its fish population.

Ultim ately, however, the fish cannot quite catch up with the lake's own photosynthetic production--cannot consume all the plant life grown in the lake. It gradually fills up with the decomposed remains of excess biomass output. Eventually, the lake becomes a swamp, and fin a lly a fu lly fille d -in meadow. Of course, this process is not immediate. The dynamic equilibrium of the lake ecosystem may be maintained for thousands or even m illions of years unless the intervention by man hastens to offset the delicate producer-consumer 56 relationships within the community.

The trophic pyramid. In the above example of energy exchange in a lake community, the lake remained in dynamic equilibrium only so long as the energy consumed by organisms equaled that produced. A lake full of dead plant material will soon eutrophy. At any point in time, this balance (or imbalance) or an ecosystem may be viewed through the trophic pyramid. The pyramid is a means by which we visualize the flow of energy through the system.

55Mills, pp. 49-59.

^ T . T. Macan, Ponds and Lakes (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973), pp. 102-103. 103

Trophic level I includes the green vegetation, the part of the community that produces a ll of the original energy of the ecosystem and hence is called the producer level. The next level of the pyramid comprises the herbivores, or plant eaters, a disparate group that ranges in size from fungi to elephants. Trophic levels III and IV consist of carnivores--animals that maintain themselves by getting their energy from the herbivores at level II. (Those carnivores at level IV get some of th e ir energy from other carnivores at level I I I . )

Again, we find a disparate group from insects to mountain lions--and of course, man-comprising trophic levels III and IV.

We may speak of this pyramid in three ways— f ir s t , by describing the number of organisms at leach level of the pyramid, second, by calculating the biomass of the total living material at each trophic level; and th ird , by tracing the rate of energy flow through the 57 successive trophic levels.

The number of individual organisms decrease as one calculates the pyramid of numbers. The same occurs as we view the pyramid of biomass (though here, unless the time factor is considered, the pyramid may be reversed since the turnover rate of the producers may 58 be greater than that of the consumers). The pyramid of produc­ tivity, however, is of the greatest significance to man, for it tells him something about the efficiency of energy transfers among various 59 food chains. In other words, from this pyramid we can determine

57 Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, p.

58Clarke, pp. 471-72. 59 Emmel, pp. 5, 36. 104 the amount of energy remaining at a particular level a fte r respiratory ac tiv itie s have been accounted fo r--th a t can be u tiliz e d once again in the ecosystem. A ratio of a level of the pyramid of productivity to the preceeding level, then, is an efficiency ra tio , a point to which we shall return.

All of these pyramids illustrate the same concept--that as food energy passes through the food web from one trophic level to another some of the energy is "lost," leaving fewer calories for successive levels. We see here how the physical laws of thermo­ dynamics pertaining to physical systems also correspond to biological 60 systems. The f ir s t law states that energy can be neither created nor destroyed but is transformed. Applying this to ecology, we see how the food energy from the primary level, say wheat, is eaten by c a ttle , afte r which i t is consumed by man. The number of calories available at each level is diminished as we procede up the pyramid.

Since the calories are used to maintain the inhabitants at various levels, they are transformed into heat energy. This heat released during the growth and respiration of the plants, cattle, and man can never be recaptured and used--underscorinq the biological systems' consonancy with the second law of thermodynamics, which states that energy is transferred into less available and dispersed states, fil leading to a state of increased randomness.

^Morowitz, pp. 79-100. 61 Morowitz, pp. 17-19. 105

The world food problem in lig h t of trophic theory. The world food

problem, mentioned in previous chapters and discussed again in

Chapter 5, is more compelling though less publicized than the inter­

national fuel crisis. It is becoming one of the critical problems in

international relations. The Food and Agricultural Organization of

the United Nations estimates that only 28 per cent of the world's

population has access to a calo rically adequate diet; only 17 per cent

of the world's population consumes an adequate daily ration of CO protein. Alan Berg summarized in The Nutrition Factor: Its Role

in National Development the magnitude of the problem:

Whatever the technique for measuring the extent of mal- nutrition--food balance sheets, food consumption surveys, consumer expenditure surveys, medical nutrition surveys— the different methods present a consistent and reasonably reliab le picture of a problem of major magnitude: when adults are included, something on the order of a billion and a half persons.63

Why do so many of the world's ecosystems inadequately supply man with

food?

The balancing mechanisms found in natural ecosystems do not

su fficien tly occur in the man-made a r t if ic ia l ecosystems. The

imbalances are three in number: in many areas, there is too large

a consuming population in relation to the available producing popula­

tion; secondly, adequate exchanges of energy between high energy and

low energy systems do not take place; and th ird , the distribution of the consuming population—which includes animals as well as

As quoted in Josue de Castro, The Black Book of Hunger (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1967), p. 7.

®^Alan Berg, The Nutrition Factor (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1973), p. 5. 106 humans--is such that great losses of energy occur before the food reaches man.

Much of the world's population consumes at least some of its food from the second and third levels of the trophic food pyramid. In other words, he eats meat, dairy products, fis h , and wild game. As we mentioned in the previous section, however, energy is lost as i t is converted from one level (primary plant energy) to a second and again to a third level. It takes five to eight primary calories to produce one calorie of animal food. The human population of the world is estimated at four b illio n persons. The consuming population of the world, however-converting the existing world livestock into man- 64 equivalent units—is closer to almost eighteen billion persons!

There are only two ways that man can balance his present need for additional food. First, he can eliminate a level of the trophic pyramid with all of its associated energy losses; or secondly, he can import energy from high productivity systems. This trade in food energy was illu strate d in Chapter 3. The next section w ill amplify this phenomenon whereby ecosystems supplement th e ir available food supply by importing energy from other ecosystems.

Georg Borgstrom, The Hungry Planet: The Modern World at the Edge of Famine (New YorF: Macmillan, 1965), p. 59. See also, Jean Mayer, U. S. Nutrition Policies in the Seventies (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1973), and Francis Moore Lappe, Diet for a Small Planet (New York: Ball antine Books, 1971); Dudley Kirk and Gavin Jones, "World Population: Causes and Consequences of Growth Differentials," Alternatives for Balancing World Food, pp. 51-71. 107

THE PHENOMENON OF COUPLING— FIRST PART

In the beginning of the chapter we emphasized the linkages among ecosystems by way of stressing that self-contained ecosystems are "ideal" communities, and seldom, i f ever, exist on earth. Rather, energy passes from one system to another in a process known as "eco- 65 system coupling." This process of coupling serves as a means of balancing two or more ecosystems; ecosystems with an overabundance of energy often export the surplus to other ecosystems. This is what we refer to as the first part of the phenomenon of coupling. In the next chapter we shall explore the "second part" of the phenomenon of coup­ lin g -o n e which takes place in the a r t if ic ia l community of man.

Ecologists classify natural communities which depend on imported energy from other ecosystems as heterotrophic communities.

Autotrophic communities, on the other hand, are s e lf-s u ffic ie n t in energy. Let us further explore these two kinds of communities.

The Characteristics of Heterotrophic Systems

The rate of photysynthesis of the heterotrophic community does not equal its rate of respiration, whereas in the autotrophic community the rate of photosynthesis corresponds to that of respiration. The f ir s t com­ munity must find energy from elsewhere or decline. These low energy communities are quite common. In springs, for example, mouths of

^Gerald Garvey, Energy, Ecology, Economy (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), pp. 62-67. cr George K. Reid, Ecology of Inland Maters and Estuaries (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1961), pp. 79-80, 320. Kormondy, pp. 151-52. 108 rivers, or oyster reefs, we find that the amount of imported energy is large .^ 7

Ecologist John Teal diagrammed the energy flow for such an heterotrophic spring community in Root Spring, Massachusetts. Less than 25 per cent of the energy from this small community derived from the primary production of algae and duckweed--its major producers within the spring. Rather, more than 50 species of resident herbi- voes and carnivores (such as flatworms) feed upon borrowed food.

This imported energy, coupled by wind and runoff, exists in the form CO of leaves and other debris from the surrounding land.

Howard Odum studied a quite d iffe re n t ecosystem in Silver

Springs, Florida. This autotrophic community is mainly self- supporting. Odum calculated that even here, however, 2 per cent of the community's energy entered Silver Springs from surrounding eco- 69 systems.

The heterotrophic community is living on past food production, usually imported energy as in the case of the Root Spring community.

A heterotrophic ecosystem may support its e lf , however, on the past in a d ifferen t manner--by using energy stored not in d e tritis but in fossil fuels. Hence, all industrial and metropolitan areas are examples of heterotrophic communities.

67Reid, pp. 79-80, 320. CO J. M. Teal, "Community Metabolism in a Temperate Cold Spring," Ecological Monographs, XXVII (1967), 283-302. CQ H. T. Odum, "Trophic Structure and Productivity of Silver Springs, Florida," Ecological Monographs, XXVII (1957), 55-112. 109

Coupling Mechanisms in Nature and in Technology

In order to import or export energy, the ecosystem needs some mechanism by which to transfer the energy from one location to another.

Certain natural coupling mechanisms readily occur: rivers, the wind, ocean currents. A river may draw surplus water from the glacial ecosystem of a mountain range and channel i t to the lush agricultural ecosystem below. The same current may then carry the nutrients (or

excess man-made biocides) from the valley on to an estuarial zone, where a delta of fertility forms at the river's end.

Animals, too, perform natural coupling functions, as can be

seen in typical forest or marshland ecosystems. Constant emigration and immigration of organisms carry materials across the boundaries of the eco-community. Birds transport fe rtiliz e d seeds from island to

island, and the "coupling" services of bees are well known. Bearers of parasites or germs may migrate from one locale to another.

Now, the energy import needed by modern urban areas (or, for that matter, by animal feedlots) cannot be supplied by natural coupling mechanisms such as the wind or the riv er systems. (New Yorkers must not rely on the Hudson River to float in enough detritus from the upper valley to feed the largest city in the country!) The highly a r t if ic ia l, highly structured systems of the world energy economy must be coupled in some way to those ecosystems which produce a substantial excess of energetic matter.

In addition to the natural coupling which can do only part of the job, a r tific ia l couplings must link the c ity to the agricultural land about i t for food, and to the fuel-producing regions for oil and gas and coal. Since no ecosystem in the real world is ever completely 110 closed, the exchanges of food or fuel which achieve ecological balance usually take place through coupling mechanisms which facilitate the transfer of materials between producing and consuming systems.^

SUMMARY: THE DIMENSIONS OF GLOBALIZATION

Linkages take place among the ecosystems of nature: marsh- grass washes into estuaries of the Atlantic Coast, providing food for the fiddler crab; marine birds deposit phosphorous in the form of guano on the shores of Peru; the northwest salmon bring nutrients from the sea to high altitudes, thus accentuating the growth of timber forests. The creation of artificial ecosystems by man increases this tendency toward ecosystem coupling, accounting not only for more linkages among communities, but for larger ones. Ships carry sugar cane from Cuba to Bulgaria, wheat from the North American plains to Egypt. The couplings now take on dimensions of g lo b ali­ zation. Man computes energetic balances across national and conti­ nental boundaries.

The world itself, then, increasingly yields to description in terms of an organized system of net producing and net consuming regions, each a kind of "patch" of earth with features that charac­ teristically differentiate it from the others. The proper starting point for an ecologically meaningful analysis of the international system lies in attention to this system of artificially and naturally coupled "producing" and consuming ecosystems.

^Garvey, pp. 62-67; see also the description of "transport mechanisms" in Clarke, pp. 42-53. m

The three salient features of the simplest natural ecological communities—disparate energy concentration (varying productive capa­ c itie s and consumptive demands), the need to achieve balance by satisfying the ecological equation, and the use of coupling mechanisms to achieve where necessary a balance among several ecosystems— suggest a kind of analytic framework for the discussion of ecological relations that have taken on an increasingly global dimension.

We now turn to a discussion of the forces which gave impetus to these increased ecosystem linkages through energy exchanges, and which led, therefore, to a globalized network of producers and con­ sumers that authors likened to a "spaceship earth." Chapter 5

THE GLOBALIZATION OF THE ECOSYSTEM

As we saw in the last chapter, the coupling of natural eco­

systems through energy flows is one of the dynamic characteristics

of ecological communities. These same energy linkages occur (though

in a more complex form) among the a r tific ia l communities constructed

and inhabited by man. Particularly in this twentieth century, the

greater demands of rising populations together with more and faster

transportation mechanisms has meant an acceleration of this process of ecosystem linking.

INTRODUCTION: ECOLOGICAL COUPLING AND THE SPACESHIP METAPHOR

A new organization appears to be taking place between man and his ecosystem. Authors use the metaphor "spaceship earth" to express consciousness of this restructuring of the world due to the heightened

interdependency of one ecosystem on another.^ The major precipitant to these increased couplings taking place between distant nations is the growth of technology. "All the irresistible forces of technological

Hhe concept of "spaceship earth" was popularized by Kenneth Boulding in "The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth," Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy, ed. Henry Jarrett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966), pp. 3-14. See also by Boulding, The Meaning of the Twentieth Century: The Great Transition (New York: Harper and Row, T964y.

112 113 and s cien tific change," Barbara Ward wrote in her book Spaceship Earth, 2 "are creating a single, vulnerable human community." At the same time, she warned that the growing imbalance between ecosystems of the wealthy states and the impoverished less-developed nations endangered world s ta b ility . Ward's reference to the inherent in s ta b ility of the world system referred to economic wealth, but from her descriptions of unequal national consumption and production patterns, one conjures a 3 picture of an ecological disequilibrium as well.

Similarly, the redoubtable Marshall McLuhan, a familiar figure in the vanguard of new intellectual movements, underscored the unifying effects of one dimension of this technological barrage--worldwide communication networks--and likened the world to a "global villa g e ."

"The computer," one of his observations began, "abolishes the human past by making i t en tirely present. I t makes natural and necessary a dialogue among cultures which is as intimate as private speech, yet 4 dispensing en tirely with speech." And in a volume significantly

p Barbara Ward, Spaceship Earth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), p. 1. See also, Lester Brown, The Interdependence of Nations (Washington, D.C.: Foreign Policy Association, 1972). 3 See p artic u la rly, Barbara Ward, The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations (New York: Norton, 1962), and Gunner Myrdal, Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, 3 Vol. (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1968). This theme of economic in s ta b ility and inequality is pursued by more traditional minds in Economics and World Order: From the 1970's to the 1990's, ed. Jagdish N. Bhagwati (New York: Macmillan, 1972), and by more radical thinkers in The Age of Imperialism by Harry Magdoff (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969), and The New' Imperialism by Michael Barratt Brown (1963; London: Redwood Press, 1970).

^Marshall McLuhan, War in a Global Village (New York: McGraw- H ill, 1969), p. 89. entitled Building the City of Man: Outlines of a World Civilization,

philosopher Warren Wagar prophesied the effects of this merging of

past and present of the humanities: "Irre s is tib le pressures crush rapidly decaying local centers of c iv iliz a tio n into a precarious new geophysical unity in a world where space and time have been v irtu a lly 5 annihilated."

"Earth politics"—a formulation of which the very term implies acceptance of the ecological perspective--focuses on the development and control of these existing (and still rapidly developing) global dependencies. As John McHale emphasized in his encyclopedic The

Ecological Context, these relationships are becoming increasingly sig n ifican t, to the point of dominating the intellectual preoccupation of more and more students and practitioners of international relations

The home planet has, by the second half of the twentieth century, become the minimal conceptual unit of occupancy fo r the whole human family—whose planetary interdependence is now seen to be closely interwoven with maintenance of the fragile balance of natural forces which sustain life. Man has converged on man and the home planet as the prime focus of his attention .6

5 W. Warren Wagar, Building the City of Man: Outlines of a World C ivilizatio n (New York: Grossman, 1971), p. 7. Wagar defines this world civilization as follows: "By 'world civilization' I mean the world society of the future viewed as a holistic system of values and institutions. Its 'culture' is its superstructure of values and value expressions, religious faiths, philosophies, sciences, arts, folkways, and technics. Its 'commonwealth' is its superstructure of political and economic institutions, which shape its social life." (Wagar, p. 77) The sim ilar view of a transformation of the world into a new phase of history was popularized in William Irwin Thompson's On the Edge of History (New York: Harper and Row, 1971); see also by Thompson, Passages about Earth: An Exploration of the New Planetary Culture (New York: Harper and Row, 1974.

John McHale, The Ecological Context (New York: George Braziller, 1971), p. 5. The systematic study of global interactions and th e ir import in both present and future worlds was provoked by the 115

As we shall see, one of the most important reasons for this new globali­

zation is man's dependency on energy from far-away ecosystems.

The relationship between energy demand and energy exchange on

the one hand, and globalization on the other, may be traced along two dimensions. F irs t, the demand for more sophisticated and comprehensive methods of food production and distribution followed changes in popula­

tion patterns. Second, we can trace changes in the energy economy associated with the processes of modernization, especially technological advancement. These demands by many nations for additional food, and more recently for fossil fuels, compose the prelude to an "earth politics." This chapter focuses on how man's position in the food chain makes inevitable an international flow of food energy, while

Chapter 6 examines the links between the globalization of these energy flows and the politization of their distribution.

MAN IN THE FOOD CHAIN

The aforementioned "soothsayers" of globalization spoke of earth-interdependencies in a cu ltu ral, often metaphysical sense. But these interdependencies are equally evident in a physical sense. The dissolution of clear ecosystem boundaries through innumerable community linkages could come about only after man became the dominant species on earth.

studies of the Club of Rome, a group concerned with environmental degrada­ tion leading to world catastrophe. The first of these studies was The Chasm Ahead by Aurelio Peccei (New York: Macmillan, 1969); the most analytic, Jay Wright Forrester's World Dynamics (Cambridge, Mass.: Wright-Alien Press, 1971), and the most popularized, Done!la and Dennis Meadow's The Limits to Growth (New York: Universe, 1972). In ecological terms, the concept of dominance refers to that flora and fauna which produce and/or consume the most energy (and often inhabit the most space) within an ecosystem . 7 Of course, many natural ecosystems are diverse, with large numbers of both energy producers g and energy consumers, none of them dominant. This is particularly g the case with a tropical forest ecosystem. Other communities, such as the North American plains of two centuries ago, were occupied by a dominant producer, blue-stern sod grass, and by a dominant consumer, the buffaloe.1^

Now, although the energy flow of an ecosystem is predominantly determined by the major limiting factors--!ight, water, and nutrients-- these dominant species, ecologist W. D. Billings te lls us, also "modify and control" their local environments . 11 These dominant species con­ trol parts of the food chain--either its inception in the production of energy, as do the redwoods in the forests of the northwest coast, or in the consumption of food energy--as the trout consume the algae production of a deep, fresh-water lake.

7Robert H. Wittaker, Communities and Ecosystems (New York: Macmillan, 1970), p. 25. g 0. L. Loucks, "Evolution of Diversity, Efficiency, and Community S ta b ility ," American Zoology, X (1970), 17-25.

Q A. 6. Fischer, "Latitudinal Variations in Organic D iversity," Evolution, XIV (1959), 64.

^ V ic to r E. Shelford, The Ecology of North America (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1963), pp. 331-34.

] 1W. D. B illin g s, Plants, Man and the Ecosystem (Belmont, C a lif.: Wadsworth, 1970), p. 153. The guano f ille d shores of Peru are a case in point. These shores are usually "low energy" systems, but made rich in nutrients by birds feeding o ff the nearby schools of anchovies. 117

Through agriculture, man determines what plants w ill dominate

within the ecosystem and specifies how this plant energy shall be con­

sumed. Man reached his present state of globalization, then, by

altering the energy production and consumption patterns of numerous

local ecosystems. Various patterns emerge: Man within a grazing

economy, for example, wherein the food from the f ir s t trophic level

passes to c a ttle , sheep, or goats before i t is transferred to man (the

history of Scandinavian food consumption, or that of the African Masai);

or, alternatively, we view man within an agricultural economy, directly

consuming the cereals or pulses produced in the first trophic level of 12 the reorganized ecosystem.

Although most ecosystems produce sufficient energy to sustain

a few men, no single ecosystem can support a modern urban community.

Primitive man lived as but one consumer among many producers and con­

sumers of energy. Rarely did these early ancestors dominate the food chain and thereby modify man's environment. I t is to this modest,

balanced, energy-budget, exemplified in the food-gathering pattern of

the Kung Bushmen, that we now turn.

The Energy Budget of Prim itive Man: The Kung Bushmen

Society probably began in relatively undifferentiated tribal associations integrated into natural ecosystems of the type described

12 Howard T. Odum depicts these differing energy transfers through diagrams and discussion of the energy flows of tropical, grazing, agricultural, and industrial ecosystems in "Energetics of World Food Production," Readings on Ecological Systems: Their Function and Relation to Man, ed. Ariel E. Lugo and Samuel C. Snedaker (New York: MSS Educational Publishing Co., 1971), pp. 252-80. 118

in Chapter 4. Tracking and hunting tied prim itive man to his immediate 13 surroundings. His re la tiv e ly closed ecosystem had almost A ristotelian

unities of time and place. Just as simple lif e patterns confined

early man's interests, these confined movements restricted his experi­

ences. He knew whom he saw and saw daily most of those he knew.

There was no accumulation of cap ital; no disciplining of the ecosystem

in agriculture or industry; no radiating network of trade dependencies

beyond the local group. Elaborate mythologies, often complemented by

the establishment of totemic systems linking clans to animal species,

reflected primitive man's sense of an unseverable link to--and unre- 14 lieved contingency upon--the vagaries of the ecosystem about him.

Food represented such an early group's prime energy requirement.

Except for some wood or dung to burn for food preparation, few fuel

resources were u tiliz e d . Primitive man maintained a simple, often

inadequate, energy budget. The sparse populations of hunters and

gatherers altered their migration patterns seasonly, synchronizing the

group's location to d ifferen t ecosystems' production of food. Often

too, primitive communities altered their own population levels--some-

times by natural selection, sometimes by infanticide or abandonment

13 Hunting during the Pleistocene period, of course, did a lte r the balance of nature; this is referred to as the "pleistocene over­ k ill." See also, "Forest Clearance in the Stone Age," by Johannes Iverson in Man and the Ecosphere, ed. S cientific American (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1971), pp. 26-31; see also, Grahame Clark, Stoneaqe Hunters (London, 1961) and Loren Eisely, The Immense Journey (New York: Random House, 1957).

^4Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough (London: Macmillan, 1914); Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966). 119 of the less productive members of the group as dictated by the abundance 15 or scarcity of food.

The Kung Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa live a subsistence existence, one similar in most essential respects to 1 fi that of "eco-system bound" early man. The Kung economy is based on the meager production of an almost waterless desert. Necessarily, few people liv e in the locale. Less than 337 individuals organized into small bands, each camping within walking distance of one of the hostile land's eight water holes. Migrations which are synchronized to the turning of the seasons, never take any band beyond a perimeter which bounds a total area of a thousand square miles. On a yearly average, the population density comes to about one person for every four square m iles . 17 (This compares to the density of primitive man of about one per square m ile; of the Eskimo of one per 70 square miles; 18 and with contemporary Japanese density at 700 per square m ile.)

15 L. Krzywicki, Primitive Society and its Vital Statistics (London: Macmillan, 1934); C. D. Forde, Habitat, Economy and Society (7th ed.; London: Dutton, 1950); and R. B. Lee and I. Devore, ed., Man the Hunter (Chicago: Aldine, 1968). 1 fi Most of the following material on the Kung Bushmen is taken from the classic study by Richard B. Lee, "Kung Bushman Subsistence: An Input-Output Analysis," Environment and Cultural Behavior, ed. Andrew P. Vayda (Garden C ity, N.Y.: The Natural History Press, 1969), pp. 47-79. See also, R. Story, "Plant Lore of the Bushmen," Ecological Studies in Southern A frica, ed. D. H. S. Davish (Hague: Junk, 1964), pp. 87-99. 17 Lee, p. 57. 18 Carlo M. Cipolla, The Economic History of World Population (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1967), p. 77. 120

The Kungs' average per capita daily intake of 2,140 calories may be compared with the average per person consumption in the United

States of 3,200 calories. Because of the Bushman's small stature--

itself, of course, partially a function of nutritional intake-- anthropologist Richard Lee has estimated that the Kung need only

1,975 calories for a bare maintenance d ie t. Part of the excess of

125 calories, however, must accumulate in fa t during the good seasons, to be metabolized by the Bushmen during periods of poor hunting.

The Bushman's case, then, suggests an order-of-magnitude sense of man's food consumption requirements under primitive conditions of habitat, technology and economy. What, then, of the production side of the subsistence equation which defines the situation of man-in-the- ecosystem?

The typical Kung gains roughly five times the gross energy return from hunting and gathering activities that he expends to obtain food. That is, for every day's expenditure of energy in stalking and foodgathering, he receives on the average, a five day food supply.

Since the very young and very old, the feeble and the temporarily ill cannot participate in the group's productive work, and since the active tribe members share their yield with all, the number of "free" days available is in fact somewhat reduced below the level implied in the 5:1 ra tio . Nevertheless, substantial surplus sometimes remains for adults to enjoy resting in camp, visiting other families, or to engage in ceremonial a c tiv itie s .

The relationship of energetic-matter consumed to energy expended suggests the efficiency of the Kung Bushmen's socio-economic system. For comparison, we might observe the existence of the baboon, 121 who also inhabits South Africa not fa r from the home of the Kung. He travels in a troop of between 10 to 200, at a density of approximately

10 baboons per square m ile. Like prim itive man, he must gather and eat his own food every day. He benefits from no social organization for the foodgathering--although, of course, the baboon social hierarchy is impressive for such functions as group defense and infant-rearing. 19 Nor has the baboon any basket to carry food. So the 5:1 efficiency figure of Kung foodgathering suggests that even the barely minimal advances of the bushman over the state of economic acts employed by advanced social primates pay substantial dividends. The Kung, by sharing all food, minimize the food collecting activity that must be performed each day. And the Bushman has rudimentary conveyance and storage techniques.

S till, among the Kung the relationship between production and consumption of food is re la tiv e ly immediate, both in space and in time.

Since a ll food within the community is consumed within 48 hours, there is l i t t l e accumulation of surplus supply. We see, then, in the Kung, a population which adapts to the energy flow of a low-energy desert ecosystem. The various eco-communities of the Kalahari desert retain their "dynamic equilibrium" unrevised by the Kung, often called its

"harmless" inhabitants. As geographer John Marshall commented:

That they liv e to a ll intents and purposes from day to day--having no real measure of surplus in the form of stored crops and beasts ready to slaughter— is another indication that the Kung have largely adapted to their environment. . . .

19 J. L. Paradiso, ed., Mammals of the World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966); Stuart Altmann and Jeanne Altmann, Baboon Ecology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), pp. 57-58. 122

That the Kung are able to exploit th e ir environment with a certain degree of efficiency is due in some measure to the structure of th e ir society. Thus, the second aspect of the ecological relationship is this one: the relationship between a certain number of natural resources, arranged in a certain environment, and a society that has developed in the presence of these resources and whose members are dependent on them. 20

The techniques of foodgathering, then, as well as the organization of society aid the Kung in their adaptation to desert life.

The Kung themselves serve as coupling agents, traversing to different eco-communities within the Kalahari (depending upon the season of the year) in order to obtain sufficient food energy. In the center of Kung te rrito ry , for example, stands the nyae nyae, a region of pan trees where the Kung look for small game, sometimes an antelope, and (rarely) giraffe; here too, they search for veldkos, or roots and vegetables. But there is neither water nor sufficient sustenance for the Kung in the nyae nyae, so they must travel to the area of tsi trees in the south, and mangetti trees twenty miles over the sand dunes to the east. The nuts of these trees, highly nutritious, ripen in the early spring after months of heavy rain.

The bushmen are well aware of the lim its of a ll the ecosystems from which they gather veldkos and within which they hunt. This is a characteristic, too, of peasants within a primitive swidden (slash-and- 21 burn) agricultural economy. Likewise, modern man depends on more than one ecosystem for his food supply. The nature of the energy

20 John Marshall, "Hunting Among the Kalahari Bushmen," Natural History, LXVII (1958), 291-309; 376-95. 21 See, for example, H. C. Conklin, Hanunoo Agriculture (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1957), and Ben Wallace, Hill and Valley Farmers (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1970). 123 couplings linking man to his food supply are d iffe re n t, however, from those of the Kung.

The following section highlights the divorce of modern man from his food supply. This severence makes him d ifferen t in kind as well as in number from either the hunter-and-gatherer or the tropical farmer:

First, urban man is distant from the ecosystems that produce his food.

He has no idea where the wheat that makes his bread is harvested nor the lim its of productivity of this wheatfield (might he buy two loaves of bread, or do supplies suggest he should suffice with one?). Second, the people of Western nations liv e high on the trophic pyramid (des­ cribed in Chapter 4)— far removed from the original producers of energy.

The Energy Budget of Modern Man

One could scarcely find a more apt polar opposite model to that of the Bushman than the global, high-technology, populous world economy to which modern history seems to be tending. This rise in population, together with the adoption of an urban, industrial life style, has wrought two changes, both significant for earth p o litics: One, there has been a spectacular increase in the amount of food energy that crosses ecosystems; and two, by means of his dominance in the food chain, man has changed the nature of ecosystems. Man reorganized the earth to produce surplus energy; but the yields in crop productivity brought with them unanticipated problems. Many ecosystems became unbalanced, so that part of the world consumed too much energy and the 22 rest of i t too l i t t l e energy.

22 The most authoritative book on the energy budget of modern man is Georg Borgstrom's The Hungry Planet: The Modern World at the 124

Population and food. The relationship of population to food supply is

that of consumer to producer within an ecosystem. One is dependent

upon the other, creating an ecological tautology whereby additional

productivity is conducive to additional consumer activity. Such is

the history of man's life on earth. Through agriculture he made his

ecosystems more productive, allowing the fields of the hinterland to

support more people in the c ity . But the lim its of this process, as

we shall see, were lost from the human perspective.

Taken by itself--that is, abstracting from more primary factors

in the chains of causation, such as improved medical technology, which

permits population growth--an increase in numbers of people exerts

mainly a quantitative rather than a qualitative pressure on the eco­

system. In other words, population growth does not necessarily imply

a change in the kinds of demands that men exert. But at minimum, i t

does entail that more energy somehow be produced and put in a form for

human consumption as food. Differences of wealth and culture contribute

too, to the amount of energy and kind of energy consumed by the world's

population. Both this increased population as well as the different

trophic pyramids contribute th eir share to the contemporary world's ever-increasing demand for more and better (in terms of energy content) calories. Since the beginning of time, human populations have consumed an extraordinary amount of food energy. It is estimated that about 77

Edge of Famine (New York: Macmillan, 1965). Another good survey of the topic is Sir Joseph Hutchinson, ed., Population and Food Supply (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969); see also, Colin Clark, Population Growth and Land Use (London: Macmillan, 1967); Lester R. Brown, In the Human Interest: A Strategy to S tabilize World Population (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974). 125 b illio n babies have been born since man f ir s t appeared on the earth 23 600.000 years ago. Much of the data for historical populations prior to 1650 is scanty, but through ancillary evidence we can piece together a general picture of the pattern of human growth. For example, probably only 12 b illio n of the people who have ever lived were born before 24 6.000 B.C., and most human beings were born in recent centuries.

Even after the discovery of agriculture--the base for the maintenance of large populations--high death rates continued to lim it population . i 25 growth.

The acceleration of population began slowly. For about 1,000 years, world population remained at approximately one half billion persons. Then in the seventeenth century population increased by about .3%. This benchmark in population growth occurred for a number of reasons, and only some of them are fu lly understood. Prim arily, however, increases in agricultural yields and the adoption of new agricultural policies (for example, those of the Manchu emperors in

China) provided additional food for the expanding population. Then, too, the discovery of the Western Hemisphere opened an area for migra­ tion and relieved the population pressures of Europe, providing new supplies of food. From 1750 to 1850, the population rose by .5 per

23 Annabelle Desmond, "How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?," Population Bulletin (February 1962). 24 J. C. Russell, "Late Ancient and Medieval Population," Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series 48, Part 3 (June 1958). For overall trends, see A. M. Carr-Saunders, World Population, Past Growth and Present Trends (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936). 25 Relations between fluctuating birth and death rates can be found in Cipolla, 77-94. cent, and from 1850 to 1950 i t grew 1.1 per cent. The world population 26 had reached 3 b illio n persons by 1960. Present projections place the

number of humans on earth in the year 2000 at between 6 and 7.1 b illio n .

The varieties of human response. What did this rise in population

mean? Quite simply, that man had to produce more food. Farmers in many areas of the world met this challenge, both by reorganizing high

energy food-producing systems in accordance with technical advances and

by dominating new, quite forbidding low energy systems. As the English 28 historical geographers put i t , man v irtu a lly "made" the land. Eco­

systems completely changed—they were fenced, irrigated, terraced, or 29 even completely enclosed as in the gigantic Siberian greenhouses.

Increased food yields of the improved ecosystems bear witness to the influence of technological advances. In 1930, the average yield of corn per acre in the United States was 19 bushels. The yield

increased to 35 bushels by 1950. By 1970 the average harvest in the

26 Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, Population, Resources, Environment: Issues in Human Ecology (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1970), pp. 9-20. See also, The American Assembly, The Population Pi 1emma (2d ed.; New York: Columbia University, 1969); Georg Borgstrom, Too Many: A Study of Earth's Biological Limitations (London: Macmillan 1970). 27 United Nations Secretariat, World and Regional Population Prospects (1974) as quoted in Lester Brown, In the Human Interest (New York: Norton, 1974), p. 26. po Alan R. H. Baker and J. B. Harley, ed., Man Made the Land: Essays in English Historical Geography (Totowa, N .J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1973). 29 These changes are described in the excellent literature on fie ld systems. See, for example, C. S. Orwin, The Open Fields (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967). For the broader (and more menacing) dimensions of change, see Edward Goldsmith and others, Blueprint for Survival (Boston: Houghton M ifflin , 1972). 127 30 corn belt produced 67 bushels of corn per acre. This yield rose to 31 86 bushels per acre on very specialized cash-grain farms. And on

"God's Little Acre," a plot in Prentiss County, Mississippi, an unsur- 32 passed 304 bushels per acre was achieved in 1955. The same production increase can be seen for wheat. In the nineteenth century in humid, drought resistant acres of the United States, farmers boasted of harvests of 20 bushels per acre. Today yields of 40 and 50 bushesl are common in the Midwest and the average yield in the U.S. in 1972 was 33 33 bushels per acre.

In the developing areas, these higher yields produced by a variety of ecosystem changes--including hybrid seed varieties, irriga- 34 tio n , and chemical fertilizer--becam e known as the "green revolution."

This agricultural growth succeeded only as parts of Asia, particularly

India and Pakistan became agriculturally "developed." In other words, farmers resorted to a ll of the techniques and technology (summarized in Chapter 1) used in modern ecosystems. In response to these

30 Charles Kellogg, "Increasing Crop Yields," Man, Food and N u tritio n , ed. Miloslav Rechcigl (Cleveland: Chemical Rubber Press, 1973), p. 104. 31 Edward Higbee, Farms and Farmers in an Urban Age (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1963), p. 25.

■^Higbee, pp. 26-27.

■^International Wheat Council, World Wheat Statistics, 1973 (London: International Wheat Council, 1973), p. 14. 34 Lester Brown, The Seeds of Change: The Green Revolution and Development in the 1970's (New York: Praeger, 1970). essentially industrial inputs, India's food grain production doubled

between 1950 and 1970.35

Modern farmers not only produce higher yields, but they expend

less personal energy in doing so. Edward Higbee in Farms and Farmers

in an Urban Age indicates man-hour changes in the production of an acre

of wheat:

In 1800, during the time of the sickle, an average of 56 hours of labor were required to produce an acre of wheat. By 1880, when the horse-drawn reaper was widely employed, i t took 20 man-hours to grow and harvest an acre of wheat. Today on the Great Plains less than 2 hours of labor will do the job.36

Consider the difference between the two man-hours calculated for the

production of an acre of wheat in a modern ecosystem and the time

spent on agricultural work by less sophisticated tropical farmers.

The Kapauku of West Iria n , studied by Pospisil in 1963, must spend 200 37 man-hours to produce an acre of sweet potatoes, and the Hanunoo of

Mindoro in the Philippines work 140 hours to produce rice harvests on 38 a similar size field.

35 Brown, The Seeds of Change, pp. 38-43. Optimism to these changes can be seen in W illard W. Cockrane, The World Food Problem-- a Guardedly Optimistic View (New York: Crowell, 1969). See also, Robert Allen, "New Strategy for the Green Revolution," New S c ie n tis t, L X III, No. 909 (August8 , 1974), 320-21; Nicholas Wade, "Green Revolution Creators S till Quite Hopeful on World Food," Science, CLXXXV, No. 4154 (September 6, 1974), 844-45.

3^Higbee, p. 9. 37 Leonard Pospisil, Kapauku Papuan Economy, Publications in Anthropology, 67 (New Haven: Yale University, Department of Anthro­ pology, 1963), p. 422. 38 H. C. Conklin, Hanunoo Agriculture: A Report on the Integral System of Shifting Cultivation in the Philippines, Forestry Development Paper 12 (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1957), p. 150. 129

Man not only altered already producing ecosystems, but he also began to cultivate (and dominate) previously uninhabited low-energy regions. In China, experiment with crops in regions of continual drought, providing water by scattering soot and ash on nearby glaciers.

Farther to the north, special strains of Chinese barley and millet are raised at altitudes ( 10,000 feet) where the wintertime average tempera­ ture is minus 40 degrees and the growing season is seventy days. A gigantic fish farm constructed in a previously energy-deficient region near Moscow produces sturgeon and carp. Farmers moved along the coasts of the Berents Sea and about the deltas of the 0b and Yenesei rivers, and north of the Arctic Circle on the Lena, the Kilyma, and the 39 Indigarka. Land that remained under ice for centuries is now being plowed in Finland and Sweden. Greenland began experimenting with Incan quinua. Over one m illion acres, the United Nations reported, 40 are farmed north of the Arctic circle.

We often have mentioned the use of chemical fe rtiliz e rs and mechanized agriculture in this discussion of man's varied response to the need for additional food. These additional inputs to the land, however, mean that a second form of energy comes into play. Energy manufactured by long ago ecosystems and “stored" in fossil fuels is expended on the ecosystems of modern farmers. Hugh Nicols, the

English soil chemist, estimates in The Limits of Man that about one third of the present human population is fed through the use of

39 Georg Borgstrom, The Hungry Planet, pp. 109-110.

40C. Langdon White, "Geography and the World's Population," in The Population Crisis and the Use of World Resources, ed. Stuart Mudd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966), p. 21. 130 fossil fuels. At least one calorie of fuel energy is used for each 41 calorie of food produced in North America.

The use of fossil fuels in agriculture composes an energy fuel of the twentieth century. Of course, one can find early and obscure references to early such practices. In the early eighteenth century the English used soot from coal burning domestic chimneys as manure.

And the Glasgow dairyman, William Harley (1770-1828) supposedly did 42 everything by steam in his mechanized cowshed except milk the cow.

Abundant harvests, but where do they go? This intensive cultivation of the soil and the incorporation of low-energy productivity systems into agriculture meant more food for more people. Whereas at one time hunting and gathering accounted for a ll of man's food sources, by the

1970's the contribution of w ildlife, while still the sole source of food to hunters and gatherers lik e the Kung bushmen, accounted for less than two per cent of man's food supply. On the other hand, in

1969 man harvested over two thousand m illion metric tons of food.

The total world food crop production increased by 707 m illion metric tons--a 59 per cent increase for the 18 year period, or just over a 43 three per cent increase per year.

Yet, with these abundant harvests, hunger and starvation continued to exist in most of the world. The international debates

^Hugh Nicol, The Limits of Man (London: Constable, 1967), p. 35; for a history of this process see Crichton Porteous, Pioneers of Fertility (London: Fertiliser Journal, 1949). 42 Nicol, p. 34. 40 J. R. Anderson, "The State of World Food Production," in Man, Food and N utrition, p. 35. 131

on commodity agreements (to prevent "dumping" on the international

market) and the decisions of developed nations to cut crop acreage

under production to prevent surplus food production appeared surreal

against this picture of human misery. The following portrait of

national plenty juxtaposed against national poverty--drawn over 40

years ago by John Steinbeck--describes equally well the international

community:

The fields were p le n tifu l, and starving men moved on the roads. The granaries were fu ll, and the children of the poor grew up rachitic, and the pustules of pellagra swelled on their sides . . . and in the eyes of the people there is a failure, and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath.44

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimated

that 72 percent of the world's population is undernourished. I f we

include the number of persons who suffer from protein insufficiency as 45 w ell, the number rises to 83 per cent of the population of the world.

Why wasn’t the three per cent annual food increase sufficient

to support the human population? In 1954, Harrison Brown suggested

the scope and theory of the food problem in chapters of The Challenge 46 of Man's Future. During the 1960's , scores of books arrived from the publishers describing the urgency of the global hunger problem.

44John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (New York: Viking, 1967), pp. 387-88. 45 The exact figures of the numbers of starving and under­ nourished people in the world are debated. The figures above are derived from Josue de Castro, The Black Book of Hunger, trans. Charles Markmann (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1967), p. 7. 46 Harrison Scott Brown, The Challenge of Man's Future: An Inquiry Concerning the Conditions of Man during the Years that Lie Ahead (2d ed.; New York: Viking, 1970). 132

Like the works that introduced the "spaceship" metaphor, these books often sacrificed analysis for effect. But authors like William and

Paul Paddock (Famine--1975) did enlighten the general public as to the causes and desperation of the problem. Towards the end of the decade, specialists in the problems of economic development began publishing books that harked back to the careful analyses of Harrison Brown:

Georg Borgstrom returned to the ecological roots of food production in

The Hungry Planet; Lester Brown published his heralded (and perhaps too optimistic) review of the "green revolution" of the developing nations;^

Jose de Castro, in the Black Book of Hunger, documented the extent and 48 consequences of world starvation. These varied descriptions carried the same message: the largest increase in world food supplies occurred in the developed nations. In proportion to population, the industrial nations took more than th eir fa ir share of the two m illion metric tons of food. I f the problem of hunger were to be solved, these developed nations would have to share either their technology or their food, and 49 probably both.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development published an excellent monograph in 1967 en titled The Food Problem in

47 William and Paul Paddock, Famine 1975: America's Decision-- Who Will Survive (Boston: L it t le , Brown, 1967). 48 Documented earlier in the chapter. 49 Robert E. Hunter, The United States and the Developing World: Agenda for Action (Washington, D.C.: Overseas Development Council, 1973); see Richard A. Falk, This Endangered Planet: Prospects and Proposals for Human Survival (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), pp. 285- 414; for a more pessimistic view, see Robert L. Heilbroner, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), pp. 127-46. 133 which authors showed two alternative futures for the demand for food and production of food in the developing countries from 1965-1980. The f ir s t possible future (A) assumed an actual decrease in the rate of increase of food production. This is because much of past increase came from the cultivation of new acres of land--and the developing areas can expand th eir agricultural land base very l i t t l e more. The second possible future (B) assumed that these lim its to land expansion would be compensated by increased technology. In both cases, however, there remains a d ifferen t between total food demand and total food produced.

Hunger would s t ill exist, then, unless developed nations rerouted their food surpluses.^

There is yet another explanation of what happened to the world's food harvests. Man never ate a large share of these food crops at a l l, nor did he benefit from their energy. The food energy was "lost" through the heat and respiration of the herbivores that comprise part of man's food chain. We turn now to a discussion of man's position at the top of the food chain.

The Paradox of Ecosystem Dominance: Man at the Top of the Food Chain

Man became the dominant species in all of the earth's ecosystems suited to his survival. (By efforts like draining bogs and reclaiming land from the sea he even dominated ecosystems unsuited to his habitation.)

There is a paradox, however, to man's contemporary dominance over nature.

50 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, The Food Problem of Developing Countries (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1968), pp. 22-35. Under Assumption A, the average growth rate for food production in developing areas is 2.60 per cent a year; under Assumption B, it increases to 3.10 per cent a year. 134

For it is, in a sense, a pyrrhic victory which he won only by upsetting the delicate balance that assures him of his energy supply. Here le t us illu s tra te the f ir s t of the two patterns (mentioned at the beginning of this section) that removed modern man from his position as a producer and consumer of plant energy--his desire to live high up on the food chain.

Not a ll men consume equally high rates of energy--and these inequalities in food consumption patterns--both v e rtic a lly through class differences and horizontally between developed and underdeveloped nations—lead to yet another form of dominance. (In the following chap­ ter we shall describe this dominance as it is institutionalized in the p o liticalized energy couplings of the world.)

In Chapter 4 we outlined the concept of the trophic pyramid.

I t is a means for describing how energy is converted from one level

(primary plant energy) to a second and third level (the herbivores and carnivores) through the consumption of grass, feed, or meats by herbivores and/or carnivores. During this conversion process, however, energy is expended in heat--to maintain the lif e and augment the growth of the animal. I t takes five to eight primary calories to produce one 51 calorie of animal foodstuffs.

The primary plant production of the world, then, sustains a much larger population than three b illio n persons. For we must consider the livestock eaten--consumed primarily by persons of developed nations who live high on the trophic pyramid. I f we convert existing world

51 John Phi 11ipson, Ecological Energetics (London: Edward Arnold, 1966). 135

livestock into man-equivalent units, we see that the three million

metric tons of food must support a total world food-eating population

of eighteen billion persons: About 40 per cent of the world's food

and feed crops, then, are consumed d irectly by man, while the remaining

60 per cent are fed to these animals comprising part of man's food , . 52 chain.

Since many of the world ecosystems cannot at present support

such a large population, the inhabitants of low energy ecosystems have

two alternatives. First, they can eliminate a level of the trophic

pyramid and a ll of its associated energy losses--in other words, go back

to eating primary plant energy. Or, alte rn atively, the populations can

import substantial amounts of energy from other ecosystems. As the

following examples w ill show, both methods take place, but they take

place unequally about the earth.

In general, the more highly developed the system, the less

efficient in an ecological sense are its food habits. The percentage

of total crop production consumed indirectly through animal food varies

from 85 per cent in the industrial nations of North America and Europe

to an average of 25 per cent in most of the developing world.

Thus, persons in the United States consumed about 3,200 calories per capita daily in 1968, but one-third of the intake typically derived from animal products. While a person in the United States consumes an average of 37.6 grams of animal protein d aily, a citizen of India consumes around 0.6 grams per person, and an inhabitant of Indonesia only 1.5 grams of animal protein daily. Table illustrates this

52 Borgstrom, The Hungry Planet, pp. 59-60. 136 variance in protein consumption around the world. I t costs three times as much energy to feed an inhabitant within a Western ecosystem than i t 53 does to adequately feed an East Indian or Chinese. And i t costs even less since the Chinese and East Indian often do not eat adequately.

An East Indian puts 1,500 to 2,000 calories directly into his mouth, but he disposes of about 2,400 calories daily when we include the calories consumed by his livestock. On the other hand, the average Westerner consumes 3,000 calories daily but disposes of more like 9,000 to 10,000 calories daily in order to maintain his meat-laden diet. The New

Zealander, who lives highest of all on the trophic pyramid, requires

13,000 calories to feed himself and to sustain the livestock he finally 54 consumes.

The population of much of the world, then, lives on an efficient primary level. Yet this same portion of the world s t il l lacks s u ffi­ cient food energy for its human population to live adequately. It is fortunate--fortunate, that is, from the standpoint of the world's ecosystem energetic production capacities--that the bulk of the twentieth century planetary population increase has occurred in areas where tastes have not developed to the same extent for food taken from the higher levels of the trophic pyramid. The major population increases have taken place in Asia, Africa, and to some extent in Latin America, where the direct consumption of grains (except for Argentina) provides closer to three-fourts of total food supply. In some places, the usual food

53 Georg Borgstrom, Harvesting the Earth (New York: Abelard- Schuman, 1973), p. 195. 54 Borgstrom, The Hungry Planet, pp. 78-90. 137

source is not cereal crops but long-quality tubers, or starchy foods 55 such as plantain and cassava.

Since livin g on the primary trophic level s t il l does not feed

the developing world adequately, logically the second means of balancing

the energy equation should come into play: low energy systems should

import food from high energy systems. However, the nations of the

developing world have l i t t l e purchasing power. Hence, most of the

grain and meat—the two largest commodities in world trade— goes to 56 the developed nations.

THE PHENOMENON OF COUPLING—CONTINUED

Just as man moved himself higher on the trophic pyramid farther

from the primary source of plant energy, he also removed himself from direct contact with these sources of his food supplies. The discovery of agriculture led to a new settlement pattern. We speak of the

phenomenon of urbanization.

Man had always survived by consuming the surplus energy from a number of ecosystems. In the case of the Kung bushman we saw how the

human population served as coupling agents, hunting and gathering food

in the various subsystems of the Kalahari desert. But the process of urbanization necessitated a cementing of this coupling between man and several ecosystems. Rising populations meant that there had to be more food. Urbanization, however, meant that man lived away from

55 Maija Pekkarinen, "World Food Consumption Patterns," Man, Food and N u tritio n , pp. 15-34. 56 Borgstrom, Harvesting the Earth, pp. 137-39. 138 his source of food energy. He depended upon the hinterland to provide his food—and the linkages that carried rye or turnips from the fields to the city became an artific ial extension of the phenomenon of coupling we described in Chapter 4.

Borrowing from the definition of Hope Tisdale Eldridge, we may describe the history of urbanization as involving two processes: f ir s t , there was a "multiplication of coints of concentration: of human popula­ tions, and secondly, there occurred an "increase in the size of individual 57 concentrations." Out of both of these processes there developed a pattern of urban dominance over rural areas, and as a consequence, a continual flow of goods— trade and commerce— encompassing most of the world.

Phase I: Many Towns, Leading to Exploitation

The urban area dominated its surrounding te rrito ry in the same manner that modern man dominated his ecosystem. S im ilarly, urbanization introduced energy imbalances that could be corrected only through the importation of more energy, or, as we previously pointed out, by reverting to consumption patterns on the elementary trophic level.

We can dispense with considering the second choice since man in the first phase of urbanization subsisted primarily on grain, not meat.

( I t was wheat, as Socrates pointed out to Glaucon, an ambitious p o li­ tician—and borther of Plato—that sustained the city of Athens.) We find here in the reciprocity of food and power that developed between

57 Hope Tisdale Eldridge, "The Process of Urbanization," Demographic Analysis, ed. J. J. Spengler and 0. D. Duncan (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1956), pp. 338-43. 139

the town and hinterland the seeds of politicized ecology, the subject 58 of our following chapter.

This f ir s t phase of urbanization appeared as an enumeration of

small settlements rather than in the growth of large urban centers.

The Neolithic communities were restricted in size: Jericho probably

covered an area of 10 acres, Katal Huyuk about 32 acres, and Djeiturn 59 one acre. Similar in kind were the first settlements of prehistoric

Europe. Karanovo in Bulgaria consisted of from 50 to 60 houses, while

Koln Lindental, a village near Cologne, contained a population of no fin more than 300 people.

The inhabitants of even tiny urban concentrations, however,

had to lace together several ecosystems into a larger artificial

arrangement of production and consumption of food energy. Once located

in a town, people were separated from th eir food supply; they depended

upon a regular influx of food from neighboring hinterlands. It was at

this historic moment, according to historian A. Harry Walters, that man devised a new "environmental ecology":

In fa c t, the city had to develop an entirely new kind of environmental ecology in order to make i t possible for such an a rtific ia l close-packed permanent human settlement to be viable. In addition, it had to be closely linked with the surrounding countryside in order to ensure a regular and adequate food supply. Since re la tiv e ly few people in the countryside could feed re la tiv e ly many people bunched together in the c itie s , the many tended to dominate the few. In each c ity a system of administration developed which

no A. Harry Walters, Ecology, Food and C ivilizatio n (London: Charles Knight, 1973), pp. 52-72. 59 Robert J. Braidwood, "The Agricultural Revolution," Man and the Ecosphere, pp. 17-25.

60Cipolla, pp. 100-101. 140

embraced both the c ity and villages which produced its food.61

Walters was talking about the Sumerian occupation of Babylonia during the Bronze age, and of the urban council presided over by a Patesi, or president who directed the agriculture (and distributed its surplus) of the countryside. But the same political bonds appeared in the urban- rural linkages of the Spartans, the Romans, and the city states of the

Middle Ages.

I t bears reemphasis, then, that this tieing together of a number of otherwise separate ecosystems through the growth of urban-rural linkages established an ecological dominance of the city over the sur­ rounding farm fie ld s . I t was not just man but urban man who reshaped the world's geography. "That its inhabitants had to receive food from the countryside--if there was to be a city at all," socialogist Nathan

Keyfitz explaints, "meant an asymmetry in the exchange of goods which somehow had to be balanced by an inverse asymmetry in the exchange of cn power." Gordon Chi 1de spoke more bluntly: "Farmers were persuaded or compelled to wring from the soil a surplus above their own domestic requirements and this surplus was made available to support new economic classes not d ire c tly engaged in production of their own food."

^W alters, p. 37. cn Nathan Keyfitz, "Political-Economic Aspects of Urbanization in South and Southeast Asia," The Study of Urbanization, ed. Philip M. Hauser and Leo F. Schnore (New York: John Wiley, 1965), p. 270. CO V. Gordon Childe.What Happened in History (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1942). The Romans accrued th e ir surpluses in this way. See Geoffrey Rickman, Roman Granaries and Storebuildings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971). 141

The Spartans of Ancient Greece, one might remember, subdued the

Messanians, inhabitants of a rich plain between Tygetis and Mount Thome

in order to obtain a constant supply of grain for th eir c ity -state.

Roman civilization, too, flourished on the productive grain fields of

annexed agricultural land. After conquering the Carthaginian city of

Tunis, Scipio (203 B.C.) extracted as indemnity in a peace treaty 64 500,000 bushels of corn and 300,000 bushels of barley. Centuries

later, towns in the middle ages continued the tradition of acquiring

surrounding agricultural lands. In the twelfth century, for example,

the c ity of Lubeck annexed fo u r-fifth s of the island of Poel, an area

famous for its corn lands. Fritz Rorig's description of Lubeck would

fit that of numerous other city-states of the middle ages:

. . . the produce of the manors together with the corn to be disposed of in private trade went to Lubeck. By this time Lubeck had acquired a ll kinds of rights in at least 240 villages as far a fie ld as Wolgast, Rugen and Fehmarn in the east and north-east.65

Though the attachments are less d irect, c ities of the past several

centuries matched Lubeck in their influence over the countryside. (In

fact, many of the f ir s t "schools" of sociology, including the writings of Parks and Hawley developed about these questions of urban morphology and urban-rural relationships.)

^Walters, pp. 35-44.

Fritz Rorig, The MediSval Town (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), p. 168; see also, "Supplying the Towns," in R. Tannahill, Food in History (New York: Stein and Day, 1973), pp. 190-208. 142

This impact of the c ity upon its surrounding te rrito ry is now documented in a large number of monographs. One of the most recent of these studies is Michael P. Conzen's historical analysis entitled

Frontier Farming in an Urban Shadow, a detailed description of the relationship between Madison, Wisconsin, and Dale County farming te r­ rito ry in the nineteenth century. Conzen's conclusions are represen­ tative of those on urban ecology:

C ities, even medium-sized ones lik e Madison, served not only as collecting and distributing points for goods produced and consumed over wide rural areas, but from the beginning were able to organize and influence to a remarkable degree the social and economic a c tiv itie s of those areas. Present- day metropolitan dominance is a force in modern society of unprecedented scale, but its roots are to be found in the earliest commercial linkages between frontier settlement and the brash new towns that erupted in its midst .66

But in la te r urban development, the commercial linkages had to go beyond the town and its frontier. This second phase of urbanization led to far more extensive dependencies, and paved the way for globalization.

Phase I I : Big Towns, Leading to Economic Coupling--the Role of Trade

The question of trade interests us here not as the transformation of barter into a global market economy, but as extensions of commodity trade followed necessarily followed from the urbanizing of the world.

As urban centers grew larger in size and not merely more frequent in number--the second process identified by Tinsdale ea rlie r in the chapter—man began linking ecosystems through ever more complicated

cc Michael P. Conzen, Frontier Farming in an Urban Shadow (Madison, Wise.: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin for the Department of History, University of Wisconsin), p. 167. 143

systems of exchange. Like the first phase or urbanization, the coupling

that linked producer and consumer ecosystems s t ill carried with i t

aspects of exploitation. The exchanges proceeded, however, under a

new rubric of trade.

The order observed in nature, as we explained in Chapter 4, is

one of eventual but not always immediate balance. Even in high energy

ecosystems we find a changeability in ecosystem energy flows. No com­ munity is immune from periodic drought or hailstorm. The townsman could no longer tolerate this uncertainty in energy flows, however.

Having lost his skill as hunter and gatherer, the town inhabitant could

not take to the forest if the hinterland, due to lack of rain or infes­ tation of insects produced little surplus energy. Then, too, over­

taxing a limited hinterland meant disaster—one historically recorded

in the famines and plagues of thirteenth century Europe which reduced

7 the population by one-third. Sometimes the over-cropping of agricul­ tural fields so diminished the availability of surplus energy that whole urban centers had to be abandoned, as probably occurred in the

Mayan areas of Yucatan.

To be secure, then, townsmen preferred to rely on foodstuffs

imported from a number of ecosystems. In his well-known discussion of the English grain trade, An Essay on the External Corn Trade published

fi7 G. C. Coulton, The Black Death (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929); see also, Marston Bates, "Human Ecology," Anthropology Today, ed. A. L. Kroeber (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).

This thesis is debated in B. L. Turner, "Prehistoric Intensive Agriculture in the Mayan Lowlands," Science, CLXXXV (July 12, 1974), 118-24. 144 in 1815, R. Torrens (a contemporary of Mai thus and Ricardo) indicated this preference for a diversity of supply:

Now this inequality, in the productiveness of the seasons, is greater in a small, than it is in a large district. A single fie ld may, in some years, give a produce, double, treble, or perhaps quadruple to that, which, under the same course of husbandry, i t may yield in others; but an exten­ sive farm, and much less, an agricultural parish composed of many arms, could scarcely, in its fertility from year to year, exhibit so striking an irregularity. The irregularity would be s t il l less i f we took the average produce of a country and less yet, i f we took the average produce of the whole kingdom. Other things remaining the same, in propor­ tion as the te rrito ry which supplies subsistence is extended, the inequality in the productiveness of the seasons will be dimini shed.69

Later in his essay, as way of advocating freer trade in wheat (both importing and exporting) Torrens applied the same principle to the supply of foodstuffs not merely in the nation, but among nations as well:

As the territory which supplies subsistence is enlarged, the irregularity in the productiveness of the seasons will be diminished. This is a general principle, equally applicable to the districts of a country, and to the countries of the world; and the statement of it is suf­ fic ie n t to suggest a close analogy which exists between the various operations of the internal, and of the foreign trade in corn.70

The larger the territory of urban centers and hinterlands had an addi­ tional impact on the development of trade. Certain efficiencies often accrue to increased production for bigger markets, an argument in favor of economic integration. Even before the rationalized economic inte­ gration of the twentieth century, however, towns and hinterlands had begun forming what we shall call the echelon of integration.

69 R. Torrens, An Essay on the External Corn Trade (2d ed.; London: Longman, 1827), p. 2.

70Torrens, p. 25. 145

The echelon of integration. We can liken the discussion of extended foodstuff markets described by Mr. Torrens to the integration of eco­ systems discussed by contemporary theorists on integration (p o litical nation-building as well as economic in te g ra tio n ).7^ Although these authors are talking about a more total integration--a flow of communi­ cations and persons as well as commodities of trade--the historical sequence of events is similar. The first links existed among small, ethnically distinct areas, which we shall call localities. Later linkages through many lo c a litie s resulted in the intercourse of dis­ tricts; these districts, specializing in distinctive products, became the building blocks of nations. And even larger couplings among a number of contiguous national areas produced the development of regions such as exemplified by the European Common Market countries. Through­ out all of these developments we find augmenting a pattern of larger and more distant global trade.

The kind of trade that took place within locality is revealed by the economy of the Tiv people of Nigeria. The food exchange among the Tive--who live widely dispersed in an area of several hundred 72 square miles--has been studied by Paul and Laura Bohanan. The Tiv culture, these anthropologists emphasize, is distinguished by its identification on the market pattern. So completely is Tiv culture

7^Bela Balassa, Economic Development and Integration (Mexico: Centro de Estudios Monetarios Latinoamericanos, 1965). 19 Paul and Laura Bohannan, Tiv Economy (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968). 146

atune to its markets, that the only known days of the week correspond

to the market cycles—Ticha (market) day being Monday, Aichwa market day

representing Tuesday, and so fo rth . With such a tig h t network of

markets, it is possible for one to trace the movement of any goods

throughout most of eastern Nigeria.

The northeastern section of Tiviand produces the most grain,

while yams are grown in the south. Livestock is more plentiful in the

lands around Ticha in the north since cattle can water and graze near

the Benue riv er. Fish, too, are caught and dried at the intersection

of the Katsina Ala and Benue Rivers, while palm oil is gathered in the

south and traded to the north. These goods, the Bohannans suggest, "in 73 the process of changing hands, give rise to a solar system of markets."

There is an inward and outward flow of foods, encompassing a number of

ecosystems, from "tiny sauce markets to the trade centers of Nigeria, which are linked, through the trading companies with the world 74 economy."

When we go beyond lo c a litie s such as that of Tiviand, the

coupling between one place and another increases in distance. We call

this larger unit within which exchanges occur the d is tr ic t. Economic

historians point to the exchanges which took place (and still take place) 75 within the districts or regions of the United States. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries sections of the country were still relatively self-sufficient. They relied on natural coupling mechanisms such as

73 74 Bohannan, p. 219. Bohannan, p. 219. 75 See, for example, John G. Clark, The Grain Trade in the Old Northwest (Urbana: University of Illin o is Press, 1966). 147

rivers to transport commodities from one part of the district to

another. (Geographical barriers often hindered more distant trade.)

Indeed, often only the riv e r prevented a community from remaining in

complete isolation. Henrietta Larson describes the importance of

waterways in an excellent l i t t l e monograph on the growth of the mid-

western wheat market:

The position of the farmers in relation to the market was largely determined by the distance which they lived from the riv er towns. Beyond the settlements were the hunter-farmers, too far from market to be able to dispose of bulky fie ld crops. Those in the fro n tie r communities could reach a barter trading point in the interior, or drive a long distance to a river town. The most fortunate were the farmers who could sell th e ir products in the cash markets near the riv e r, or, best of a l l , in the river towns. . . .76

Henry Adams, describing the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century, described the relative isolation of parts of the nation--

indeed, of parts of the world: "The valley of the Ohio had no more to do with that of the Hudson, the Susquehanna, the Potomac, the Roanoke, and the Santee, than the valley of the Danube with that of the Rhone, the Po, or the Elbe." 77

Even the south, Sam Bowers H illard argues in Hog Meat and

Hoecake: Food Supply in the Old South, 1840-1860, largely fed its e lf 78 except for periodic reliance on Ohio pork. An 1847 compendium of

7 fi Henrietta Larson, The Wheat Market and the Farmer in Minnesota, 1858-1900 (New York: Columbia University, 1932), p. 19.

77Henry Adams, History of the United States of America during the Administration of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Albert and Charles Ben, 1930), pp. 5-8. 78 Sam Bowers H illa rd , Hog Meat and Hoecake: Food Supply in the Old South, 1840-1860 (Carbondale, Illin o is : Southern Illin o is Univer- sity Press, 1972). resources of the United States describes the New Orleans wharves of that year. Commodities reached the c ity from numerous locations, but in most cases the producing hinterland was part of the southern d is tric t

Here is a boat stowed with apples . . . cider cheese, potatoes, butter, chickens, lard. . . . Flour from Virginia and Ohio . . . cotton from Arkansas and Mississippi, lumber from Tennessee, whiskey from Missouri, tobacco from Kentucky. . . . Pork without end, as i f Ohio had emptied its lap at the door of New Orleans. Flour by the thousand barrels; rolled out upon the quay.79

As transportation became easier and the need for exotic goods purchased elsewhere increased, these d is tric ts became more integrated--a process 80 which modern literature calls "nation-building."

S till more expansive patterns of food exchange take place in modern nations. Larger and more industrial metropolitan areas necessi­ tate ever broader searches for food supplies. The c ity of New York exemplifies one such center of people and industry. What defines the supply hinterland of New York? H. P. Hedden examined the influx of 81 foodstuffs into New York in 1922 in How Great Cities Are Fed. The average consumption of New York in this year--excepting a ll canned products--came to more than a thousand freight cars per day. These cars, coupled together, would have made a train eight miles long. The geography of supply was vast--m ilk from Vermont, New Jersey and New

York; vegetables from the Gulf and Pacific Coast; dairy products from the Mississippi Valley; meat from Chicago and St. Louis; fru it from

79 James DeBow, quoted in H illa rd , p. 202. on See Karl Deutsch and William J. Foltz, eds., Nation-Building (New York: Atherton Press, 1963).

*^H. P. Hedden, How Great Cities Are Fed (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1929). 149

Florida and the Caribbean. Here we see indications of specialization.

The average traveling distance on dairy products was more than a thousand miles; the traveling distance on fruits and vegetables came Op to over 1 ,500 miles.

One-tenth to one-eighth of the world consumption of food is obtained by world trade; and 80 per cent of a ll world food, at a minimum, is transferred from one ecosystem to another before i t is con­ sumed. The globalization of ecosystem linkages, then, has indeed taken place, and some of these couplings of energy cross vast distances.

There is some export and import of food energy from every nation of the world.

There exists an even greater percentage of trade identified as

"world tra d e"if we include regional trade--trade which takes place within Common Market countries, for example, or exchanges that take 83 place among the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. In the past decade, 84 trade within these regional units has increased more than global trade.

The regions have become the "districts" of a century ago--although isolated more by politics than geography.

^Hedden, pp. 1-5.

OO See the discussion in Frank McFadzean, et a l ., Towards an Open World Economy (London: Macmillan, 1972). 84 Borgstrom, Harvesting the Earth, p. 40. 150

CONCEPTS FOLLOW FACTS: GLOBALIZING ECOLOGY AND ECOLOGIZING POLITICS

In Chapter 3 we spoke of "ideal" ecosystems as isolated, natural communities within which energy is produced and consumed. Centuries ago, man lived simply within these communities in much the same fashion as the Kung bushmen of the Kalahari. Neither the primitive man (nor the Kung) made efforts to a lte r the natural eco-communities. With the onset of urbanization and industrialization, however, farmers transformed natural ecosystems in high-energy, food producing fie ld s . The ecosystems ceased to be isolated; they were linked together first on a local, and then on a national and international scale.

Globalizing Ecology

Just as the city once relied on the hinterland for food supplies, this same hinterland now relies on the industrial city to supply it with f e r t iliz e r (which may be produced by fuel energy from yet another distant ecosystem). Once harvested, the food crop from this producing ecosystem may be shipped to yet another distant community. This pattern is borne out in the production and trade of wheat. Four-fifths of the wheat crops produced in North Dakota are destined for the international market.

Wheat produced in only five nations is consumed by more than 50 nations.

Few ecosystems now f it the pattern of the description of the semi-isolated natural system. Once inhabited by man, the natural links among these ecosystems are exaggerated into large, a r t if ic ia l flows of energy, often to distant ecosystems. The present design of the world is such that we have a globalized ecology. 151

Ecologizing Politics

At the same time, however, there is an increasing tendency for people and nations of the world to ecologize p o litic s . More often, decisions that men made within the economic sector are now questions decided by p o litic a l debate. Quite d ifferen t incentives in the developed and developing nations reminded citizens of the neglected relationship between man, his form of society, and the natural world he lives in.

The years of expanded industrialization brought pollution, o il shortages, and higher food prices to the developed nations. But the developing nations were worried about the same old problem, not higher food prices, but food at any price.

Problems varied from nation to nation but they reflected a need for the same kind of solution: a return to the ecological equation-- to a consideration of how to link the energy that is produced with the energy that must be consumed. We turn now to a discussion of these principles and solutions which comprise the ecological model of p o litic s . Chapter 6

THE POLITICS OF ECOLOGICAL TRANSACTIONS

The issues of world politics and the contexts within which they are evaluated change as societies develop politically and economically and as they interact with one another.^ In the past, the issues of international relations concerned what has been called "security politics." These were questions of political status, conflict and war— often among a restricted number of nations. Even when matters of war and peace involved large numbers of nations as during the second World War, the issues did not affect the entire globe. This limited context of world politics can be found in the most noteworthy books on international relations from Thucydides The Peloponnesian War 2 to E. H. Carr's The Twenty Year C risis.

In addition, as Kenneth Boulding has stressed, our image of the world change as we receive new information about what is going on in the world--as we are forced to re-evaluate original assumptions: "The meaning of a message is the change which i t produces in the image." Kenneth Boulding, The Image (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 1956). p Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1974); E. H. Carr, The Twenty Year Crisis; 1919-1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (1939; London, Macmillan, 1961). The emphasis on conflict among nations is also apparent in Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations (Garden City, N.YTl Doubleday, 1966). Recent changes in the context of international relations are explored in Donald J. Puchala and Stuart I. Fagan, "International Politics in the 1970's: The Search for a Perspective," International Organization, XXVIII, No. 2 (Spring, 1974), 247-266.

152 The contemporary issues of world p o litic s , on the other hand, 3 deal with what has been called "welfare politics." Politics now

touches upon a whole range of environmental, economic, and ecological

questions; political systems increasingly are concerned with allocating

and regulating energy and resource flows in such a way that the

material well-being of their ecosystems is increased. People's

interest in securing basic amenities--food, fuel, comfortable environ­

ments— is not a new theme: "A loaf of bread/the Walrus said/is What

we chiefly need." What is new however, is the world context within which these issues arise, a context surranarized in the t i t l e of a

recent book by Lester Brown, World without Borders. The interdependency wrought by economic development means that nations by necessity deal

more often with one another. In terms of flows of energy and goods

across the globe, we already have a world community. Now there is a 4 crucial need for a corresponding politics of ecological transactions.

The intentions of this chapter are both descriptive and pre­

scriptive. F irs t, i t places one of the contemporary issues of world

p o litic s — the flow of food described in previous chapters through the

case study of wheat—within the framework of international relations

3 The term "welfare politics" was f ir s t suggested by Ernest Haas in Beyond the Nation State (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1964), pp. 10-12. This issue of world resource scarcity is also examined in Harold and Margaret Sprout, "The Dilemma of Rising Demands and Insufficient Resources," World P o litic s , XX, No. 4 (July, 1968), 660-93. Dennis and Done!la Meadows, The Limits to Growth (New York: Universe, 1972); N. Choucri and R. C. North, "Some Policy Implications of Population, Resources, and Technology," World P o litic s , XXIV, (1972), 80-122.

^Lester Brown, World without Borders (New York: Random House, 1972). 154

theory. The implications of energy production and consumption, these chapters argued, could be understood more clearly i f they were put in

the perspective of ecological theory. Now we investigate just what these implications are for the past and future of politics. This analysis is prescriptive, as well. The imbalances in energy flows in the contemporary world have normative implications. The welfare of both developed and lesser developed nations depends upon a s h ift in the 5 kinds of institutions that allocate and regulate energy.

"WHO AM I?" ACTORS AND BIASES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY

Alice took up the fan and gloves. . . . "Dear, dear! how queer everything is today! And yesterday things went on ju st as usual. I wonder i f I'v e been changed during the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a l i t t l e d ifferen t. But i f I'm not the same, the next question is, who in the world am I? Ah, that1s the great puzzle! Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

The new issues in international affa irs force scholars to reassess their traditional answers to Alice's question, "Who in the world am I?" This question is really twofold: F irs t, Alice cogitates about the world being d ifferent from an e a rlie r point in time, "a b it queer," and open to new interpretation. Secondly, the question invites us to identify the "I" or major p o litic a l actors in international relations. This change in international affa irs described at the

5 This is to say nothing of the moral implications of the present configuration of p o litic s . This subject is discussed in Dennis Goulet, A New Moral Order (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1974), pp. 36-45. Goulet raised some of these ethical questions in an earlier book, The Cruel Choice: A New Concept in the Theory of Development (New York: Atheneum, 1971). 155

beginning of the chapter, together with the s h ift in importance of

p o litical actors in world p o litic s , suggest a change in the paradigm

within which scholars analyze international relations.

In the next few pages we discuss two paradigms for the study

of human society and the way in which each of these paradigms handles

the role of political actors in world politics. We refer hereto meta­

physical or philosophic paradigms--not to methodological ones--that in

the words of Thomas Kuhn form "constellations of beliefs, values, tech- g niques . . . shared by the members of a given community." The f ir s t

of these is the Maximizer Paradigm which has dominated much of social

science in general and p o litic a l science in particular. It holds that

certain political actors produce sociological, political, and economic

transformations by "maximizing" their individual power positions or

economic u t ilit y . There are indications, however, that the "spaceship

metaphor" and its implications--examined in the last chapter--characterize

a contemporary world within which maximizing institutions threaten the

general welfare of society. Hence the Ecological Paradigm, of recent

interest to the social sciences, grows in importance.

Social scientists often debate which actor--the individual or

the polity--most influences social affairs. By individual, I shall

refer to particular economic institutions (fo r example, the economic

corporation) or political institution (political party) as well as to

/r The concept of "paradigm" as applied to the development of intellectual constructs is identified with the work of Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2d ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). I am aware that this term is used loosely in these pages--and also that Mr. Kuhn remains "puzzled" by the use of his ideas to understand any disciplines outside those of pure science (pp. 208-209). 156 separate individuals. Economists stress the impact of the individual person or firm on the growth of the marketplace; political theorists argue the importance of the polity or nation-state. The designation of the p o litic a l actors in the ecological paradigm, however, is not as important as the assertion of what this actor does: the actor is seen as a processor of goods rather than as a maximizer of goods.

The Maximizer Paradigm: Balance by Power and P rofit

The view of people and nations as maximizers of personal or group interests reached political science from three directions: it grew out of p o litical philosophy of the fifte en th century, economic theory of the eighteenth century, and sociology of the nineteenth century. In a ll three instances, scholars were searching for a solution to the notion of order: how to impose order on the feuding Italian city states, how to explain the apparent logic of supply meeting demand, and how to explain the continuity of political regimes.^

The maximizer paradigm stressed the inherent conflict in human and socio-economic situations. In p o litic s , scholars held, the constant threat to disorder was inherent in the biology of man, and some said, in g sim ilar im perialist inclinations of the state. For the economist, the

^An excellent discussion of the rise of the economic perspective appears in Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953); for an examination of the rise of political mind, beginning with Machiavelli, see Friedrich Meinecke, Machiavellism, trans. by Douglas Scott (New York: Praeger, 1965). g For example, Thomas Hobbes wrote: "Hereby i t is manifest, that during the time men liv e without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is every man, against every man." Leviathan (1651; New York: Washington Square Press, 1964), p. 84. 157

chaos existed in the dispersion of resources and human talents; in

sociology, the dissonance existed among social class. Since no society

can progress in a state of continual c o n flic t, the co n flict had to be

resolved and this occurred through the reordering or balancing of the

system.

I t is fundamental that we see how this equilibrium took place

in the maximizer paradigm: order occurred not through the integration of the actor into the general social, economic, or p o litic a l system, but

by the maximizing actor reaching a superordinate position of wealth or

power. Some actors, therefore, gained more money or power than others, and therefore controlled other profit-seekers and power-seekers and this matching of p ro fit with p ro fit and power with power supposedly lent 9 s ta b ility to the system.

The maximizing individual. The philosopher of the idea that individual- maximizing men create a stable and harmonious economic system was Adam

Smith, whose Inquiry in the Nature and/Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, remains the seminal work of modern economics. He explained in this treatise why the economic actions most advantageous to an individual also have the greatest value for society:

He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an in visib le hand to promote an end which is no part of his intention. . . . By pursuing

Q There is no pretense to equality: Schumpeter made clear that some entrepreneurs had more "chances" and better "situations" than others, and therefore reaped greater profits; similarly, power was distributed unequally throughout the p o litic a l system which meant that some segments of society had more control over the density of the system than did others. Joseph A. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development (1934; New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), pp. 74-76. 158

his own interest, he frequently promotes that of society more effectually than when he really intends to promote i t .10

Adam Smith's assumptions have been accepted by generations of economists and contemporary scholars of decision-theory which reaches beyond the disciple of economics to other social sciences. These decision-theories of rational behavior stipulate that the p o litic a l actor makes choices to maximize his profits or power by making the "best" decisions about price, output, markets, and so forthJ 1 With a whole world of maximizing individuals rationally restructuring their ecosystems into productive and consumptive units, i t appears to some thinkers that a balance of rewards should be distributed within the system.

In society, too, according to theorists of p o litic a l elites and p o litical parties, the desire for power leads some interests to maximize their political influence. This was the focus of elite theory as 12 developed by Pareto and later by Mosca; i t appeared in the writings on 13 political parties and later in the early works of Harold Lasswell.

Likewise, political parties are seen as maximizers, both as analyzed through early sociological theory and through contemporary economic models of p o litics. Hence Roberto Michels wrote of the "omnibus

^Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (New York: Modern Library, 1937), p. 421.

^Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960); Herbert A. Simon, Models of Man (New York: John Wiley, 1957). 1 ? Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class, trans. Hannah D. Kahn (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972).

^Harold Lasswell, P o litics: Who Gets What When, How (New York: Meridian Press, 1958). 159 tendency" of p o litical parties which he described as "organizations ever 14 greedy for new members. ..."

The maximizing p o lity . P olitical observations about the maximizing polity date as far back as the treatise on the Peloponnesian war by the Greek historian Thucydides and are included in the works of 15 Machiavelli, Hobbes, and more recently E. H. Carr and Hans Morgenthau.

Contemporary interest in such subjects as alliance theory show an interest in the polity as maximizer as do those methodologies for deter­ mining national decision-making according to economic models.

These political theorists assumed that individuals and polities act out of selfishness--with results quite less harmonious than those found by Adam Smith. Thucydides suggested that the unnecessary war with Corinth and la te r with the Peloponnesians could be attributed to the greed of the leaders of Athens. David Hume referred back to

Thucydides' descriptions of politics in Athens, inferring the univer­ sality of power politics:

The same principle, call i t envy or pride which produced the Ostracism of Athens, the Petal ism of Syracuse, and expelled every citizen whose fame or power over-topped the

14 Robert Michels, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (New York: Dover, 1970), pp. 377-87. 15 Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1974); Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. by Luigi Ricci, intro, by Christian Gauss (1532; New York: New American Library, 1952) and Machiavelli, The Discourses (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1970). Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Francis Frandall (1651; New York: Washington Square Press, 1970); E. H. Carr, The Twenty Year C risis, 1919-1939: An Introduction to the Study o f International Relations (1939; London: Macmillan, 1961); Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Knopf, 1967). 160

rest; the same principle, I say, naturally discovered itself to foreign policies, and soon raised enemies to the leading states, however moderate in the exercise of its authority.16

Several centuries later, Hans Morgenthau based his theory of interna­

tional relations on the assumption that the primary social tendency of biological man is aggression towards other men .17

Since man's natural inclinations were not a ltru is tic but directed at satisfying desires, avoiding pain and ruling others, what could be done to assure the survival of society? The p olity must be powerful enough to dominate a ll of these individual (and non-harmonizing) interests. Equally important, the polity must remain firm in its rela­ tions with other p o litie s . Hence, Thucydides acknowledged that the national interest of Athens must determine her policy toward other c ity states and Machiavelli advised the prince of the need to form an 18 inviolable, independent p rin cip ality.

Just as the natural disorder among men necessitated the granting of power to the nation-state, the aggressions of nations against other nations necessitated yet another deterrence to excessive ambition. The idea of deterrence through a "balance of power" goes back to Machiavelli, but i t has been refined considerably in the past 19 century. Many scholars s t il l accept the image of a world populated

1 David Hume, Essays Moral, P olitical and L ite ra ry , Pt. I I , E VII (1752).

17Hans Morgenthau, p. 23. 18 Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War; Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter XXVI, "Exhortation to Liberate Ita ly from the Barbarians," pp. 124-27. 19 See particularly the review of the balance of power doctrine in F. H. Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace: Theory and Practice 161

by maximizing states, and they devise, therefore, constellations of

interests (various forms of "balance") in order to construct different

world o rd e rs .^

The Ecological Paradigm: Balance through Redistribution of Energy Flows

The ecological paradigm, lik e the maximizer paradigm, establishes

order among large numbers of seemingly chaotic transactions. These

transactions are those incurred by man as he changes his physical

environment through d iffe re n t levels of social and industrial develop- 21 ment. The ecological paradigm as i t applies to the social sciences

is born of this interdependency of man, many nations, and their one global environment which, as Barbara Ward summarizes in Only One Earth,

"begins to require, in the fields of politics and economics, a new 22 capacity for global decision-making and global care."

in the History of Relations between States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963); he also uses the balance of power theory to describe contemporary international relations (pp. 349-59). Other historical treatments of the concept of balance of power include, Edward Vose Gulick, Europe's Classical Balance of Power: A Case History of the Theory and Practice of One of the Great Concepts of European Statecraft (1944; New York: Norton, 1967), and Ludwig Dehio, The Precarious Balance: Four Centuries of the European Power Struggle, trans. Charles Fullman (New York: Vintage, 1962). Dehio refers to the present "precarious balance" in which the power of the bipolar balance in which the power of the United States is pitted against that of the Soviet Union. 20 See, for example, Morton Kaplan, System and Process in International Relations (New York: Wiley, 1957). 21 John McHale, The Ecological Context (New York: B ra z ille r, 1970). 22 Barbara Ward and Rene Dubo, Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet (New York: Norton, 1972), p. 195. 162

This paradigm, then, see the place of each individual and each polity as a series of interrelationships through which all energy flows must be balanced.

Individual in the ecosystem. The concept of the individual in the ecological perspective applies to two levels: to the level of the individual organism (each man, each plant) and at the level of the individual species. Hence, each man or each plant adjusts to his eco­ system in relation to the adjustments of other individuals and species.

He processes energy but does not maximize i t .

Ever since G. P. Marsh outlined the impact man made on the earth's "physical geography" in Man and Nature (1874), ecologists have realized that man also d iffers in his impact i f not in principle from 23 components of the natural ecosystem. The ecological way of viewing man's lif e on earth allows us to see both the changes wrought by man, and in turn, how these physical alterations affect the economic and 24 political relations of nations.

The polity in the ecosystem. The polity is the outcome of the growth of human communities. I t is an " a r tific ia l" boundary in the sense that its boundaries do not coincide with those of the natural ecosystem.

Rather, the p o lity— usually conceived of as the nation-state--is

23G. P. Marsh, Man and Nature (1874; Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1967). OA For one of the earliest attempts to use ecological concepts to further explain the nature of human communities, see Robert E. Park, Human Communities: The City and Human Ecology, ed. E. C. Hughes (New York: Free Press, 1952); other sociologists using the ideas of Park include A. H. Hawley, Human Ecology: A Theory of Community Structure (New York: Ronald Press, 1950). 163 composed of a number of ecosystems and tra d itio n a lly i t has given coherence to this assortment of contiguous ecosystems by regulating 25 flows of material and energy within and among them.

The growth and development of human society means that the exchanges of energy now take place within a s t ill larger number of eco­ systems reaching across the globe. The polity no longer defines the limit of these exchanges of food, fuel, and other materials--nor is it always able to regulate the transactions across its borders. Hence the paradox of the polity operating within a world ecosystem: its functions are becoming increasingly those of a processor of energy and material for the welfare of its people rather than a maximizer of p o litical power. Yet due to the globalization of energy flows, the polity is less able to maintain the coherence that i t once exercised over energy 26 transactions within and across its borders.

The ecological paradigm as it relates to the social sciences, incorporates this tendency of scholars of international relations to think in terms of linkages between domestic and foreign policies and the integration of nations with traditional ecological theory which emphasizes empirical study of energy flows in both natural and a r tific ia l 27 communities. In the fie ld of international relations, Harold and

25 Harold and Margaret Sprout, An Ecological Paradigm for the Study of International P o litic s , Research Monograph No. 30 (Princeton: Center of International Studies, Princeton University, March 1968), pp. 11- 20. pc See Seyom Brown, New Forces in World Politics (Washington, D.C.: Brookings In s titu tio n , 1974), pp. 130-36; 149-51; also, Richard Cooper, "Economic Interdependence and Foreign Policy in the Seventies," World P o litic s , XXIV, No. 2 (January, 1972), 159-81. 27 One of the first books to make explicit these linkages was Linkage P olitics: Essays on the Convergence of National and 164

Margaret Sprout pioneered development of the ecological paradigm in two books that focused on the "milieu" within which politics take 28 place. In This Endangered Planet, Richard Falk suggests an "eco­ logical understanding" of certain economic and environmental threats 29 to man's existence as the basis for designing a new world order.

Numerous books that deal with resource flows, written not by political scientists but by economists and ecologists made an impact on the study of international relations: These include Barry Commoner's

The Closing C irc le , Dennis and Donella Meadow's The Dynamics of Growth, 30 John McHale's The Ecological Context, to name but a few.

International Systems, ed. James N. Rosenau (New York: Free Press, 1969). In the introduction to this book, he explains, "Modern science and technology have collapsed space and time in the physical world and thereby heightened interdependence in the p o litical world" (p. 2). See also, Fred W. Riggs, "The Theory of Development P o litics," World Politics, XVI, No. 1 (October, 1963), 167-71; and Henry Kissinger, "Domestic Structure and Foreign Policy," Daedalus, XCV, No. 2 (Spring, 1966), 503-29. 28 The Sprouts f ir s t suggested an ecological framework for international relations in Man-Milieu Relationship Hypotheses in the Context of International Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Center of International Studies of Princeton University, 1956); this study was incorporated into The Ecological Perspective on Human Affairs (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965). See also, Margaret and Harold Sprout, Toward the P olitics of Planet Earth (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhart, 1972). 29 Richard A. Falk, This Endangered Planet: Prospects and Proposals for Human Survival (1971; New York: Random House, 1972), p. 27.

"^Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle: Nature, Man and Technology (New York: Knopf, 1972); Dennis and Donella Meadows, The Limits to Growth (New York: Universe, 1972); John McHale, The Ecological Context (New York: B ra z ille r, 1970). See also, William R. Burch, Daydreams and Nightmares: A Sociological Essay on the American Environment (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), and F. Fraser Darling, "The Ecological Approach to the Social Sciences," American S cien tist, XXXIX, No. 2 (April, 1951), 244-56. 165

Together, these works contribute to the beginning of a paradigm

for evaluating the new politics of ecological transactions. At the very least, they suggest new answers to the question, "Who am I?" and illustrate the dangers of continuing to evaluate actions and for- 31 mulate institutions a fte r the maximizer model.

The ecological paradigm allows us to see two kinds of energy transactions that take place among human communities--binary transactions and orchestral transactions. Binary transactions take place between levels of systems— between an individual and his local ecosystem, for example, or between the small town and the larger d is tric t. These are a series of two-way, dyadic, relationships, which are channeled through binary institutions and at times replace them in redistributing flows of energy throughout the world.

31 The ecological approach to the social sciences is often equated with the systems approach; this relationship is im plicit in the analyses of Bruce Russett--see his introduction to International Regions and the International System: A Study in P olitical Ecology (New York: Rand McNally, 1967), p. vii. Indeed, there are many similarities between the two approaches, p articularly in the historic roots of the two approaches ( i.e . the work of Ludwig von Bertalanffy and W. Ross Ashby). A discussion of the differences between ecological analysis and systems analysis (not referring to systems engineering) would be the subject of yet another thesis. Let me briefly say, however, that while systems studies are purely a-historical dealing with the shape of the system (relationships among the parts) at any point in time, the ecological perspective is historical and evolutionary; the relationship between parts environment are given import only as they change with time. Ecology, therefore, deals with both the past and the future of man and his world. This dimension of time receives theoretical attention in Harold Blum, Time's Arrow and Evolution (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968); it receives empirical attention in Lynn White, J r ., "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis," in The Subversive Science: Essays Toward an Ecology of Man, ed. Paul Shepard and Daniel McKinleys (Boston: Houghton M ifflin , 1969); pp. 341-50 and in Robert L. Heilbroner, The Future as History (New York: Grove, 1960). 166

THE THEORY OF BINARY TRANSACTIONS

The theory of binary transactions explains the way that energy

flows from one system to another. There are many separate systems which produce or need energy--all of them organized into larger, more

comprehensive systems. We speak now not only of the natural ecosystems

described in Chapter 4, but also of ecosystems that have been changed

by man. These are a r t if ic ia l systems that incorporate man and land 32 into units such as the town or the nation. Sets of interactions and

transactions of energy within and among these units distinguish one

system from another--the fieldland from the city, the city from its

larger district, and so forth.

This flow of energy not only circulates within the subsystem, but moves across i t to a contiguous system. I f part of one system's boundary is simultaneously the boundary of a second system, the two systems are said to share an interface. Thus a person--one subsystem—

is always coupled to his or her environment, which may be defined (at d ifferent times and for d ifferen t purposes) to include only the indi­ vidual's immediate physical surroundings, to include all physical and social factors which influence the individual's behavior, or even to 33 include the entire universe.

No system is immune to the impact of its larger environment; nor is the larger environment independent of its continual energy

op Philip L. Wagner, The Human Use of the Earth (New York: Free Press, 1960), pp. 21-37.

I am indebted to Gerald Garvey, Princeton University, for discussions on the concept of the binary transaction. 167

exchanges with smaller units. This impact varies in time and from

system to system. Hence, we see change and continual motion both

within the system, and in the set of systems, change which is monitored

through the binary transactions analyzed below and through the orchestral

transactions mentioned at the end of the chapter.

To summarize: the energy flows between two systems occur in

what are called binary transactions. As we mentioned several paragraphs

back, there are many of these systems (distinguished by transactions).

We may discern levels which are organized into more comprehensive

systems that incorporate a number of smaller systems at a higher level

of organization. The following pages describe four of these levels

of system organization, from the most basic level of the individual and

his immediate locale to the level of international energy transactions.

The relationship among these levels is dyadic--energy flows directly

from one unit to the next larger unit, and so forth. The relationship

of the f ir s t two of these binary transactions may be understood in

what we shall call the model of the Chinese Box.

The Chinese Box Model: Elementary Binary Transactions

Significant portions of a ll energy transactions occur between

systems that are analogous to Chinese boxes. We may imagine each

separate individual or ecosystem as existing within an immediate

environment—one box in a larger one. The following diagram indicates

the more significant levels of transaction, which, in aggregate, define

the energy transfers that constitute the outer box, or world ecosystem.

The basic relationship in this system, as the diagram illu strate s is a 168

binary one. There are two-way flows between each box and its subsystem

or larger environment.

We distinguish two binary levels within the box-like structure

and two more which may transact energy with other systems outside the

box. The f ir s t or smallest box is the locale. Here we see the energy

that transacts between an individual and his or her environment. I t is a sheer physical fact of lif e that before the individual metabolizes energy in the form of food, that food must have become a part of the

locale. On the other hand, the same individual will also excrete matter into his or her environment--spent air in the act of exhaling, potential nutrients in body-wastes, and heat energy radiated from the body. There occurs, then, at the most elementary level a two-way or binary transaction between the individual living organism and its

immediate habitat.

At the next le v e l--th a t is , the next larger set of "Chinese boxes"—a definable ecological district (say, an oil or coal rich area of the world, or an especially fertile agricultural basin, or a high consumption city) subsumes a number of smaller lo c a litie s or habitats.

If the district is a net consumer of energy, it must receive imports of food or fuel from a net producing area. This sets up a binary trans­ action between two districts, with energy flowing in one direction and exchange goods such as money flowing reciprocally. Then, within the receiving district, a series of additonal binary transactions must take place as the imported energy is distributed from the level of the district to each of the separate locales of which it is composed.

D istricts, in turn, may be regarded as the components— the

"ecological building blocks" of larger p o litical systems, or nations. 169

As a corollary of the phenomenon of globalization, excesses and deficits exist on the national as well as on the district or local ecosystem levels. Therefore, following the same logic, further binary trans­ actions occur between p o litical systems. The transactions here take place between p o litical systems. The transactions here take place between two nations, or between regional blocs of nations (such as the

European Common Market).

Individual--loca1e. The first and most basic form of binary transaction links the individual to his or her immediate environment--to the food at his table, to his farm or villa g e , township or c ity . I f the indi­ vidual lives o ff the land, then his immediate habitat is the source of a ll food and energy. Otherwise, the locale includes nearby markets, stores, and gas stations—depositories of energy.

In the natural community, the individual human has exactly the same relationship to the environment as does any other predator.

Survival is a catch-as-catch-can proposition, with every person or group dependent on the luck of the hunt or, in the case of primitive agriculturalists, the chance of the weather.

Such is the approximate situation of the hunters and gatherers, 34 such as the Bushmen, described in Chapter 4. The Bushman lives within a lim ited number of ecosystems, in a d efin ite locale, circumscribed by the desert. Except for the natural energy transfers that always occur among ecosystems (perhaps a moving herd of antelope) no energy comes

34 Richard B. Lee, "IKung Bushman Subsistence," Environment and Cultural Behavior, ed. Andrew Vayda (Garden City, N.Y.: The Natural History Press, 1969). 170

into the locale or goes out of it. The Bushman is completely enclosed within the f ir s t level of the Chinese box and is unaware of any box other than his own. Without exchanges of energy with the other boxes or larger binary systems, however, the Bushman lives a precarious existence. He accumulates little food surplus to protect him from famine and in some years, ultimate death. Without permanent residence or specialization of s k ills , the Bushman developed l i t t l e c iv iliz a tio n .

Thus civilization is the construction of an artificial society which tries to compose order out of the "disorder" of nature, and it does so by tieing ecosystems together through energy flows. The more complex the society, the larger the number of ecosystems needed to sustain it and the greater the number of transactions between all levels of the box.

Exchanges of energy and goods in the ecosystem are politicized when society becomes more complex and economic exchanges of food 35 energy are not "tuned" to the existing complexity. P oliticization occurs when the authority of a community asserts the groups interest in the outcome of a category of transactions and uses the coercive potential of the community to enforce (or at least to underscore) the rules which regulate these energy transactions. Such rules may be primarily regulative, by which we mean that they monitor the production

"Ultim ately," Robert 0. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye w rite, "the parameters of economic a c tiv ity are determined by governmental action or inaction; in that sense, economic activity always has a political dimension." "World Politics and the International Economic System," The Future of the International Economic Order, ed. C. Fred Bergson (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973), p. 118. 171

or consumption of energy; or they may be redistributive—aimed at

equalizing the consumption of what is produced.

Governments may regulate an individual's output or production of wheat, for example, in a number of ways. They may increase overall national production through support programs which pay individual

farmers a minimum price for his wheat, or which absorb the cost of grain storage payments; on the other hand, the government may attempt to decrease production through use or cancellation of acreage diversion and land retirement programs. The government can also a lte r the con­ sumption of wheat through grading procedures— thereby assuring the 36 quality of the goods produced.

L o c a le --d is tric t. As society becomes larger, and the economy more specialized, the locale cannot supply a ll the energy needs of the com­ munity. The formation of a second binary level takes place--one that links the locale with the next bigger box, the d is tr ic t.

In nature, the obvious coupling mechanisms--rivers, the wind, lands!ides--must be relied upon to transport energy material from a 37 larger region into a particular locale. Similarly, the dispersive forces of nature carry some fraction of the food beyond the borders of a given ecosystems. On occasion, such "natural" transactions between district and locale have occurred with sufficient reliability

or See Food and Agriculture Organization, National Grain Policies, Document, PP/D4975/E/2.73/1/2800 (Rome, 1973). 37 See the discussion of "transport mechanisms" in George Clarke, Elements of Ecology (2d ed.; New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1966), pp. 47-53. 172

for men to depend on them. The classic case, of course, is that of

the periodic redeposit of nutrients from the African plateau in con­

centrated detritus which fe r tiliz e d the Nile Valley--an occurrence of

sufficient reliability to permit the early Egyptians to organize an

agriculture upon it.

Yet even Egypt experienced the consequences of nature's vagaries--

as the story of Joseph and seven years of famine indicate. Men rarely

are content, therefore, to leave performance of the local e -d is tric t

binary transportation of energy to chance, but advance to the second

level of development by setting up trade routes and practices to

bring goods from neighboring ecosystems into the centers of population.

This was particularly true of the medieval c ity states, in which towns

such as Lubeck acquired land in the outlying hinterland in order to

feed the city population and form a basis for further trade with yet 38 other districts.

Transactions between Coupled Systems

The next two kinds of binary transactions take place between what we shall call "coupled systems"--between transactions of one district with another, and of one political system with another. At

this point we leave the Chinese box structure of the prior, elementary

kinds of transfers. That is , energy transfers between districts generally do not run from a part to whole or from a center to periphery.

38 Described by F ritz Rorig in The Medieval Town (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), pp. 165-69. 173

Rather, commodities are transported from one geographical area to a

wholly external region.

Hence, at least in the case of intra national food transfers,

the relevant p o litical authority characteristically enjoys a super-

ordinant position with respect to both the producing and consuming

region. The national government usually regulates the linkages among

districts. The linkages among political systems (nation to nation

transactions, or linkages among international regions), on the other

hand, are performed by these same national institutions, or at times,

by rudimentary international agreements.

District--district. Communities within a single district trade among

themselves, thereby benefiting from specializations different from

their own. But the district--we may conceive of it as a state, or

even as a group of states--often is geologically and ecologically

homogeneous, so that if the localities require unusual materials they must extend transactions beyond the immediate d is tric t to another dis­

t r ic t that produces the required commodity. (Manitoba grows wheat, but not without Saskatchewan potash.)

Therefore energy transactions take place among various d is tric ts .

One district because of extraordinary wealth (or low population) may become a producing area and another d is tric t--e ith e r highly urban or extremely unproductive--may become a consuming district.

Energy must be transferred from one d is tric t to another until a kind of equilibrium or self-sufficiency takes place. A ristotle pointed this out, though of course the point at which the Greek polis became self-sufficient was smaller than the number of districts 174 necessary to make industrial c itie s s e lf-s u ffic ie n t.

Much the same principle will apply to the territory of the state: everyone would agree in praising the te rrito ry which is all-producing, for to have all things and to want nothing is sufficiency. In size and extent it should be such as may enable the inhabitants to liv e at once tem­ perately and lib e ra lly in the enjoyment of le i su re .39

"To have all things" is the function of the modern global network of supply and demand relationships. They are maintained by a continual balancing of the ecological equation as between producing and consuming d is tric ts . Food is grown in the midwest and south for the suburban concentrations of the Eastern United States: the Mekong basin of Indo­ china performs the same function for southeast Asia, and the fields of southern France for Western Europe. Likewise, energy is transferred from fossil fuel rich basins to the industrial complexes which depend on them.

"Accessibility in space," Jean Gottman, the noted English p o litical geographer specifies, "is organized, at all times in history, to serve p o litical aims, and one of the major aims of politics is to 40 regulate conditions of access." Whereas the polis, or the medieval city state regulated the relationships between localities and districts in the past (and state or provincial political systems still reserve some powers over their regulation) the regulation of large producing and consuming districts usually proceeds under the direction of the national government. Much of the recent work on nation-building and nationalism pertains to the difficulties of penetrating and linking

^Aristotle, Politics, Book VII, 1326a-b.

^Jean Gottman, The Significance of Territory (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1973), p. 86. 175

and equalizing the energy flows among the d iffe re n t producing and con- 41 suming districts of the nation.

It is logical to assume that this rational authority will tend

to have its highest salience where there exists ecosystem imbalance--a

substantial excess or deficiency of energy supplies. For example,

active intervention by national governments is evident with respect to

d is tric ts with high producing ecosystems whose output is essential for

other regions. It also exists where there are uncertainties in produc­

tion because of chance factors. This is the case with food production,

where unpredictable weather, disease, and market conditions mean that

producers have l i t t l e control over total crop production; they cannot

adjust rapidly to major changes in consumption requirements. A number

of "patchwork" government programs becomes necessary to lessen the

circular swings from surplus to shortage. We previously mentioned

price support and acreage programs which are federal programs, although

they are aimed at the farmers of the f ir s t binary level. In addition,

governments regulate major institutions dealing in large crops such as

wheat. In the United States, for example, the Commodity Exchange

Authority supervises the cash and futures markets for grain and other

agricultural products at Minneapolis, Kansas City and Chicago. In

other nations, governments provide producers with government agencies--

such as the Canadian Wheat Board and the Australian Wheat Board-- which buy wheat from the producing d is tric ts and sell i t to consuming

districts both within the nation and to other nations. In addition, a

41 See, for example, Karl Deutsch and William J. Foltz, eds., Nation-Building (New York: Atherton Press, 1963). 176 variety of technical services and educational programs is provided by national governments and is available to wheat producing d is tric ts under their jurisdiction.

Political system—political system. The fourth binary transaction takes place between political systems. The political system (usually, but not always, the nation-state) does not itself produce or consume goods, but rather coordinates the producing and consuming units of sub­ ordinate binary levels. Its functions are primarily political. The political system traditionally took the form of the nation-state.

These nations traded with one another in order to further align pro­ ducing and consuming d istricts within th eir boundaries with the markets 42 or raw materials of foreign ecosystems.

In addition to coordinating the units within its territory, the nation-state provided security against interference in these national districts by foreign political systems. Gradually, this need for security lessened. At the present time the nation-state not only provides security to its districts, but, more importantly, promotes the interaction of its internal producing and consuming d is tric ts with other political systems.

The increased interaction of the subnational binary levels, then, with foreign systems, produced the need for p o litic a l systems

42 These economic units la te r became parts of a p o litic a l union. The idea of government capacity to "penetrate" to all levels of a system as a way to gauge success of nation-building is described by Joseph La Palombara, "Penetration: A Crisis of Government Capacity" in Sequences in P o litical Development, ed. Leonard Binder and others (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 205-32. 177 more inclusive than the nation-state. The phenomenon of international regions or "blocs" of nations acting (for certain purposes) as a common territory became evident by the mid-twentieth century. The European

Common Market, the East African Common Market, the Central American

Common Market--all of these illustrate either the existence of increased binary transactions among the subunits of the nations involved, or else the need to promote such an increased exchange among these 43 units. To the extent that these larger regional units controlled the binary transactions of the subnational binary levels, they assumed the stature of the "political system."

We previously mentioned the fluidity of the binary level of the "p o litic al system." There is no preestablished (or developed) consistent linkage system among political systems the way there is for other binary levels. The artificial community at this binary level, therefore, loses the "organization" over the natural ecosystems that human communities b u ilt at previous binary levels. Some areas produce too much, others too l i t t l e , and the mechanisms for regulating these energy exchanges are crude and often contradictory. Therefore, while politicization at the other binary levels facilitates consumer- producer relationships, at the level of the p o litic a l system i t often hinders them.

43 The economic aspects of this integration process are discussed in Bela Balassa, Economic Development and Integration (Mexico: Centro de Estudios Monetarios Latinoamericanos, 1965). See also, Miguel S. Wionczek, Economic Cooperation in Latin America, A frica, and Asia (Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1939). 178

In the absence of any but the most rudimentary international

governmental structures, nations make agreements with one another to

regulate goods between districts under their separate jurisdiction.

Here, more than at any other level, we see the problems generated by a market economy and dependence upon price to adjust the quantities of energy produced and those consumed. In the area of trade in food, nations agree to 1) commodity agreements in which nations maintain world price of primary products such as grains, thereby preventing a r t if ic ia lly a high or low price, and 2) ta riffs and quotas through which nations maintain a r tific ia l domestic prices for products so that

internal units do not have to compete with the produce of foreign eco­

systems. Neither form of p o litizatio n , however, promotes a true

balancing between those nations which can produce energy and those who

need to consume energy.

Cambridge economist John Rowe (Primary Commodities in International

Trade) reminds us that "commodity control schemes are fundamentally

forms of monopolistic combinations of the cartel type adapted to the 44 rather different problems of and conditions of primary industries."

The agreements arise to ameliorate the strain among the various binary levels of the globe. For example, wheat prices fell to low levels just before and after the depression of 1930. Nations wanted to protect domestic prices, and therefore a r t if ic ia lly sustained the wheat produc­ tion of the local and district binary levels. Wheat importing

44 John Rowe, Primary Commodities in International Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), p. 36. 179

countries therefore insulated their wheat industries from the rest of

the world. In order to maintain internal wheat prices, the importing

countries (not naturally grain producing, due to ecosystem deficiencies)

had to construct a r t if ic ia l food-producing systems, which was a hard

and costly task.

The f ir s t international wheat agreement of 1933 came amidst

a series of other commodity agreements (tin , 1931; sugar, 1931; rubber,

1934). I t differed from other international control agreements, however,

in that the wheat agreement was conceived in the interest of both pro­ ducers and consumers. Producers agreed to cut the acreage of wheat under cultivation; consumers agreed to lower quotas and ta r iffs and

import more wheat. Prices gradually rose, making it more cost effec- 45 tive for countries to produce wheat. The agreement was shortlived.

Such international agreements, subject to "tacit" understanding among producers and consumers often are ignored.

A second agreement--the International Wheat Agreement of 1949-- was again preceded by hardships caused in producer counties by large surpluses of grain. The new Agreement, then, followed upon a 1942

Memorandum of Agreement between Britain and four exporters of wheat

(U.S., Canada, A ustralia, and Argentina); i t provided control of pro­ duction and also a r e lie f pool of stocks to meet the expected needs of

Europe. This 1942 agreement established the International Wheat

Council, which began preparing for the final 1929 Agreement between three exporting and thirty-three importing countries. The problems

45 Rowe, pp. 163-68. 180

involved in concluding such agreements are illustrated by the fact that i t took seven international conferences to produce the agreement--and even at that point two countries refused to sign--the Soviet Union because i t f e lt that its quota was too small, and Argentina who f e lt that the suggested wheat prices were too low. Six subsequent agreements followed (1953, 1956, 1959, 1962, 1964, 1968, 1971). The 1971 commodity agreement was not renewed, and no agreement was in effect by the end of

1974.

A major change in the agreements took place in 1959. As Marian

Radetzki explains in International Commodity Market Arrangements, until

1959 the "controlling instrument consisted of an understanding by the exporters to sell guaranteed quantities not above a fixed maximum price, and a reciprocal obligation for the importers to buy specified amounts at prices above given minimums. . . . From 1959 onwards, the 46 system of specified quotas was discontinued." Thus, the reciprocity between importers and exporters--an important step toward establishing mutually beneficial arrangements in world agricultural trade, was lost.

The International Grains Arrangements of 1968 and 1971 were comprised both of the Wheat Trade Convention and the Food Aid Convention.

The Trade Convention of 1968 adopted principles sim ilar to that used in previous agreements: i t relied on a commitment from the importing countries to import minimum percentages of th e ir purchases from members of the Convention and exporters agreed to make available adequate supplies of grain on a regular basis to meet the commercial requirements

AC Marian Padetzki, International Commodity Market Arrangements (London: C. Hurst, 1970), p. 49. 181

of the importing countries. This effort to stabilize prices through

quotas and minimum prices was dropped from the 1971 agreement.

A separate Convention of the 1968 and 1971 Agreements related

to Food Aid. Participating countries donated wheat, coarse grains (or

cash equivalent) as aid to developing countries. This Convention,

primarily an effort of the United States to shift some of its food aid

burden to other developed countries, incorporates three basic goals:

to improve the prospects for commercial wheat trade by siphoning o ff

surpluses to consumers unlikely to make commercial purchases; and to

assist developing wheat exporters, such as Argentina, by directing

that a fixed portion of wheat purchases by non-wheat producing Food 47 Aid Convention donors be purchased from developing countries.

International economists such as Harry Johnson are sceptical

about the impact of commodity agreements. Their possibilities are

limited, Johnson suggests, since "the technical and economic charac­

te ris tic s of many commodities and the nature of the trade in them pre- 48 elude the useful application of international commodity agreements."

(The recent success of OPEC--which represents the most successful of

the producer cartels--has led some observers, such as C. Fred Bergson

to opine that commodity agreements w ill be more successful in the future.

He refers, however, to the possible growth of "third world" cartels;

47 Robert Bard, Food Aid and International Agricultural Trade: A Study in Legal and Administrative Control (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1972), pp. 72-77. 48 Quoted in M. A. G. van Meerhaeghe, International Economic Institutions (London: Longman Group, 1971), p. 124. 182 former wheat commodity agreements, of course, fostered the trade of 49 the industrialized nations.)

The impact and intent of most commodity agreements is to main­ tain world price of a primary product, even i f i t means reducing sur­ pluses by restricting production of wheat, cotton, coffee, tin , and so forth. The nature of tariff and quota systems is quite different. The desire of the political system limiting the importation of primary pro­ ductions through the declaration of ta r iffs and quotas is to increase internal production. Often this is done for purposes of security

(p o litic a l), and other times in the interest of trade creation (economic).

The overall effect of these ta r iffs and quota systems on food products tends to be an increase in the world-cost of the product. The Food and

Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that the increase in the cost of agricultural goods due to protectionist policies at about 6 per cent of the present cost of these products.

We see the issue of ta r iffs and quotas at work most clearly in the European community's common agricultural policy and its effects, particularly, on United States agricultural exports. (In previous years, United States policy--and that of Japan--worked sim ilar re s tric ­ tions on agricultural trade, thereby often controlling world trade.)

To quote from T. E. Josling of the London School of Economics, "no country, whether exporting or importing, can be held blameless for the chaotic situation currently prevailing in world agricultural trade, a

49 C. Fred Bergson, "The Threat from the Third World," Foreign Policy, No. 11 (Summer, 1973), 102-24. 183 situation in which the world market has been v irtu a lly segregated into national markets with international trade a residual activity involving 50 a struggle for sales quite unrelated to basic comparative advantage."

While re s tric tiv e ta r iffs and commodity agreements both look to the nation's interests in its own security of resource availability, they implement contradictory theories of the essential conditions of such security. Tariffs imply the desire for self-sufficiency, while commodity agreements look toward increasing international interdependency.

(In other words, they assume an external market and seek to regulate i t . )

Thus, a nation with high ta riff walls or low import quotas must stimu­ late internal production of all needed goods. Such a policy intensifies the need for careful husbandry of the productive resources under its p o litical sovereignty. Corresponding to this requirement is a relatively high emphasis on regulation of inter-district transactions. On the other hand, commodity agreements and trade conventions anticipate and foster increasing globalization. Probably the overriding consequence of this is pressure for the development of more effective international political institutions.

Congeniality of Binary Transactions to Maximizer Model: Parable of the Misallocation of Wheat

The binary transactions mentioned above are congenial to the

"maximizer" paradigm which we have described as holding a central position in international relations theory. Ecological relationships, as we saw in Chapter 4, often are described to a re latively high degree of approximation in terms of dyadic or binary relationships--for

50 T. E. Josling, One World Economy, p. 3. 184 example the predator-prey relationship. In society this often becomes the buyer-seller relationship through which many of the energy exchanges among binary levels are made. Hence we see the growing importance of the transnational economic institutions in coupling energy between one political system and another.

A certain underlying consistency prevails as between the maxi­ mizer frame work as a model of transactions between organisms or eco­ systems and the binary transactions as a characteristic physical fact.

The binary transaction postulates two entities in conflict or competition with one another--or at least in a "zero sum game" situation. That is, what the organism eats, the local ecosystem gives up; what the buyer pays the seller gains. Just as obversely, what the seller trades away in the form of goods represents a gain to the buyer. At each stage in a chain of binary transactions, an individual entity is regarded as engaged in a quest for goods. These goods may be energy, materials, or other derivative "goods" such as power. These goods can be obtained only by taking them--forcibly or by agreement--from another.

None of this is to suggest that binary transactions absolutely require each individual to act as a maximizer. Nor does it necessarily imply that acceptance of the maximizer framework as a normative ideal requires that transactions be dyadic or binary in structure. It is true, however, that the binary transaction paradigm is one conducive to the adoption and execution of maximizer norms. I t seems equally clear that acceptance of maximizer as a fundamental goal of behavior-- as has been implied in much of Western social philosophy--might dispose an individual to favor a binary framework of social relationships 185 precisely because such a framework throws into high r e lie f the im plicit con flict situation which most maximizing theories presume.

Although political philosophers often describe p o litical parties or the nation-state as maximizing in stitu tio n s , the maximizer par excel!ance has been the economic institutions. For centuries these two kinds of institutions were seen as operating in non-competitive realms, and not until the polity became involved in questions of public welfare were the maximizing a c tiv itie s of economic institutions seen as potentially disruptive. We see then, that the economic interests and polity came into conflict just as there was a shift in the way that one of these institutions viewed the linking of binary systems: the maximizing im pact--particularly of transnational economic institu tio n s-- begins to disrupt the orchestrating or coordinating activities of the nation-state.

We may view the Big Wheat Deal as a parable which throws this con flict between international maximizing binary in stitutions--th e multinational grain brokers--and the coordinating national binary institutions into high relief. We note that the nation here acts as a coordinating interest in allocating resources within its districts but as a maximizer when it makes decisions in regard to other nations.

Through the prism of the United States wheat sale to Russia, we see the maximizing institutions at work as food energy is transferred from the locale--the wheatfields of the central plains--across numerous binary levels to the farms and flour mills of the Soviet Union.

The wheat sale engendered imbalances among both producers and consumers at a number of binary levels. Some producers of wheat at the first binary level benefited from the wheat sale as the large 186

transaction prompted a rise in the cost of wheat. Other farmers, however,

particularly in Texas, Oklahoma and southern Kansas sold th eir grain for

a low domestic price before the large sales had an effect on the com­

modity market. Since the objective of the multinational grain brokers

handling the transaction was to buy as much wheat as possible at a low

market price, they kept the large sale secret, thereby denying farmers

at the first binary level information as to the true market for their

product.

Consumers of food energy also benefited unequally from the wheat

sale. Certainly the individual consumer of wheat in the Soviet system

benefited--they received food energy which th e ir local ecosystems could

not provide. The Soviet government benefited, for it bought grain at

a very low price, on excellent terms of credit. But the consumer of wheat in the same locale where wheat is produced, in North Dakota,

Montana and Washington, found he was paying higher prices for wheat products--and for food in general. Other consumers of wheat within the producing d is tric t found themselves in equal d iffic u lty : the m illers of flour, the bakers of bread, the cattlemen who due to cross-elasticity found that they were paying more for corn and soybeans--all had to pay more for raw materials, and yet because of price controls they could not pass this price on to the consumer. (Even i f they could, i t might have been uneconomical--due to e la s tic itie s of demand--for them to do so.)

Due to the depletion of wheat surpluses, consumers of wheat in many nations other than the United States and the Soviet Union were affected by the wheat sale. Food aid is distributed from surplus producer systems--the United States in p artic u la r--to consuming areas only when existing stocks reach a specific level: below the specified 187

le v e l, stocks are reserved for domestic emergencies. The huge Russian

purchase put wheat stocks at a precarious level. At the same time,

however, poor Australian and Argentine grain harvests, together with

the war in Bangladesh and the failu re of the Peruvian anchovy harvest

meant that more parts of the world were in need of food aid. Prior to

1972, for example, India received 400,000 tons of grain yearly from the

United States under Food for Peace Agreements; the grain was purchased with rupees and the United States then reimbursed sellers (the interna­

tional commodity brokers) in hard currency. The drought that plagued

India in 1972 and 1973 forced the government to buy 1.5 m illions tons of wheat on the world market, most of i t from Canada and the United

States (where the only remaining surpluses existed). But because of

scarcity of grain due to the Russian purchases, the cost to India was much higher than the price paid by the Soviet Union the previous year.

While the Soviet Union paid $60 to $65 a ton for wheat, India was

forced to buy the wheat at $110 a ton, plus half a million tons of grain sorghum at $70 a ton; in addition, India now had to pay in hard

currency, which lowered the government's hard-currency reserves by one- 51 f if t h . 1

The Maximizer Model as a Threat to the System: Parable of the Commons

The fundamental point which a more complete view of world ecological relationships suggests, however, is the potentially des­ tructive implication of the maximizer framework. This was brought home

51 James Trager, Amber Waves of Grain (New York: Arthur Fields Books, 1973), pp. 146-47. 188 to us in a parable--The Tragedy of the Commons-reconstructed by 52 Garrett Hardin. In England, herdsmen shared a large commons within which they grazed th eir c a ttle . I f too many c a ttle were added to the already existing number, the common resource would be destroyed by overgrazing. Nevertheless, each herdsman, jealous of his individual prerogative, added more cattle to the group until the commons were destroyed. As Hardin summarizes, "Each man is locked in a system that compels him to increase his herd without limits—in a world that is lim ited. Ruin is the destination toward which a ll men rush, each pursuing his own best interests in a society that believes in the 53 freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings rush to a ll."

Of course, even with the destruction of the commons, Englishmen continued to eat, for there remained other fields in which some of the herdsmen could maximize their interests. In times past, therefore, when ecological relationships were much less than continental—let alone global— in scope, any one individual or group of individuals who threw the system out of balance could in principle drive the less successful competitors into new areas. The maximizer model was thus feasible so long as remaining unexplored te rrito rie s or unexploited resources permitted the losers to recoup their losses by moving on.

In some parts of the world this available frontier has been gone for thousands of years. Therefore much of world history records the famine and starvation that befell the losers of maximizing

52 Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons," Science, CLXII (December 13, 1968), 1243-48.

53Hardin, p. 1244. 189 struggles. The disequilibrium in these parts of the globe had l i t t l e effect on the conduct of international relations. But the situation today is different in kind or at least rapidly approaches a situation of unprecedented and basic change in the nature of human relationships.

First, questions of health and nutrition-public welfare—have only recently come to be recognized as matters over which men had substantial c o n tro l--le t alone as matters that fe ll with the pervue of a society's political leadership. Second, it has been only recently that political and economic mechanisms have become tru ly global in scope, with the effect of making hunger in Russia or famine in Africa an issue not only of common awareness but of potential political relevance in domestic p o litic s . In other words, the structure of the ecosystem has become not only globalized, but increasingly politicized as well. And it is in this situation that the maximizer paradigm becomes less and less satisfactory as a useful model of human behavior.

As the parable of the commons illu s tra te d , any ecosystem— the increasingly global ecological community no less than a natural forest or swamp—needs a balance of energetic transactions. It is axiomatic, for example, that an ecosystem dominated by a single species of plants or animals is highly unstable. On the other hand, a system marked by a rich diversity, which is sustainable only with a myriad of individual transactions, is insured by the very richness of its composition against a random shock. In a sense, we may say that the ultimate aim of any maximizer is to acquire ever more of the available stocks, to the end of becoming dominant within the system of which the maximizer is a part. Not only does such a course, i f successful, portend the 190

literal extermination of competitors, but also works toward destruction

of the stability and resiliency of the very system on which the maximizer's continued aggrandizement depends.

The conclusion seems inescapable that the answer to Alice's

question, "Who am I?" can no longer be formulated in terms of a maxi­ mizer model. In as much as the "I" increasingly must be viewed in ecological terms--as a processor of energy and materials which must be made available to each organism at a rate characteristic for the species--

i t is necessary to accelerate thinking in terms of norms, in stitu tio n s, and modes of social transaction which are consistent with the need for system balance than the ecological facts of lif e require.

One humane way to balance the energy flows among the world's ecosystems is to establish institutions that coordinate the binary transactions in such a way that no one political actor maximizes his control over energy resources. These institutions would be orchestral institutions which perform the function for the larger global system that the nation theoretically exerts over the allocation of resources within its numerous districts.

THE NEED FOR ORCHESTRAL INSTITUTIONS

Perhaps the best way to balance the energy flow among the world's ecosystems is to make sure that redistribution and regulation occur in the global system as well as within p o litical systems. We may visualize this kind of transaction as one performed by a courier within the Chinese box-like structure that defined binary relationships.

While energy usually flows from one binary level to the next binary level, and to still another level until an energy transaction has been 191

completed, the "courier" would coordinate the various binary trans­

actions in such a way that the surplus energy in one system would be

transported immediately to another d e fic it system, thus saving the time

and revenue that storage and multiple handling entails.

The next few paragraphs recall some of the substantive material

for the f ir s t four chapters as they bear on 1) the need for orchestral

institutions as an outcome of industrial, and therefore more inter­ dependent society, 2) the increasing incapacity of the nation-state to

perform the function of coordination and resource allocation, and 3) the uncertainty in the evolution of orchestral institutions.

The need for orchestration of binary levels of transaction accompanies the growth of human society, particularly urban and indus­ tria l society. This was the theme of Chapter 5. The transactions in these modern, sophisticated societies change in two ways: they grow in number and they grow in importance. In order that the individual

Japanese shipbuilder may have American coking coal, in order that the

Roman housewife may buy South Dakota durum wheat semolina for her pastas, in order that the Nigerian bureaucrat may have Arabian gas for his official car, a complex machinery for the production and distribution of energy must be set in motion. At each stage of economic and p o lit i­ cal development we can trace the increase in the specialized s k ills applied to the running of society, which,in turn, demand greater coordination and regulation.

Since e a rlie r energy transactions took place over shorter dis­ tances and between fewer people the energy exchanges were less complex.

Primitive farmers grew their own wheat, ground it, and ate it. If exchanges took place, they took place among immediate kinsmen. With 192

the growth of urban areas, food production became separated further

from food consumption. At least twenty to twenty-five separate trans­

actions are necessary before the Roman housewife gets her pasta made

from South Dakota wheat. A sim ilar number of transactions between

industrial complexes and the farmer are necessary before the farmer

can grow this wheat, for he depends upon chemical f e r t iliz e r , improved

seed, farm support programs, and so forth.

The nation-state performed this integration function-redis­

tributing energy among d is tric ts — for the past several centuries.

Amitai Etzioni alludes to this guidance function as i t takes place in

the political system:

Both transitions—from collectivities to national societies and from nations to more encompassing communi­ tie s — involve a change in the locus of guidance, not in terms of abolishing e a rlie r loci but by imposing more encompassing levels on top of existing (though transformed) ones. The nation-state added a level of action, control, and consensus-formation to collectivities while transforming them.54

The nation-state could effectively guide the flows of energy within its d istricts so long as—among themselves— the d is tric ts were relatively self-sufficient. But the need for energy, technology, raw materials, from outside the nation introduced conditions over which the nation was not sovereign. In recent decades, binary transactions took place throughout the world, most of them fa c ilita te d by maximizing

institutions, and few institutions operated to coordinate and orches­ trate these transactions.

54Amitai E tzioni, The Active Society (New York: Free Press, 1968), p. 481. 193

We have intimated that without orchestrating institutions the tragedy portrayed in the parable of the commons might befall much of the world. Yet there is nothing inevitable about the evolution of these institutions. There are no orchestral transactions (or few of them) in the world of nature. Rather, balance takes place--at a tremendous c o s t- through a series of binary transactions. The result, as we emphasized in Chapter 4 is costly, and in e ffic ie n t: dominating species maximize their portion of the energy flows of a community at great cost. Once they have exhausted this energy, the species often fade into extinction.

Stable communities are those in which l i t t l e competition takes place; each member of the community inhabits its niche within the ecosystem.

Parallel conclusions seem to be reported in recent works of the "neo-functionalists"— those scholars who review processes of economic and political integration in different parts of the globe.

At one time, these theories of integration assumed an inevitable growth of economic interaction among nations (and within them) due to indus­ tria l demands, which would be followed by an equally inevitable p o lit i­ cal integration of these same producing and consuming areas. Recent students of integrate conclude that this was an unwarranted judgment.

Individual interests—indeed, those institutions which entered the binary transactions between individual districts—are unwilling to forego maximizing opportunities in the general interest of the larger community.

What is the structure of these orchestrating institutions? We see in international organizations the rudiments of orchestrating institutions. To a limited extent, the international organizations coordinate the binary transactions across political systems. This s t ill means, however, that the subsystems of nations (d is tric ts , locales) enclosed within the national systems are not open to coor­ dination by international organizations. Although the transnational economic institutions work among the binary levels within political systems as well as across them, these in stitutions, as we argued previously, are maximizing ones that do not necessarily fa c ilita te the balancing of energy throughout the world. Chapter 7

ORCHESTRATING INSTITUTIONS AND THE WORLD FOOD PROBLEM

There is no way for nation-states to ignore one another.

Chapter 4 suggested the growth of interdependency--the outcome of globalized flows of resources--that led to what George Model ski has called the "network of actors" on the international sceneJ Of course political philosophers have told us the same thing. Heinrich von

Treitscheke wrote: "Every state will realize that it is an integral part of the community of other states in which it finds itself placed and that i t must liv e with them on some kind of terms, bad or good as the case may be. These reflections will arise from very real considera- 2 tions or reciprocity, and not from love to mankind."

Now Treitscheke, though he wrote of the community of nations, championed the development of powerful, sovereign states. Counter to his realist interpretation of the world, we find another group of w riters, called the "functionalists," who sought means to decrease the impact of national sovereignty. H. G. Wells was one of the creators of the idea in which supranational servants would replace the "functions

George Model ski, Principles of International Politics (New York: Free Press, 1972), pp. 207-26. 2 Heinrich von Treitscheke, "International Law and International Intercourse," reprinted in The Theory of International Relations: Selected Texts, ed. M. G. Forsyth, H. M. A. Keens and P. Savigear (New York: Atherton, 1970), pp. 334-35.

195 196 3 of the states." The contemporary world, although i t is unwilling to go as far as Wells suggested, seems to agree that some form of supra­

national organization in the world is necessary— that sovereign nations cannot solve problems arising from interdependency. The numerous world conferences sponsored by the United Nations on the environment, material resource scarcity, the ocean, population and the world food problem indicate this desire among nations to come to some agreement on global problems^ (out of "considerations of reciprocity," as Treitscheke explained, "not out of love of mankind").

Can international organizations perform what we have called orchestral functions? It is possible or perhaps we should say, realis­ tic , to expect world acceptance of organizations that w ill coordinate and exchange energy flows across ecosystems and thereby amend the global energy imbalance? This chapter explores what the previous chapter's theory on the construct of p o litic a l systems, together with the empirical works on contemporary international organization—suggest for the growth of these orchestral institutions in the world of politics.

As we pointed out in previous chapters, the multinational cor­ porations and government-sponsored trading institutions--by virtue of

3W. Warren Wagar, H. G. Wells and the World State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), p. 43.

^The conferences can not a ll be said to be successes. See, for example, Edward P. Morgan, "Stockholm: the Clean (but Impossible) Dream," Foreign Policy, No. 8 (F a ll, 1972), 149-55. Morgan concludes, however, that "there had to be an international beginning in confronting the damage man was doing to the only known habitable planet in the solar system, and Stockholm was i t . " S im ilarly, the other conferences mark only the "beginning" to new views of how men w ill have to relate to one another. 5 Treitscheke, p. 335. 197

their vast distribution systems (and "vertical integration")--perform

many of the so-called "coupling" functions found in nature. Coupling, you w ill re c a ll, is the process in natural ecosystems whereby food

energy is transferred from communities with an excess of energy to

surrounding ecosystems. This transfer of energy--in the world economic

system as well as in the natural ecosystem— usually occurs through a

series of binary transactions: the energy leaves one ecosystem for

another but there occurs no "rational" redistribution of plant matter or energy resource in the sense that these are routed by some invisible, orchestrating hand to surrounding ecosystems or nations. Contemporary

problems in international resource flows stem more from the numerous,

separate, binary resource transactions than from an insufficient number of "couplings" among world ecosystems.

I t is the uneven distribution of these resource transactions

that creates economic and ultimately political problems. The varied patterns of world food consumption outlined in Chapters 4 and 5 dramati­ cally reveal the disequilibrium in resource consumption. The world flows in food (and fuel) are "rationalized" by large corporations or among national governments only in an economic sense. The maximizing objectives of these firms or national government institutions make it unlikely that they will rationalize global resource distribution in yet another, ecological, sense. Neither the corporation nor the national government is organized to perform a welfare function that goes beyond its scope of institutional interest. Therefore, we must look else­ where—specifically, to international organizations—for institutions able to orchestrate the binary transactions already encircling the globe. 198

We can identify three conditions for the emergence of truly orchestral institutions. First, the institution must be global in scope and in representation.^ By representation, we mean that the interests of all locales, districts, nations, and international regions— the politicized Chinese-box-like ecosystems described in Chapter 5— are considered equally. No interest or client is maximized to the disadvantage of another. In fact, the only way that the orchestral institution can be considered "maximizing" is in the sense of maxi­ mizing "world interest" in resource flows.

Secondly, orchestral institutions must be able to balance the energy needs of the various world ecosystems. In part, this balance would be obtained by regulating and coordinating existing binary trans- actions—the world trade in food and/or fuel.^ But in addition to monitoring and coordinating existing food trade, orchestral institu­ tions would be able to redistribute energy from surplus ecosystems to ecosystems with insufficient food.

The phenomena of "spaceship earth" necessitates yet a third requirement. The orchestral institutions must work within the "big picture" of human a ffa irs . Decisions must be made by people who are aware of the subtle relationships among the workings of industrialized society--of population, the need for food (and kinds of food), demands

Miriam Camps, The Management of Interdependence: A Preliminary View (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1974), pp. 77-80.

^The need for greater redistribution and regulation on a global scale is emphasized in Lester Brown, World without Borders (New York: Random House, 1972), pp. 247-318. 199

8 for fu e l, and so forth. As Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye point out,

the results of interdependency result in a heightened "sensitivity" g about issues that impinge on international a ffa irs . Resolving these

issues requires organizations that are flexible and innovative, and

therefore able to make choices that w ill avoid what in the cliche of

our times is called "future shock."

Do institutions fitting the above requirements exist? Let us

look briefly at the workings of international organizations, the closest

form of orchestral in stitution in contemporary world a ffa irs . Interna­

tional organizations firs t appeared over a century ago; they were the

O See Amitai Etzioni's description of a "global guidance system" in The Active Society (New York: The Free Press, 1968), pp. 572-76. For other recent works on the need for global guidance systems, see Ervin Laszlo, A Strategy for the Future: the Systems Approach to World Order (New York: B ra z ille r, 1974)— particularly Chapter 6, the "World Homeostat System," pp. 143-82; and J. Forrester, World Dynamics (Cambridge, Mass.: Wright-Allan, 1971); Richard Falk, "Designing a New World-Order System" in This Endangered Planet (New York: Vintage, 1972), pp. 285-352; and Richard Falk, "The Sherrill Hypothesis: International Law and Drastic Global Reform," unpublished d ra ft, Princeton University, June, 1974. There are numerous other books that argue the need for world government; they take a more drastic stance than the previously mentioned works. See, for example, a review of these works in Gerald J. Mangone, The Idea and Practice of World Government (New York: Columbia University Press, 1953); and other examples include, Fremont Rider, The Great Dilemma of World Organization (New York: Hadman Press, 1946); Nicholas Dorman, The Coming Age of World Control (New York: Harper and Bros., 1942).

^Robert Keohane and J. S. Nye, "World P olitics and the International Economic System" in The Future of the New Economic Order, ed. C. Fred Bergson (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973), p. 124. 200

product of a more closely knit, complex world which followed the

industrial revolution.^ 0 This is not to say that these structures provided "order" in what has been considered the anarchic realm of 11 international relations. Early international organizations were lim ited in scope, sometimes even triv ia l in impact. Even now their influence as actors in world politics remains debatable. At the very least, however, the recent proliferation of international organizations illustrates a greater need for coordination of the interactions among nations.

The following pages suggest the kinds of thinking about formal international organization going on in international relations and the empirical evidence of organizational success as represented by one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations, the Food and Agriculture

Organizations. The emphasis shall be on international organizations as they f i t the aforementioned definition of orchestral in stitu tio n s, in other words on their global nature, on the organizations' ability to regulate and redistribute food energy, and on international institutions

^°0ne of the earliest discussions of international organiza­ tions appears in Paul S. Reinsch's Public International Unions (Boston: Ginn, 1911); short historical descriptions of international organization are found in A Short History of International Organization by Gerald J. Mangone (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1954) and Paul Reuter, International Institutions (New York: Rinehart, 1958). For earlie st developments see also Chapter 1 of Forging World Order: The Politics of International Organization by Jack C. Plano and Robert E. Riggs (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1967), pp. 1-14.

^This view of the international order is reviewed in Kenneth Waltz, Man in the State and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959) 201 capacity to visualize the cumulative effects of autonomous national activities and decisions.

These requirements, we shall argue, lim it the extent to which a

"functional 11 approach to international organization will result in an 12 orchestration of resource flows. This approach remains one of the most influential frameworks for the study of international organization

(if only because it has yet to be replaced). We turn now to a short aside on the emphasis of functionalism in international organization.

HOW WILL ORCHESTRAL INSTITUTIONS EVOLVE? ON FUNCTIONALISM

To an extent, present economic and technical organizations in international politics are a product of design as much as of evolution.

This design comes from the application of functionalist theory to international organization. The term "functionalism" is broad and incorporates a number of schools of thought as well as a description of social processes. We refer here, however, to the functionalist posi­ tion on international organization most often identified with the works of David Mitrany who suggested a means of reorganizing ("transforming") world politics of transferring social welfare functions usually carried 13 out by the nation-state to the international sphere.

12 The word functional in conjunction with international organi­ zation refers to the kind of actions of authority which the institution s authorized to undertake. In a functional organization, "power is accorded according to the type of function to be performed rather than by the geographical region to be administered." From Evan Luard, The Evolu- tion of International Organization (London: Thames and Hudson, 1966), p. 12. 13 David Mitrany, A Working Peace System (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1966); also "The Prospect of Integration: Federal or Functional?," in International Regionalism, ed. Joseph Nye (Boston: L itt le , Brown, 1968), pp. 43-73. 202

There is a certain s im ila rity , however, among a whole number of

perspectives in contemporary social science: functionalism, structural

functionalism, structuralism, and general systems theory. Often (as

with functionalism and structural functionalism) these perspectives

developed as independent but parallel lines of thought. They had a

common heritage, however, in a nineteenth century mode of thought that

stressed an understanding of society through an observation and analysis of that society (rather than, for example, in the nature of "man").

Like systems theory (which it antedates), structural functionalism

identified certain structures (personal, social) which evolve to fu lfill

human needs; the actions or functions of these "parts" or "structures"

perpetuate them. (As Arthur Stinchcombe has stipulated, "by a functional explanation we mean one in which the consequences of some behavior or social arrangement are essential elements of the cause of that 14 behavior.") In the words of Oran Young, "the most fundamental concern of structural functional analysis is with phenomena of system mainten­ ance and regulation. In this connection especially, the nature of structural functionalism as a conceptual derivative of general systems 15 theory becomes apparent."

The functionalists of international organization also show certain similarities to these overarching social science precepts. "The functionalist rubric," Patrick Sewell writes "overarches a loose family

14 / Arthur L. Stinchcombe, Constructing Social Theories (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968), p. 80. 1 R Oran Young, Systems of P o litical Science (Englewood C liffs , N.J.: Prentice-Hal1, 1968), p. 28. 203

of concerns with relationships--relationships, for instance, between

organs, attitudes . . . institutions, processes; between these and

organisms, theories, systems; between these and th e ir environment, con- 16 crete or analytically defined." But there are two ways in which

functionalism differed from other social theory, and the second of

these, we shall argue, makes this orientation to organization ill-

suited to the modern world. 1) A normative thread runs throughout the

works of the functionalists of the Mitrany school; in other words, i t

incorporates the belief that functionalist organization will promote

public welfare and therefore decrease the likelihood of war. 2) Func­

tio n alists stress that international organizations should be given

responsibility for specific, non-political social welfare functions.

The growth of public international unions seemed to early functionalists

to bear out this thesis. Functionalists merely assumed that at some

point these independent organizations would be coordinated (but with­ out p o litic s ? ).

Functionalists, systems theorists and structural functionalists agree that everything is related to everything else. They often disa­ gree, however, in their explanation of how this connection takes place: must the organization of "connections" take an hierarchical form, or can the synchronization of the system take place through individual adjustments of the various parts? This disagreement is concretized in scholars' debates about the location of power in the international

^James Patrick Sewell, Functionalism and World Politics: A Study Based on United Nations Programs Financing Economic Development (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. ix, x. system--whether it must be transferred from the nation to the interna­ tional organizations. Hence, one systems theorist, Morton Kaplan, argues that there is no logical reason for one system to supplant another

"A nalytically, the interests of individuals, subnational systems, supra­ national systems, and the international system stand on an equal footing.

There is no natural order of priority such that one system level must 17 defer to another."

Geoffrey Vickers, yet another systems thinker, argues the same point with a different result. As the world becomes more interdependent, he suggests, a higher level of political organization does take place.

This generalization is true for all systems, organic or historical.

The sector of activity within nations which is collectively managed grows larger--measured for example by the ever greater proportion of national income used for public welfare. "To members of a society where industrialization was born of individualism," it indicates, "it may seem anomalous that i t should lead to collectivism ; but in some clearly 18 definable sense it is clear that it must. ..." This is an adjustment

Vickers concludes, that will take place also in the international system:

"Industrialization disturbs international, no less than intranational relations. These disturbances call for regulation far beyond the power

^Morton Kaplan, Macropolitics: Selected Essays on the Philosophy and Science of Politics (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1969), p. 173. 1R Geoffrey Vickers, "Is Adaptability Enough?," Behavioral Science, IV (1959, 219-34, reprinted in Modern Systems Research for the Behavioral S cien tist, ed. Walter Buckley (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1968), p. 472. 205

of the rudimentary regulators which at present exist in the interna­

tional field.

Like Vickers, the proponents of a functionalist development of

the international system saw the evolution of international organization

as an inevitable--or at least as a 1ikely— development. The process of

organizing at the international level, however, had been slow; history

recorded many setbacks--the greatest of these being the dissolution of 20 the League of Nations. Therefore, the functionalists suggested,

nations should focus cooperation on technical and non-controversial

problems. The result of many such agreements would be a gradual but discernible increase in the elimination of conflict.

The functionalists saw international organization as one of the solutions to problems of war and peace. They assumed that most people were more interested in services and welfare than in nationalist aspirations. Existing social and economic problems precipitated war; therefore, an amelioration of these problems would bring peace. The division of the international system into inappropriate nation-units merely perpetuated the social and economic problems. In the words of

Mitrany, nations must agree to a "web of international activities and 21 agencies" that would "overlay p o litical divisions."

^V ickers, p. 473. 20 The outstanding book on the League experiment is Alfred E. Zimmern, The League of Nations and the Rule of Law: 1918-1935 (London: Macmillan, 1936). See also Francis P. Walters, A History of the League of Nations (London: Oxford, 1960). An excellent summary of the League of Nations as a forerunner to contemporary organization is Francis P. Walters, "The League of Nations" in Luard, pp. 25-41. 21 Mitrany, pp. 10-11. Mitrany was not the only functionalist-- merely one of the most in flu e n tia l. Carl Becker, for example, voiced 206

As a normative theory, functionalism competed with theories of

"balance of power" whose adherents argued that peace could result only 22 from a balance of competing national interests. As a "scientific"

perspective, functionalism gave way to the more sceptical analyses of

the "neo-functionalists" who looked at the development of organization

from the persepective of integration theory, particularly theories of 23 economic integration.

Despite the fact that few contemporary scholars speak of

functionalist organization in the sense intended by its major promoter,

David Mitrany, the majority of the existing international organizations

are functionalist in form. There are major differences, however, between

these functional organizations and the requirements for the orchestral

institutions we suggested were necessary to coordinate international

resource flows. In fact, one might argue that the creation of "func­

tional" international institutions does quite the opposite from what is expected of an orchestral institution: these organizations merely

sim ilar arguments in his book, How Will the Better World Be? (New York, 1955). Speaking of the United Nations, Becker wrote: "The contemplated union, league, federation . . . w i l l have a better chance of success . . . i f i t begins with the drafting of specific problems, and the creation of whatever commissions, boards, agencies, may seem best suited to dealing with the specific problem in hand," pp. 241-43. A good critique of functionalism is Inis L. Claude, J r ., Swords into Plowshires: The Problems of International Organizations (New York: Random House, 1964), and the previously cited book by James Sewel1. 22 See Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 4th ed. (New York: Knopf, 1967). 23 One of the most influential of the neofunctionalists if Joseph Nye. See his Peace in Parts: Integration and Conflict in Regional Organization (Boston: L ittle , Brown, 1971). 207 perpetuate the binary, maximizing a c tiv ity exhibited by nation-states 24 , and by multinational corporations. (We previously described the way in which "binary" and "maximizing" a c tiv ity led to the present skewed distribution of world food energy.)

We see, then, that historically international functional organizations have arisen to cope with specific economic, social, or technical problems. Yet no overall, general organization has evolved to coordinate the separate activities of separate organizations. Rather, every new international problem prompts the creation of new organizations to regulate trade, the quality of the environment, the distribution of food and so fo rth . As Lester B. Pearson pointed out in his analysis of world development in stitu tio n s , "The proliferation of U.N. agencies has often resulted in disperse and unrelated efforts at the level of the 25 recipient countries where there is an urgent need for coordination."

And again, "the present m u ltip lic ity of agencies and their lack of 26 coordination leads to much unnecessary duplication of effort." Two other c r itic s , Francis Wilcox and Carl Marcy, w rite that organization by functional agencies for larger portions of United Nations funds with various interest groups exerting pressure on behalf of their particular 27 agencies."

24 The actions of nation-states are maximizing with regard to other nations but equalizing in relation to their internal ecosystems. 25 Lester B. Pearson, Partners in Development: Report of the Commission on International Development (New York: Praeger, 1969), p. 216.

^Pearson, p. 228. 27 Francis Wilcox and Carl Marcy, Proposals for Changes in the United Nations (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings In stitu tio n , 1955), p. 241. 208

Contemporary solutions, then, to international problems, take the form of lim ited institutions that perpetuate the same kind of binary transactions undertaken by the multinational corporation and the nation. The creation of agricultural credit for cooperatives in

Africa, for example, prompts negotiations among African nations, the

World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International

Labor Organization, and so forth. And the lack of an orchestral mechanism means that even when the problems arise, the same kind of multiple negotiations must take place before solutions can be found.

If functional organizations are inefficient in an orchestral sense, then, they are even less successful at establishing a "balance" in energy flows. In summary, we may suggest that a functional approach to international organization will not result in the formation of orchestral institutions.

The ecological perspective suggests that orchestrating, balancing institutions w ill not "appear" ( i.e . evolve in an evolu­ tionary sense). Nature works out a cruel and costly balance; she works a fte r the fact, expending individuals and species in the process.

Coordinating institutions must quite deliberately be created. Yet constructing them signifies an intrusion on the sovereignty of many nations; it calls for the relinquishment of purely national claims to the world's resources.

GLOBAL INSTITUTIONS: THE EVIDENCE

The first prerequisite of an orchestral institution as we defined it is that the organization be global. What is the nature of existing international organizations, and can they be called "global?" 209

First, there is evidence of an increase in the number of international organizations. Secondly, contemporary organizations tend to have an economic or welfare orientation as opposed to a security orientation.

And third, we see an increase in the growth of "shadow organizations"-- international organizations that represent quite distinct economic and political interests as opposed to world interests (GATT, for example, and UNCTAD).

It is difficult to determine just which institutions are "global," and equally d iffic u lt to determine the impact of the "global" interna­ tional organizations as political actors. Of course, one can observe the sheer increase in numbers of existing international organizations.

At present there are about 200 intergovernmental organizations in the world--and about 2,300 non-governmental ("transnational") organiza- 28 tions. Relatively few of these organizations, however, deal with major issues of world p o litic s , and some are a ll but inactive.

It is the underlying assumption of the empirical approach to international organization (represented, for example, by David Singer and Robert Angel!) that the increase in numbers of organizations-- quite apart from the import of the organizations themselves--leaves a

28 Yearbook of International Organizations (Brussels: Union of International Organizations, 1968-1969). These numbers differ according to one's definition of an intergovernmental organization-- hence Johann Galtung estimates the number at 600 and suggests that they are growing at a rate of 10 per cent yearly. See Johan Galtung, "On the Future of the International System" in Mankind: 2000, ed. Robert Jungk and Johan Galtung (London: Allen and Unwin, 1967), p. 24. 210 29 positive effect on the international order. However small the impact of these organizations might be, Angel 1 points out, th eir changes are cumulative and ultim ately they have an influence on workings of in te r- 30 national p o litical system. (Note that this optimism about the effect of multiple organizations suggests a relationship between these empiricists and the aforementioned functionalists!)

The greater number of existing international organizations is only one of the changes that have taken place in international organi­ zation. Of equal significance is the shift in emphasis (within already existing organizations as well as in the focus of new organizations) 31 from a security interest to an economic or "welfare" orientation.

This new orientation, related to the growing scarcity of natural resources, and additionally, to growing economic interdependence among

29 See J. David Singer and Michael Wallace, "Intergovernmental Organization in the Global System, 1815-1964: A Quantitative Description," International Organization, XXIV, No. 2 (Spring, 1970), 239-87. In this a rtic le the authors measure the amount of in te r­ governmental organization in the international system. Robert Angell, "National Support for World Order," Conflict Resolution, XVII, No. 3 (Sept., 1973), 429-54; also, Robert Angell, Peace on the March: Transnational Participation (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1969). Of] Robert Angell, "An Analysis of Trends in International Organization," Proceedings of the Peace Research Society, I I I (1964), 185. 31 Ernst Haas first drew this distinction between "welfare pur­ suits" and "power" objectives in international relations. See Beyond the Nation-State (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1963), pp. 10-12. Donald Puchala and Stuart Fagan summarize the new "welfare" issues as those concerning trade, forms of aid, and international finance. See "International Politics in the 1970*s: The Search for a Perspective," International Organization, XXVIII (1974), 247-66. The importance of these new economic issues are also emphasized in Harold and Margaret Sprout, Toward a Politics of the Planet Earth (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1971), pp. 348-77. 211

nations, can be identified in such consequential political actors as 32 the United Nations, the World Bank, and the European Community.

The European Comnunity--a general designation for a number of

joint organizations of the European nations--developed through a series

of economic adjustments intended to foster a European common market.

We mention i t because the growth of regional organization reflects one

pattern to contemporary international organization--the tendency to emphasize regional institutions--which competes with (but may not always complement) support of tru ly global institutions. Between the years 1956-1957 and 1962-1963 there was a 34 per cent increase in the number of global international organizations, while regional institutions 33 increased by 167 per cent!

The United Nations originated primarily as a security institution.

Yet i t has increasingly accepted the role of an agent of social and 34 economic development. Inis Claude, in his small book entitled The

32 Kenneth J. Twitchett and Carol Ann Cosgrove, eds., The New International Actors: The United Nations and the European Economic Community (London: Macmillan, 1970). Oran R. Young, "The United Nations and the International System," International Organization, XXII, No. 4 (Autumn, 1968), 902-22.

33Angell 34 See W. Kotschnig, The United Nations as an Instrument of Economic and Social Development," International Organization, XXII (Winter, 1968), 16-43; also Susan Strange, "The United Nations and International Economic Relations" in The Evolving United Nations: A Prospect for Peace?, ed. Kenneth J. Twitchett (London: Europa Publica­ tions, 1971), pp. 100-19. Ms. Strange is less enthusiastic about United Nations development operations than other observers. She argues that "... the UN is likely to remain primarily a symbolic institu­ tion . . . for in economics, ju st as much as in other matters progress beyond a symbolic role is barred by real p o litic a l conflicts and con­ troversies (concerning the redistribution of wealth and the redrawing of international rules concerning trade and investment, for example) 212

Changing United Nations, observes this shift from a security to an economic emphasis in international organization; the shift is related to sim ilar changes within national governments--governments gradually accepting additional responsibility for economic and resource problems.

The prose of Claude may be ungainly, but his message is clear: "I see every reason to suppose that the p o litical demand of the many w ill be used to keep the United Nations on the track of concentrating increasing proportions of its attention and the resources that it can obtain upon 35 programs of assistance in the economic development fie ld ."

More recent international organizations consciously formed about economic objectives. Yet these organizations are neither global in their representation nor orchestral in their intention. Rather, the new international institutions are composed of a limited number of nations with similar interests that operate outside the network larger and more representative organizations like the United Nations. Often the clients of these special-interests organizations include only the developed countries as in the Energy Coordinating Group--an organization

which cannot be resolved in the absence of an ultimate political authority to decide them," p. 119. OC Inis L. Claude, J r ., The Changing United Nations (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 115. OC Examples of these special interest organizations include, for example, the T rila te ra l Commission composed of the U.S., Japan, and a number of Western European Nations. See T rilateral P olitical Task Force, The Crisis of International Cooperation, a Report to the Executive Committee of the T rila te ra l Commission, Tokyo, October, 1973 (New York: T rila te ra l Commission, 1974). 213 of industrialized nations formed in 1974 as a defense against the pres- 37 sure of the oil exporting OPEC nations.

Indeed, only those functional international organizations most removed from politics seem to be global in their representation of nations. The International Postal Union, for example, in existence 38 since 1857, is the usual example of a tru ly global organization.

Other functional organizations such as the World Bank and the Food and

Agriculture Organization operate in more sensitive areas: the dispersal and regulations of resources have become "high po litics." The univer­ sality of these organizations, however, is limited by their ideology of development--by th eir market orientation, or what Ernst Haas has called 39 the "free enterprise vision of the international economy. ..."

Philippe de Seynes argues that even these lim ited, technical organizations are not global. The distinction between a global and an international organization, he points out, is significant. Internation­ alism according to Seynes, arose from a solidarity of interest stimulated by the benefits of technology; it resulted in close coordination on a number of technical as well as cultural matters. Global ism, on the other hand, arises from the negative rather than the positive effects of this same technology. Not out of interest, but out of necessity,

37 Composed of the European Community (less France), Norway, Japan, the United States and Canada. See the Department of State B u lletin , LXXI, No. 1843 (October 21, 1974), 525. 38 The International Postal Union is an often quoted example of a non-political international organization. M. A. K. Menon, Universal Postal Union, International C onciliation, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, No. 552 (March, 1965). 39 Ernst B. Haas, Tangle of Hopes: American Commitments and World Order (Englewood C liffs , N.J.: Prentice-Hal1 , 1960), p. 120. 214 nations find that environmental problems, resource scarcity, ever- larger disparities of wealth, are forcing them to take steps in the direction of global regulation and sharing of wealth. Therefore, global institutions must display capabilities for long range planning, for greater regulation of energy flows, and for an understanding about approaches to development. The present in stitu tio n s , Seynes concludes, 40 were not developed to perform these functions.

Other authors point to the appearance of a "global interest" even if this interest does not take the concrete form of an organization.

Kenneth Boulding suggests that a "world interest" is developing in what he calls the "econosphere" and that one finds this economic interest 41 in existing "interlocking national interests."

These interlocking national interests, we suggest, are to be found in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Although not quite universal in membership (131 member nations), the

FAO represents a large number of both rich and poor nations. I t must cope with the problems of developed nations (surplus commodities, pollution) as well as with problems encountered by developing nations

(insufficient food, fuel, and markets). The interests, therefore, of the FAO may be identified with the balancing of the world's resource flows (particularly in food).

^P hilippe de Seynes, "Prospects for a Future Whole World," International Organization, XXVI, No. 1 (Winter, 1972), 1-17.

^Kenneth Boulding, "The Concept of World Interest," in Disarmament and Economic Development, ed. Richard A. Falk and Saul H. Mendlovitz (New York: World Law Fund, 1966), pp. 494-516. 215

Let us examine now the way in which the FAO has worked in an

orchestrating sense, and secondly, the means by which one of the step­

children to the FA0--the newly proposed World Food Council--aims to go

beyond objectives of the FAO in asserting broader coordination over the

numerous binary relationships (national and international) determining

world food flows.

REGULATION AND DISTRIBUTION: FOOD ENERGY AND THE FAO

The specialized agencies of the United Nations are representa­

tive of international organizations that perform limited orchestral

functions. One of the oldest and most successful of these organizations

is the Food and Agriculture Organization headquartered in Rome. The

specific functions of these organizations vary, but they generally

include fact-finding, the dissemination of information, the application

of technical experts to problems of health and information, and the

regulation and distribution of resources (in the form of technology or x 42 finances). Most importantly, of course, international organizations

provide a mechanism for dialogue among nations.

The regulation and distribution of material resources were

considered a minor function when the United Nations specialized agencies 43 were first organized. (Ironically, the more an international

42 Robert W. Gregg and Michael Barkun, eds., The United Nations System and Its Functions (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1965). 43 Charles Henry Alexandrowicz, World Economic Agencies (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962). 216

organization regulates and redistributes resources, the less "global"

it is likely to be. These are essentially political functions, and

require substantial agreement among nations before they can be undertaken.

Hence GATT, which arose to establish rules for world trade, operates

mainly among the wealthier industrialized nations; UNCTAD, on the

other hand, represents the lesser developed countries. Not even the

World Bank or the FAO are global institutions in the sense of repre­

senting all nations.

As we shall point out, the FAO had contributed to the regulation

of international exchanges primarily by facilitating commodity trade

arrangements, by collecting and analyzing information and (together with the World Health Organization) establishing agreed standards known

as the Codex Alimentarius for products in international trade. In

addition, the organization redistributes food or the means to produce

it in two ways: First, the FAO, in cooperation with other agencies,

contributes human (technical) and some material resources needed in

agricultural development to developing nations--development planners,

food, equipment, cash, high-yielding seeds, fe r tiliz e r s , and so forth.

Secondly, through programs of food aid, the FAO and the World Food

Program have redistributed food its e lf by moving contributions from surplus nations to developing countries and to disaster areas.

The Early Years: Coupling by Trade

The changing objectives of the organization now known as the

FAO reflect the changes in focus of international organizations in general. As we mentioned earlier, the focus of international politics has shifted away from a primarily security orientation to demands by 217

nations for access to resources. This is what we have referred to as

the new "welfare interest" in international affairs, an orientation

particularly evident in the functional international organizations.

The predecessor to the FAO, the International In stitu te of

Agriculture, dates back to 1905. David Lubin, businessman and farmer,

founded the Institute to collect and exchange international information about agricultural production and trade. More information about markets, he f e lt , would aid farmers in expanding outlets for their products.

Once established, the Institute broadened its focus: members not only collected information on agricultural production and trade but also studied problems of plant disease, problems of rural employment and started the f ir s t world food survey. Yet the In s titu te 's major interest remained one of stimulating trade in food commodities. The food problem was defined in terms of securing adequate prices and markets for member nations rather than in eliminating problems of food shortages. (Founder

Lubin's concept of the role of international institutions, however, was much broader; he published essays calling for the establishment of world government.) The International In stitu te of Agriculture sur­ vived the f ir s t World War (indeed, belligerents continued to work together in drawing up the half-yearly grain balance sheets!) and 44 operated during the first part of the Second World War.

By the 1930's international organizations began evidencing a greater interest in the world food problem—one that went beyond an examination of trade relationships. In 1935, for example, Stanley Bruce

^Howard R. Cottam, "Internationalism: David Lubin Model," Notes for an address at Stockton, California, April, 1973. 218

of Australia delivered a remarkable speech to the Assembly of the

League of Nations requesting the marriage of health and agriculture,

and "by so doing make a great step in the improvement of national health,

and at the same time an appreciable contribution to the solution of the 45 agricultural problem." For the f ir s t time, surplus commodities and

th e ir opposite-complete shortages of food elsewhere in the g lo b e -

seemed to suggest that redistribution of food should become one of the

functions of international organization.

In 1943 President Franklin Roosevelt called a meeting which led

to the establishment of the Food and Agriculture Organization on 46 October 8 , 1945. The International Institute of Agriculture was

legally dissolved in 1947 and its assets and functions became a part of

the new Food and Agriculture Organization. In 1946 the FAO became fo r­ mally associated with the United Nations as one of its specialized agencies. (Not a ll nations belonging to the United Nations, however,

joined the FAO, and Switzerland, a member of FAO is not in the United 47 Nations.) Although 131 nations were members of the organization by

45 / x Food and Agriculture Organization, David Lubin (1849-1919): An Appreciation, Document P1/93422/10.69/E/1/3100 (Rome, n.d.), p. 11. 46 U.S. Department of State, United Nations Conference on Food and Agriculture, Hot Springs, Virginia, May 18-June 3, 1943. Final act and Section Reports, Publication No. 1948, Conference Ser. 52, 1943. 47 See this history in Alexandrowicz, pp. 113-24; also Stephen S. Goodspeed, The Nature and Function of International Organization (New York: Oxford Press, 1967), pp. 420-45. The constitutional documents of the various specialized agencies may be found in A Decade of American Foreign Policy: Basic Documents, 1941-49, Senate Document No. 123, 81st Congress, 1st Session (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1950), Part IV. 219

1974, several of the nations whose grain trade makes a significant

impact on world food flows were not members. The Soviet Union has been

conspicuously absent (although i t participated in preparatory meetings)

and the Peoples Republic of China, absent for over a decade, rejoined

the FAO in April of 1974.

In its early years with the United Nations, the FAO s till empha­

sized its role as fact-finder and consort to the world's agricultural

traders. (This was more due to the temper of the times and the

interests of member nations than to the leadership within the FAO.) In

1949 i t established the Committee on Commodities which began reviewing

trade in specific commodities and which la te r sought to harmonize the

flows of commercial and concessional agricultural trade. Gradually,

other organizations emerged to regulate trade—GATT and particularly the

separate commodity boards such as the International Wheat Council.

Under the excellent leadership of these early years, however,

there germinated many of the ideas for solution to the world food

problem proposed during the recent (1974) World Food Conference. The work of Lord Boyd Orr was particularly significant. During the years

of world food shortage following World War I I , Orr indicated the need

for information on food availability, and instructed his small staff

to compile one of the f ir s t world food surveys. Orr also emphasized

the need for r e lie f for nations with food shortages. As wartime r e lie f agencies such as the Combined Food Board began to disband, he called an emergency conference in Washington; this could be called the f ir s t

World Food Congress (the o ffic ia l First World Food Congress was not 220

held until 1963). This conference established the International

Emergency Food C ouncil.^

Most importantly, Orr recognized the problem of periodic global

scarcity of food, and suggested the creation of a world food bank which would be part of a "permanent supranational food administration which would store and distribute food supplies and stabilize agricultural 49 prices." The idea failed to receive sufficient support, but in its

place the FAO established a World Food Council (1947) to monitor both

the world food situation and the programs of the FAO. This same pro­

posal for a world food bank (as we shall see in the next section) is alive in 1974; its need is still apparent to experts on the World Food

Problem such as Lester Brown and Norman Borlaug. Yet even now, the world is unprepared to relinquish the sovereignty required to make the bank a reality. Again, the solution has been the creation of a World

Food Council, a council with more members and broader responsibilities than the Council established in 1947, but which, in the manner of its predecessor, aims at monitoring and coordination information and pro- 50 grams of food and agriculture.

48 Howard R. Cottam, "The Role of FAO in nutrition," unpublished d raft, Washington, D.C., n .d ., pp. 7-8. 49 Cottam, p. 8 . See also the discussion in Lord Boyd-Orr, As I Recall (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1966). 50 The major international organizations involved in the agri­ cultural sphere are the FAO, United Nations, the World Food Program (administered by the FAO), The General Agreement on T ariffs and Trade (GATT), and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The main regional bodies include the European Community (EEC), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the Organization of American States (OAS). The international commodity groups include the International Wheat Council, the International Coffee 221

The Recent Years: Coupling through Redistribution

Food is made available to low energy ecosystems either by

importing the needed commodities or by increasing local harvest. The

developing nations, hindered by a low national income and a shortage of foreign exchange, find i t impossible to import large amounts of

food. Yet these are the same nations plagued by food shortages. Even the option of increasing home food production (rather tha importing it)

is lim ited in these nations unless external aid contributes to th eir agricultural development. Hence, the FAO seeks to redistribute food energy indirectly by making available the means for increased production.

In addition, the organization cooperates with the United Nations through the World Food Program to redistribute food contributed by member governments.^

The technical assistance programs of the FAO have increased in size and in range of projects. Funding for the expanded program is supplied by the United Nations Development Program. In fact, 29 per cent of a ll United Nation's development funds are allocated to support

Organization, and the International Cotton Advisory Committee. Among private organizations, there is also the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP)--this organization has consultative status in the United Nations and in the FAO. A good review of these various organizations appears in Chapter 3 of Food Aid and International Agricultural Trade by Robert L. Bard (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1972), pp. 83-110. 51 United Nations, Report on Consultative Machinery and Procedures (A p ril, 1958), Document FAO/UN, CCP/SCD/58/7; also, United Nations, Report on the Operation and Adequacy of the FAQ Principles of Surplus Disposal and Guiding Lines (May, 1959), Document FAO/UN, CCP/CSD/59/23. 222 52 the FAO--more than to any other specialized agency. Other agencies

(and nations as well) also participate in special programs with the FAO; the co-sponsoring institutions supply part of the funding and help to determine the specific programs to be undertaken. These cooperative programs are an avenue for putting together both money--which usually is supplied by the cooperating agency--and the large technical resources of the FAO. The World Bank, for example, often joins the FAO on programs of agricultural development in which the Bank supplies the funding and the FAO technical expertise. In addition, some donor countries, notably the Scandinavian countries, prefer to engage in m ultilateral programs of foreign aid. These governments establish trust funds upon which the

FAO can draw to implement agreed projects.

Agricultural development in the food d e fic it nations cannot proceed without substantial transfers of agricultural technology from the industrialized countries. The technical programs are called for to create an entire agro-industrial complex in nations just beginning to industrialize. The amounts necessary--estimated at 10 billion dollars 53 a year--are not available to these nations for agricultural investment.

Much of the emphasis by the FAO, therefore, has been in the form of consciousness raising. Through publications, through campaigns such as the Freedom from Hunger Campaign, and through the World Food Program

5? Sir Robert Jackson, A Study of the Capacity of the United Nations Development System, Vol. 2 (Geneva: United Nations, 1969), p. 11. 53 This would be ten times the current levels of assistance. This is the figure given by C lifford M. Hardin, Secretary of Agricul­ ture and William P. Rogers, Secretary of State in the Report to the President, World Food Population Levels (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, April, 1970). 223

(described below), the FAO has emphasized the need for greater investments in the agricultural sector of lesser developed nations.

Perhaps the most successful FAO program stressing redistribution 54 of food has been the World Food Program. This program, begun in 1963, may be described as the United States PL 480 program—described in

Chapter 5— internationalized. Nations supported the World Food program through commodity pledges—mainly from the United States and Canada— and through cash and services offered by non-agricultural nations like

Japan. Most of the commodities contributed have been in the form of cereals, sp ecifically, wheat, maize and sorghum. The total resources available to the World Food Program from its inception until December

1972 were $1,035 mil 1 ion—more than to any other international 55 program.

Part of the assistance of the World Food Program has been devoted to emergency food needs. Over 30 countries have received surplus foods to lessen the tragedy of natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and droughts. The major aim of the program, however, is not r e lie f but economic development. Therefore, i t offers food for

54 Food and Agriculture Organization, Report on the World Food Program by the Executive Director (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1965), Document 27400/12.65/E/1/3600. Many of the basic documents directing the World Food Program are collected in the United Nations, World Food Program Basic Documents (1966), Document UN/FA0,PL/ WFP:BD 1. See also Wightman, Food Aid and Economic Development, International Conciliation, No. 567 (March, 1968); and I. M. D. L ittle and J. M. C liffo rd , International Aid (Chicago: Aldine, 1966), pp. 174, 259; Uner Kirdar, The Structure of United Nations Economic Aid to Underdeveloped Countries (Hague: Martinus N ijhoff, 1966), pp. 233, 250.

55T. C. M. Robinson, "WFP Tenth Anniversary," World Agriculture, XXII, No. 2 (1973), 3, 4. 224 school lunch programs, gives surpluses to farmers in resettlement pro­ grams until their first crops are harvested, and offers food as partial 56 substitute for wages in road-building and public construction program.

Admittedly, as an "orchestral" program in the redistribution of food energy, the FAO/UN World Food Program plays a very small role.

Yet the success of the program suggests that i t is not impossible for international organizations to assist in redistributing world resources.

Unfortunately, part of the program's success in gaining contributions from wealthier nations was due to the availability of food surpluses.

Beginning in 1972, however, these surpluses diminished and in the words 57 of Director General Boerma, the program "took a giant step backwards."

Capable administration also contributed to the World Food

Program's success. As one c r itic conmented:

The problems of administering an international commodity surplus programme, on a global scale, in the interest of the economically developing countries are considerable. For­ tunately, the Programme has been administered with a flexi­ bility rare in international administration with considerable freedom of action given to the Executive Director. . . .58

Can the same excellent administration exist in even more ambitious programs? We refer to the Resolutions of the World Food Conference of

r /- These activities are related in the bimonthly World Food Proqranme News published by the Food and Agriculture Organization. See also, United Nations, Multilateral Food Aid (1968), Document UN/ECCSOC/E/4538. 57 "World Food Program's Unique Step Backwards," World Agriculture, XXIII, No. 1 (1974), 28-29.

5®Ra1ph Townley, "The Economic Organs of the United Nations," in Luard, p. 279; see also, Roger Revelle, "International Cooperation in Food and Population," International Organization, XXII, No. 1 (Winter, 1968), 362-91. 225

November 1974--proposals presently (1975) to be put into action by the

newly formed World Food Council.

THE WORLD FOOD CONFERENCE: DISCUSSION ABOUT A COMPREHENSIVE FOOD PROGRAM

The world p o litic a l process has not responded to the problems

of globalization--the interdependence of nations, the increasing

scarcity of resources--with adequate organization. But to say that the

international p o litical process has ignored contemporary problems is

equally misleading. Rather, the network of international actors from

nations to private charitable and business organizations have responded

by staging gigantic workshops known as the International Conferences.

The recent (November 1974) World Food Conference, a meeting ground for

130 intergovernmental and 100 non-governmental organizations, serves as

a case in point. The next few pages discuss both the conduct of this

Conference and, in addition, its proposed (now formed) World Food

Council . ^

There were two major focuses to the conference, and two addi­

tional themes that received only minor attention. The first focus

concerned the means of increasing food production in the lesser developed

countries, particularly those who now find themselves most troubled by

food shortages. Secondly, the conference focused on the problems of

food security--recommending the institution of a World Food Information

System to keep nations informed to existing cereal stocks and crop

59 The background to the conference--world events, General Assembly resolutions, FAO decisions, and so fo rth , appear in "Draft Report of the Conference: Introduction--Background to the Conference" by Aftab Ahmad Khan" (Rome: World Food Conference, November 12, 1974), Document E/CONF. 65/L.3. 226 conditions throughout the world. In addition, conference members dis­ cussed the needed changes in the present pattern of world trade and the requirement for improved consumption and nutrition, particularly within 60 the lesser developed nations.

Increased Agricultural Production

An increase in production through investment and technical aid to agriculture in the lesser developed countries is the only permanent solution to the food problem. (Of course, this must be accompanied by a control of population growth, an important issue which was discussed only b rie fly at the Food Conference since i t had been the subject of the

World Population Conference in 1973.) The Rome Forum--a group of 25 eminent exports on the world food problem convened prior to the conference by Lady Barbara Ward Jackson--called for the establishment of an agri­ cultural fund of between $18 to $20 b illio n a year to aid investments to agriculture in developing areas. F e rtiliz e r shortages and world inflationary pressures necessitate this large investment. Wealthy nations were to contribute $5 billion of this amount, a figure consider­ ably greater than today's contributions of $1.5 billion per year. The report of the Rome Forum summarized:

We therefore support the proposal for a Special Agricul­ tural Fund. We urge the "old rich" of the industrialized nations and the "new rich" among the wealthy members of OPEC to come together with the developing peoples to agree upon accelerating investment programs in agriculture, bring

A summary of the general debate of the World Food Conference appears in Aftab Ahmad Kahn, "Proceedings of the Conference: Summary of the General Debate" (Rome: World Food Conference, November 14, 1974), Document E/CONF.65/1/3/Add.3. 227

together the wealth and managerial s k ills in developed lands, the investment funds of the wealthiest o il producers and the needs and agricultural potential of the poorest co u n tries. 61

The major p rio ritie s for these investments were to be the benefits of recent agricultural technology such as improved seed, water supplies, fertilizer, use of appropriate machinery, and, in addition, the creation of marketing and storage fa c ilitie s . The Rome Forum warned, however, that new environmental concerns must become part of farm practices:

"Pressures in the Sahel region serve to emphasize that, for the long 62 term, agricultural development should be with not against nature."

These recommendations were sim ilar to those proposed by the

Preparatory Committee of the World Food Conference (a group of nations and experts which met prior to the conference to draw up an agenda and proposals for action). Much of this material referred back to the

Indicative World Plan for Agriculture, prepared by the FAO in 1969— a plan for agricultural growth which some experts outside the United

Nations considered too optimistic. Conference members authorized the establishment of an International Fund for Agricultural Development

fil Rome Forum on World Food Problems, ed. Lady Barbara Ward Jackson, Declaration of the Rome Forum on World Food Problems (Rome: World Food Conference, November 6, 1974), Document E/CONF.65/14, p. 3.

CO Rome Forum, p. 5. cq Working documents for the conference include the following: World Food Preparatory Committee of the World Food Conference, Preliminary Assessment of the World Food Situation: Present and Future, United Nations (Rome: United Nations World Food Conference, A p ril, 1974), Document E/CONF.65/PREP/6; Preparatory Committee of the World Food Conference, The World Food Problem: Proposals for National and International Action (Rome: World Food Conference, August, 1974), Document E/Conf.65/4. 228 of $5 billioni they also formed a "Consultative Group on Food Production and Investment"--a group to be composed of specialists from the World

Bank, the FAO, and other appropriate international agencies.

World Food Security

The idea of World Food Security includes three main avenues for assuring continued food supplies in the event of future crop uncertain­ ties. First, the plan incorporates the need for cereal reserves for dispersal in the event of an emergency, secondly, it suggests the need for a food information and early warning system, and th ird , i t provides 65 for continued world food aid to nations with food shortages.

In its final Resolutions, the Food Conference called for the

"international coordination" of food stocks of cereal grains in all nations. In it ia lly , however, the Director General of the FAO and food authorities such as Lester Brown and Norman Borlaug had called for the formation of world food banks (an idea in it ia lly proposed by Lord fifi Boyd Orr in the late 1940's!). During the General Debate of the conference, delegates suggested "that reserve stocks of cereals of as

fid United Nations, World Food Conference, press release entitled "World Food Conference Closes afte r Drawing Blueprints for Solution on World Food Problems" (Rome: World Food Conference, November, 1974), Document MI/F4699, p. 4.

^Lester Brown, "The Next Crisis? Good," Foreign Policy, No. 13 (Winter, 1973-74), 24-30.

*^See the interview with Norman Borlaug, "The Green Revolution Lives," by Alan Anderson in The New York Times Magazine, April 27, 1975, pp. 15, 80-86, 90, 94. 229 much as 60 m illion tons above the current carryover might be necessary

for adequate protection.The Rome Forum also had suggested the need for more positive action than mere "international coordination" of stocks. It recommended the establishment of a 10 million ton grain reserve "for use in emergencies, to provide concessional aid and to underpin a direct attack upon diseases and d is a b ilitie s due to malnu­ t r i t io n ." ^

Up until 1972, the United States and Canada had held substantial grain reserves, mainly as a result of domestic agricultural support programs. With the greater demand for grains, these stocks diminished, leaving the world with a reserve stock of 20 days of grain consumption.

"The idea of a food bank," the Economist concluded, was "essentially a means of relieving the Americans of their sole responsibility for keeping the world's grain reserves, and dividing it among all the countries 69 capable of paying th e ir way."

The food information and early warning system suggested at the conference would require that all governments regularly report informa­ tion on crop and livestock conditions to a central institution. In the past, great fluctuations in food sales have led to wide fluctuations in the price of foodstuffs on the world market. Crises of food supply develop in years of globally insufficient harvests because of the

cj Khan, "Summary of the General Debate," p. 1 68 Rome Forum, p. 2. 69 The Economist, November, 1974. 230

imperfect system of distribution. (This was highlighted in the discussion of the U.S. wheat sale to the Soviet Union in 1972 discussed in Chapter

2 .) Such a world warning system would aim to end the secrecy which now surrounds the buying and selling of grain on the world market. China, however, specifically objected to this proposal, and the Soviet Union did not specifically agree. Although the final resolutions of the

World Food Conference spoke to the need for a World Food Information

System, it appears at this date that the problem is too political to be undertaken by any existing international organization. (The Soviet

Union is not a member of the FAO; the developing countries object to the wheat-producer dominated International Wheat Council of London.)

The information and warning system probably w ill be provided by an inter-national non-profit research institution.7^

Nations now receiving food aid fear suspension of this aid when rising world demand for food lessens surpluses. The Conference approved a commitment, therefore, to provide commodities and financing for food aid on a three year forward basis to a minimum level of 10 m illion tons of cereals each year. Only Canada, however, made an immediate, generous contribution.7^

The aim of the conference was to deal with long-range food problems rather than with the desperate immediate situation. Yet imme­ diate problems required solution, and i t was in relation to meeting the immediate need for food supplies in nations undergoing famine that the

^ In terview with Howard Cottam, Washington, D.C., January, 1975.

71 Khan, "Summary of the General Debate," pp. 2, 3. 231 72 World Food Conference failed most completely. The Rome Forum e s ti­ mated a food grain shortfall in 1974/75 of about 20 million tons and a f e r tiliz e r shortage of one m illion tons. Expenditures of $4 to $5 73 billion dollars were required to meet these needs. This failure of the Conference to meet immediate food and f e r tiliz e r needs prompted

Pulitzer prize-winner Norman Borlaug (acclaimed for his work on the

Green Revolution) to assess the Conference quite harshly: "It was 74 nonsense . . . nothing tangible was done. I t was just talk ." He estimated that millions would die in the next eight months in Bangladesh and India. If, belatedly, international constitutions should agree on a re lie f program, he opined, i t would be too late to implement i t .

The Conference also discussed the problems of trade and agri­ cultural adjustment--at the insistence of UNCTAD--and the need to improve world nutrition (a subject proposed by the Provisional Committee of the

Food Conference). In b rie f, the discussion on agricultural adjustment emphasized that nations liberalize trade to the benefit of developing countries. Various nations stressed the need for "improved commodity arrangements" to stab ilize food prices on the international market.

Only one Resolution dealt with the problem of nutrition; but nutritional

72 Following the World Food Conference, there was a meeting of cereal supplier-nations and a number of international organizations to discuss means of meeting the inmediate shortages, but no commitments were made by the attending nations. FAO, November 29, 1974. 73 Rome Forum, p. 2.

7^Norman E. Borlaug, New York Times, December 11, 1974, Sec. 1, p. 13, col. 1; also, New York Times, December 15, 1974, Sec. E, p. 2, col. 2. 232 deficiencies are in large part the result of insufficient food in the

right places.

Considering the scope and expectations of the World Food Con­ ference, the final results were disappointing. The initial need for the conference had seemed to many observers to summarize and substantiate a large number of problems on human and material growth that were straining the economics of the world's nations. The dangers to environ­ mental quality and the depletion of resources (both evident in the field of agriculture) had been the subject of the Environmental Conference in

Stockholm; the problems of the world's fish eries, now endangered, was discussed at the Law of the Seas Conference in Caracas; the dangers of an increasing world population in a world of lim ited resources had been emphasized at the Population Conference in Bucharest in 1973. The

World Food Conference appeared to be both a summary and an extension of these previous conferences on the human condition. Anthony Lewis commented on the scope and complexity of the problems that had been faced by the conference:

Oil, food, prosperity, security, everything is connected to everything else. And so the hard question on food and other issues is as much p o litic a l as s c ie n tific : Are human being capable of organizing themselves on so large a scale: Can they overcome th e ir differences and agree on world solutions to world problems??5

Of course, the nations attending the World Food Conference could not overcome their differences. The final decisions of the Conference were woefully inadequate in lig h t of present world food needs.

Anthony Lewis, "Rome: Can the World Organize to Save Its e lf? ," New York Times, November 10, 1974, Sec. E, p. 5, cols. 1-3.

x - 233

Rather, the Conference became a p o litic a l forum but evidenced

little political action. The speeches were moving, the declarations

appealing, the resolutions suggestive, but the results less than con- 76 crete or affirmative. The Universal Declaration on the Eradication

of Hunger adopted by the Conference, for example, underscored the "grave

food crisis that is a fflic tin g the people of the developing countries";

it stressed that the present situation is "not only fraught with grave

economic and social implications, but also acutely jeopardizes the most fundamental principles and values associated with the right to

life and human dignity as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights . " 77 The Declaration called for "urgent and effective 78 international action."

Yet "urgent solutions" are exactly what the process of inter­ national p o litic s , a process impeded by the slow workings of a complex network of organizations and nations, are least able to provide. One participant at the conference, Howard Cottam, summarized:

. . . there was not convincing evidence that governments are willing to relinquish enough sovereignty to permit a bonafide global world policy. Each [nation] insists on sovereign control of its resources, its boundaries, its political-economic system and its cultural practices. . . . Many developing countries demanded recompense for prior colonial exploitation and called for a new economic order,

76 An example is the excellent address by Henry Kissinger, "The Global Community and the Struggle against Famine," World Food Conference, Rome, November 5, 1974.

77United Nations World Food Conference, "Draft Declaration on the Eradication of Hunger (Rome: World Food Conference, November 15, 1974), Document E/Conf.65/C.1/L.25.

7^United Nations, "Draft Declaration on . . . Hunger." 234

yet sovereign rights were preciously guarded. Socialist countries attributed world hunger, and the poverty which underlies i t , to decadent social systems. Yet the largest socialist states adamantly refused to share basic informa­ tion on food stocks to permit orderly global food security planning. Market-economy states depend upon supply-demand forces with minimum regulation and control; they emphasize efficiency more than social goals. Food exporting countries, while willing to share food, insisted that others share costs, especially because they pay dearly for petroleum and other scarce commodities. O il-rich countries explained that they want to catch up on development and to attain permanent security in other sec­ tors as their exhaustible oil reserves dwindle.™

Recognizing that the food problem required additional attention, and that the numerous international agencies and programs dealing with food aid, agricultural information and agricultural development, neces­ sitated coordination, the Conference called for the creation of a

World Food Council. In its recommendation of this Council to the

General Assembly of the United Nations, the World Food Conference may 80 have made its most substantial contribution.

THE WORLD FOOD COUNCIL: DESIGN FOR A COMPREHENSIVE FOOD PROGRAM

The World Food Conference of November, 1974 proposed the creation of a World Food Council to serve as the "umbrella"—the coordinator--of the numerous existing and proposed international programs and consulta­ tive groups dealing with aspects of the world food problem. The

^Howard Cottam, "The World Food Conference and Beyond," Notes for speech to Cosmos Club, Washington, D.C., January 21, 1975.

^The United Nations General Assembly established the World Food Council upon recommendation by the World Food Conference on December 6, 1974; the resolution is contained in Document A /C .2/L.1421. This resolution recommends that the Food Council shall be composed of 36 members nominated by the Economic and Social Council and elected by the General Assembly. 235 formation of the World Food Council, a council established by the

General Assembly of the United Nations, is of particular relevance to 81 this dissertation. I t is an institution designed to perform the orchestral function that Chapter Five argued was necessary to "orches­ trate" the various binary transactions in energy. In design the World

Food Council is what we have referred to as an orchestral in s titu tio n .

Such an institution, as previously defined, must be global in scope. It must have the capacity to couple energy from one ecosystem to another-- in other words, to redistribute resources. And third, the orchestral institution must be comprehensive in scope--in the terminology of a systems engineer, i t must receive "numerous feedbacks." (Hence, the

International Wheat Council might announce world shortages of grain-- but providing this information concludes the responsibility of the council; i t cannot in itia te programs to produce more grain or to encourage more equitable distribution of grain. Nor does the FAO encouragement of agricultural development allow the organization to divert world traffic in petroleum to the production of much needed fe r tiliz e r s . Rather, a ll existing international organizations have limited objectives and programs.)

Yet the design of an institution is quite d iffe re n t from its performance. What can we expect from the World Food Council? Will i t operate more effectively than other international institutions to date?

The Council, composed of members of 36 nations nominated by the Economic

81 Food and Agriculture Organization, "New Coordinating Council Proposed for World Food Conference Follow-up," News [FAO Press publica­ tion] (New York: FAO, November, 1974), Document 24/74-R WFC/98. 236 and Social Council of the United Nations is already beseiged by p o litic a l quarrels. (These quarrels began with the selection of the nations to be represented on the Council; specifically, the debates revolved about whether or not Cuba would be represented in the Latin American dele- 82 gation.) I t is too early to determine the World Food Council's long-term effectiveness in coordinating the diffuse programs on world food and agriculture, but this in itia l turmoil does not auger well for its future.

We can, however, address two broader questions that relate to the Council's possible effectiveness. First, will nations concede suf­ ficient sovereignty to make such an organization live up to its orches­ tra l designs? And secondly, what does the success of past program- oriented organizations auger for the World Food Council?

The formation of an orchestral institution requires, in the words of Richard Gardner, ". . . a great transcontinental bargain in which access to energy and other raw materials industrialized countries need, is traded for other kinds of access food that developing countries 83 need." Leaving aside whether or not this kind of bargaining goes beyond the objectives of the World Food Council (fo r example, w ill

GATT and UNCTAD--those organizations responsible for negotiating world trade--participate?), we can examine the question of sovereignty. The redistribution of the national resources--both money and food--of the

Op This debate in United Nations, Press Release by Economic and Social Douncil (New York: ECOSOC, December 16, 1974), Document ECOSOC/3672. 83 Richard Gardner, New York Times, November 21, 1974, p. 1, col. 4. 237 wealthier nations requires cooperation by nations who are unaccustomed to working within a community of nations. Even the release of food stock and crop information is viewed by the Soviet Union and Peoples

Republic of China as infringements on matters of national security.

And the possible actions of the Council are forestalled as the govern­ ments of member nations are themselves uncertain of what should comprise world action. "In Washington," the New York Times summarized, "the

American response to the hunger crisis was bogged down in inter-agency 84 bickering over the extent of what should be done. ..."

Even nations with wide experience in international organization are not prepared to relinquish national decision to an international organization. The process of consultation is itself open to suspect by many government officials. This suspicion of international consul­ tation and of action undertaken by international organizations, is reflected in the words of Henry Kissinger—the diplomat par excellence of the present world order.

One remedial suggestion has been to place greater reliance on the process of international consultation. No doubt we can and should improve formal consultation processes. But i t is well to remember that even within our own government, consultation does not guarantee an identity of views. What­ ever the field of conduct, a decision is finally required, and i t is bound to be more d iffic u lt where sovereign states are involved.85

And how much more difficult it is to turn this process of consultation

^^New York Times, December 15, 1974, Sec. E, p. 2, col. 2. 85 Henry A. Kissinger, "Power and Diplomacy," The Dimensions of Diplomacy, ed. E. A. J. Johnson (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), p. 29. 238 into a working international organization that performs orchestral functions!

S ir Robert Jackson's report to the United Nations on the capa­ city of the United Nations to undertake responsibility for economic development programs is indicative of the widespread pessimism about greater world cooperation through international organization:

There is no doubt that this opportunity [to revitalize the United Nations development system] exists--but can the governments of the world grasp it? There is where my second and predominantly negative impression emerges and I am com­ pelled to say: "On the record of the last twenty years, probably not . "86

The Jackson report to the United Nations and other recent studies also allude to the general inefficiency of international organization. In part, the inefficiency of these international functional organizations is due to the large number of organizations--each working within areas of uncertain jurisdiction with respect to the others. Thus, in the words of Evan Luard, the internecine disputes of the United Nations specialized agencies "reflec t the attempts of each to extend the area 87 of their own authority in relation to that of others. ..." The administrative structure of the United Nations and its various agencies and programs are under the control of about th irty separate governing bodies! The Jackson report explains the problems thus:

At the headquarter level, there is no real "headpiece"-- no central coordinating organization--which could exercise effective control. This machine now has a marked identity of its own and its power is so great that the question must be asked "who controls this machine." So fa r, the evidence suggests that governments do not, and also that the machine is incapable of intelligently controlling itself. This is

^Jackson, Vol. 2, pp. 10. ^Luard, p. 321. 239

not because i t lacks in te llig e n t and capable o ffic ia ls , but because i t is so organized that managerial direction is impossible. In other words, the machine as a whole has become unmanageable in the s tric te s t use of the word. As a result, it is becoming slower and more unwieldy, like some prehistoric monster.88

So we return to where we began this story of the extended need for politics to control man's ecology as well as supervise his economy

(just as once it provided his national security). The politicization of ecology in the international realm (exemplified by greater world interest in flows of food and petroleum) is but an extension of the century long p o liticiza tio n of the domestic and international economy.

The p o liticiza tio n of domestic economies, seen in the rise of the welfare state, signaled the end of a belief in the "invisible" orchestrating hand described two centuries ago by Adam Smith. In different degrees, the nation-state assumed responsibility for the redis­ tribution of national wealth; and more recently these same nation­ states have intensified the regulation of the flow of natural resources among the locales and d is tric ts with th e ir boundaries.

But the international system has had limited orchestration and guidance. No single set of ordering institutions dominate the inter­ national system; rather, there exist international actors with differing objectives--multinational corporations exhibiting the maximizing ten­ dencies of all economic institutions; nation-states, each attempting to exert its sovereign interest; and a host of other both international

8 8 Jackson, p. i i i . 240

and transnational organizations. At times these international organiza­

tions (we used the example of the Food and Agriculture Organization)

work towards balancing the needs of separate parts of the world system,

to the extent that these international organizations with distributive

functions, however, have been "functional" organizations designed to

achieve limited objectives, they tend to resemble the maximizing in s ti­

tutions, competing with one another for resources and jurisdictions.

Food energy remains concentrated in the fields, the storage bins,

livestock, and citizens' stomaches of the wealthiest nations. Elsewhere

in the globe, food production cannot keep pace with increases in popula­

tion. This imbalance— imbalance of wealth, of food and population, of

nation (over international) sovereignty, has become the subject of an

increasing number of international conferences, the last of which—the

World Food Conference held in Rome in November of 1974— proposed yet

another international organization to rationalize world food flows.

This organization, the World Food Council, is to orchestrate the

programs to augment food production in the developing world, improve consumption and distribution of food, and introduce a better system of world food security.

In design the World Food Council is deliberately different from existing functional international organizations. It is essentially a political institution, one that intends to coordinate and direct various national, intergovernmental, and transnational programs dealing with food and agriculture. But i t remains to be seen whether the breadth and authority of the institution can meet the needs of an increasingly imbalanced, hungry world. Yet despite the pessimism about the contribution of the 1974

World Food Conference in general and about the possible success of the World Food Council in particular, we can trace d efin ite changes in international thinking about both the food problem and the manner in which it must be ameliorated. In the Introduction we traced the changes in the focus of the two World Food Congresses that have been sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food

Conference of the United Nations in 1974. The in itia l emphasis of the

FA0--an emphasis reflected in FAO documents as well as in the pro­ ceedings of the 1963 World Food Congress-revolved about creating trade s ta b ility and agricultural adjustment in individual countries.

By 1971, officials realized that harmonization and adjustment of national agricultural policies, though necessary, was not sufficient to cope with the growing world food problem. The FAO began to empha­ size the need for world food security, particularly the continuation of food aid and the formation of coordinated national food stocks.

Officials stressed the need to increase food production in lesser developed nations. These are objectives that require planning and cooperation among a greater number of nations, as well as substantial sacrifices by the wealthiest nations. The perspectives, if not the organizations, of international statesmen had become global and ecological. CONCLUSION

THE LIMITS OF POLITICS

The problems which envelop nations today cannot be neatly polarized in the useful categories of the past—"foreign" versus

"domestic," for example, or issues affecting "large" states as opposed to "small” ones. The growing complexity of society, leading to the interlocking ecosystems of the world environment, brings with i t a sharing of human concerns. Both the global p o litical structure and the earth's physical environment are severely strained. I t is not by accident that p o litic a l and environmental structures find themselves in mutual disarray. This dissertation suggests that the recently emerging ecological perspective can add to the understanding of world problems and their political solutions; it should take its place among the paradigms of political science and international relations.

The politics of past and present— the polis, the medieval c ity states, the nation-state and now the international region— arose to protect and to impose order over the resource flows of ever larger numbers of ecosystems. But now world resource flows escape regulation by the state. Food in particular (although fuel as well) is coupled by multinational institutions from energy rich ecosystems to wealthy consumers elsewhere. Hence the energy balance we find within natural ecosystems is lost in the human earth-sphere. I t can be gained only through the construction of international institutions capable of coordinating—of making more orderly--the world energy flow.

242 243

The most dynamic aspect of any ecosystem model is the focus

on the energy flow that in itia te s and sustains the organization of the

community. In Chapter 2 and 3 we illu strate d the most basic of a ll

energy relationships--the flow of food between producers and consumers.

More specifically, we referred to the growth and trade of one food crop, wheat. Grain crops (and wheat in particular) metaphorically symbolize

"the staff of life," the very existence of man himself. As in most myths and metaphors, there is a grain of truth in this designation.

C ivilizations change, technology renders some human needs obsolete--but people s t ill have to eat. Man may be liberated from restraints on his time and in his p o litic s ; he remains in bondage to the earth. Food energy is the final umbilical cord irrevocably attaching man to his planet.

These references to wheat, trade in grains, and the world food problems, are used as an illu s tra tio n through which one may follow the varied impact of food energy production and exchange. The basic frame­ work and analyses of the dissertation, however, could apply as readily to the use and exchange of fossil fuels. The need for oil, particularly among developed nations, and the impact of oil flows on international relations, comprise one of the c ritic a l issues of contemporary world affairs. Together, food and fossil fuels are the most basic provisions of any society; at the present time they define the totality of any energy available to man.

The most important requirement of an ecological equation is that energy be produced. Chapter 4 defined the kinds of ecosystems called "high energy" systems which produce surpluses of food. Conversely, those areas incapable of producing food or that are too heavily populated 244

(such as an urban c ity ) to be self-sustaining are called "low energy"

systems. In the world of nature, a balance takes place over time between

high energy and low energy systems. The various ecosystems are linked

together by flows of energy which, together with an internal distribu­

tion of energy (the trophic pyramid), promote an equilibrium. In

nature, energy is coupled from one ecosystem to another through such

mechanisms as wind or floods. However, these natural energy trans­

actions are too undependable or "random" to permit man to depend upon

them. Society, therefore, develops reliable artificial linkages between

food consumers and food producers.

Much of human history surrounds the e ffo rt of man to provide

these a r tific ia l links between himself and food producing systems.

Agricultural surpluses permitted man to form urban towns. This urbani­

zation separated man from his immediate food supply. He relied on an

influx of food from the hinterland. Industrialization, by heightening

specialization, tended to separate him even further. The hinterland

now became more dispersed; food flowed into large metropolitan areas

from ever more distant and unrelated ecosystems. The cluster of

attributes of both urbanization and industrialization (unprecedented

population growth, the creation of new and more sophicticated tech­

nology), created the need for larger and more varied links between

consuming populations and the producing hinterland.

These relationships between man and his ecosystem occur within

a binary structure. We described this binary structure in the model

of the Chinese box. In other words, energy exchanges take place in dyadic fashion between one system level and another system level. As man became more urban and in d u strial, he depended not only upon the 245

firs t binary relationship--that occurring between man and his immediate

locale--but also on the amenities and provisions of the larger district.

These districts are agglomerations of several ecosystems united at a

higher level of organization. As time progressed, these districts

interacted with one another. They formed the building blocks of

nations, each producing some required social and economic goods and

consuming others. Recent works of political science--studies on "nation-

building" and "development" record the efforts of nations to integrate

and "balance" the many producing and consuming d istricts within their

boundaries. One additional binary exchange takes pi ace--the exchange

of energy among p o litic a l systems. The p o litic a l system most active

in world politics is, of course, the nation-state. However, recent

growth of regional associations and common markets mean that "international"

exchanges of goods sometimes organize at a level above that of the

nation-state.

These sets of binary exchanges now take place throughout the

earth, the theme of Chapter 5. This complex planetary network of

energy exchanges is described in the concept of "spaceship earth."

Energy exchanges remain binary, but they are increasingly international

in scope. The "big wheat deal" described in Chapter 3 --the United

States' sale of 11 million tons of wheat to the Soviet Union in 1972--

illu strate s just one of these energy transactions. At the level of

global exchange, the impact of these energy transfers also become global.

And indeed, the exchange of wheat affected not only the trading part­

ners themselves but by reducing the total grain supply also affected other nations of the world. Those nations that suffered natural disasters or who otherwise depended upon food imports through either 246 commercial sales or food aid now purchased wheat at increasingly higher prices.

Incredibly, man surmounted one "limiting factor" after the other in his efforts to provide food for growing populations. We use the concept of lim iting factor in its ecological sense, as the variable which inhibits the further productivity of food energy. At any point in time, food productivity is enhanced by additional sunlight, nutrients such as nitrogen or phosphorous, and water. One by one, century by century, man altered the environmental givens. Irrig atio n systems supplied water, fertilizers transferred nutrients to the ground, new hybrid plants required less sunlight. In addition, farm technology for sowing, harvesting, and storing food supplies greatly increased the surpluses needed by man.

Yet there are s t ill hungry people and unproductive ecosystems.

This combination of human hunger and insufficient agricultural develop­ ment is known as the world food problem. "The world food problem" has become yet another metaphor by which authors illu s tra te the inadequate adaptation of mankind to our spaceship earth. Food is distributed in an uneven and unbalanced fashion throughout the earth: i t is unevenly distributed between high energy systems (usually located in indus­ tria liz e d areas that can give support to agriculture) and low energy systems--these often in the less developed nations. Food also is distributed unevenly between the levels of the trophic pyramid, and therefore energy losses stem from the costly consumption of primary energy by large numbers of meat-producing animals. 247

The most crucial limiting factor now existing, therefore, is not

in the "environmental givens," but in the means to a lte r the distribu­

tion of energy among the various binary systems of the world. Energy

is adequately and unequally available to the human population, both

within nations and among them. The global system is out of balance in

an ecological sense. For centuries linkages of food energy to consuming

populations took place through free-market economics. National p o liti­

cal systems increasingly assume the function of regulating and allocating

energy in order to make these resources respond to the welfare needs

of their peoples. Very l i t t l e of this redistribution occurs in the

international political system.

The institutions that operate on the international level are what we referred to in Chapter 6 as maximizing institutions. These

institutions transfer energy from one distant ecosystem to another, but only as these transfers benefit th eir s e lf-in te re s t. This is the case with the nation-state, which, by virtue of its sovereignty over natural resources, theoretically monitors energy transactions across its borders. The multinational corporation, the legacy of market economics

(and which now usurp some of the states' control over resource flows), are also maximizing institutions exhibiting what Richard Barnet has described as a "global reach.We referred to these corporations in

Chapters 3 and 6 in the example of the international commodity exporters.

Both the state and multinational grain exporters transfer wheat—or oil, as the case may be— from one nation to another only when i t does not

^Richard J. Barnet and Ronald E. M ille r, Global Reach: The __rPower of the Multinational Corporations (New York: Simon and Schuster, 248

jeopardize national welfare or corporation profits. These maximizing

institutions, administered by political and economic elite, are limited

in their a b ility to bring balance to the world energy flow by their

selfish perspective. They are limited further by their inability to

overcome the binary pattern of energy exchange, a pattern which is

characterized by multiple, criss-crossing (often inefficient) transfers

of energy from individual ecosystems.

The need exists, therefore, for the creation of the institutions

which can coordinate the various binary exchanges in energy. We have

referred to these balancing mechanisms as orchestral institutions.

But there is no "natural" or inevitable reason for these institutions

to evolve. Orchestral links do not exist in natural ecosystems and

appear only crudely in the annals of p o litic a l history in the rudiments

of international organization. They are represented somewhat better by

governments of nation-states who perform orchestral functions when they

redistribute resources within national boundaries. (Of course, this

redistribution does not always occur, and this imbalance forms one of

the issues of national p o litic s .)

It is possible for man to overcome the limits of his politics just as he has overcome many of the natural lim itations of the eco­

system? In its broadest sense, of course, this is a question of

philosophy (and perhaps of biology); i t argues about the nature of man.

I t is also a question of ethics, for i t argues about the proper mode of

individual behavior and of social organization. It is also, however, an empirical question to the extent that we can examine the growth and development of international institutions which regulate, harmonize, and balance the ac tiv itie s of the nation-states. Chapter 7 examines 249

this growth in international organization, particularly as these organi­

zations accept the task of regulating and redistributing world food.

In the past century, the most evident among international

organizations dealing in resources have been those linked to the market

economy--GATT, and the Commodity Agreements, and more recently producer

cartels such as OPEC, and institutions of industrialized nations such as

OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). In the

last decade, however, new institutions have formed to pressure for wider

and more equitable international resource distribution--UNCTAD, for

example--and older organizations such as the United Nations and the

World Bank have given greater consideration to the redistribution of

resources from the wealthier to the poorer nations. The Food and

Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is one of these organi­

zations characterized by ever greater interest in the redistribution

of resources from the wealthy and/or industrial nations to the lesser

developed nations--in the form of technology and industrial aid ( f e r t i­

liz e rs , farm machinery) as well as food aid.

The sovereignty of nations no longer protects nations from the dislocation of their resources; the world has become too interdependent

for successful policies of isolation. The thesis of the new s p irit of

cooperation advocated by internationalists and by international institu­

tions such as the FAO and UNCTAD intimates that the present threats to mankind are not those dealing with national defense (security) with but national and international welfare. The environmental threats--and foremost among them continued world famines and starvation—make

international action. Imperative. Of course, these suggestions for more rationalized use and distribution of resources are not new: 250

Stanley Bruce and Lord Boyd Orr called for the redistribution and

"banking" of food surpluses in the 1930's and 1940's. We see in the events of the past 15 years, however, a gradual increase in national interest over the problems of international welfare, and a greater willingness of nations to form organizations to promote it.

The various world food conferences (the f ir s t two in 1963 and

1970 sponsored by the FAO, and the last conference of November, 1974 sponsored by the United Nations in conjunction with the FAO and other organizations) illustrate this increased interest in the problems known collectively as the world food problem.

Yet the likelihood of a truly orchestral institution—one that maximizes not the welfare of particular nations or its own organizational interest but coordinates the energy transactions of numerous binary systems (and other organizations as w e ll), is dim.

The formation of the World Food Council is a step towards orchestration.

I t reveals that nations understand the need for better information about crop conditions and food stockpiles (the proposed early warning system), the need for greater food security (the food banks), for revisions in agricultural trade, for the promotion of agricultural development in lesser developed nations and for the supply of food aid to those nations who desperately need i t now. The problems, in other words, call for varied forms of agricultural adjustment, both within individual nations and in the nature of the energy flows among them.

Of course, proposals and declarations are not actions. But despite the derision and criticism of the World Food Conference and Council by influential observers such as Barbara Ward and Norman Borlaug, the now organizing council--though rifled with selfish politics and 251 administrative problems--is an advance over whatever organization existed before.

Yet contemporary political organization is not organization enough. With no interference by international institutions, the ecological equation will still display itself--there will occur a balance between consumers and producers of food energy. But i t w ill be a cruel, inefficient balancing—the kind of balancing exhibited in the natural ecosystem where the survival of individuals or species is not assured. Orchestral institutions w ill not evolve. They w ill have to be a product of what Lewis Mumford called the "transformation 2 of man." The world food problem— the result of complex, international food flows—has no inevitable solution apart from a transformation of international political and economic institutions.

2 Lewis Mumford, The Transformations of Man (New York: Harper, 1956). SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. THE NATURAL ECOSYSTEM

1. Books

Bates, Marston. "The Human Ecosystem." In America's Land and Its Uses. Edited by Marion Clawson. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1972.

Beckner, Morton. The Biological Way of Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968.

B illin g s, W. D. Plants, Man, and the Ecosystem. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing, 1970.

Borgstrom, Georg. The Hungry Planet: The Modern World at the Edge of Famine. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1965.

Boughey, Arthur S. Ecology of Populations. Toronto, Ontario: The Macmillan Co., 1968.

Brandwein, Paul and others. Energy, Its Forms and Changes. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968.

Chang, Jen-Hu. Climate and Agriculture: An Ecological Survey. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1968.

Clapham, W. B. Natural Ecosystems. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1973.

Clarke, George L. Elements of Ecology. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1954; reprint ed. 1966.

Colinvaux, Paul A. Introduction to Ecology. New York: John Wiley and Sons, In c ., 1973.

Darnell, Rezneat M. Ecology and Man. Dubue, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown Company, 1973. de Vries, C. A. "Increasing Crop Yields--Relative Potential of Specific Crops by Region and/or Country." In Man, Food and N u tritio n . Edited by Miloslav Rechicigl. Cleveland: Chemical Rubber Co., 1973.

Dregne, H. E. "Surface Material of Desert Environments." In Deserts of the World. Edited by McGinnies and others. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 1968.

252 253

Emmel, Thomas C. An Introduction to Ecology and Population Biology. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1873.

Garvey, Gerald. Energy, Ecology, Economy. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972.

Gates, D. M. Energy Exchange in the Biosphere. New York: Harper and Row, 1962.

Hughes, A. P. "The Importance of Light Compared with Other Factors Affecting Plant Growth." In Light as an Ecological Factor. Edited by Richard Bainbridge and others. Oxford: Blackwell S cien tific Publications, 1966.

Inger, Robert F. and others, ed. Man in the Living Environment. The In stitu te of Ecology. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1972.

Kormondy, J. Concepts of Ecology. Englewood C liffs , New Jersey: Prentice- H a ll, In c., 1969.

Linford, J. H. An Introduction to Energetics. London: Butterworths, 1966.

Macan, T. T. Ponds and Lakes. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973.

McNeil, Mary. "Lateritic Soils in Distinct Tropical Environments: Southern Sudan and B razil." The Careless Technology: Ecology and International Development. Garden City, New York: The Natural History Press, 1972.

Margalef, Ramon. Perspectives in Ecological Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968; reprint 1970.

M ills , D. K. An Introduction to Freshwater Ecology. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1972.

Milton, John P. and M. Taghi Farvar. The Careless Technology. New York: Natural History Press, 1971.

Milton, John P., M. Taghi Farvar, Gordon T. Goodman, and others, ed. Ecology and the Industrial Society. British Ecological Society Symposium Number Five. New York: John Wiley, 1965.

Morowitz, Harold. Energy Flow in Biology. New York: Academic Press, 1968.

Odum, Eugene P. Ecology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966.

. Fundamentals of Ecology. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1969.

Odum, Howard T. Environment Power, and Society. New York: Wiley- Interscience, 1971.

Phillipson, J. Ecological Energetics. London: Edward Arnold, Ltd., 1966. 254

Rabinowitch, E. I. Photosynthesis. Vol. 1. New York: W iley-Interscience, 1945.

Reid, George K. Ecology of Inland Waters and Estuaries. New York: Van Nostrand-Reinhold, 1961.

Richards, P. W. The Tropical Rain Forest: An Ecological Study. Cambridge University Press, 1966.

Sears, Paul. The Living Landscape. New York: Basic Books, 1962.

Seliger, Howard H. and william D. McElroy. Light: Physical and Biological Action. New York: Academic Press, 1965.

Shelford, Victor E. The Ecology of North America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963.

Storer, John. The Web of L ife . New York: New American Library, 1953; reprint 1969.

Thomas, W. L ., J r ., ed. Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956.

Von Bertalanffy, Ludwig. "General System Theory--A C ritical Review." In Modern Systems Research for the Behavioral S c ien tist. Edited by Walter Buckley. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1968.

Watt, Kenneth E. F. Ecology and Resource Management. New York: McGraw H ill, 1968.

Whittaker, Robert H. Communities and Ecosystems. New York: Macmillan, 1970.

2. A rticles: Journals, Magazines, Newspapers

Commoner, Barry. "Nature Unbalanced: How Man Interferes with the Nitrogen Cycle," Scientist and Citizen, X (January-February, 1968), 9-19.

Odum, Howard T. "Trophic Structure and Productivity of Silver Springs, Florida," Ecological Monographs, XXVII (1957), 55-112.

Teal, J. M. "Community Metabolism in a Temperate Cold Spring," Ecological Monographs, XXVII (1967), 283-302. 255

B. AGRICULTURE: EMPHASIS ON THE CULTIVATION OF WHEAT

1. Books

Addison, Herbert. Land, Water and Food. London: Chapman & H all, 1955.

Bates, Marston. "The Human Ecosystem." In America's Land and Its Uses. Edited by Marion Clawson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1972.

Berger, Kermit C. Sun, Soil and Survival: An Introduction to Soils. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965; rep rin t, 1972.

Borgstrom, Georg. Harvesting the Earth. London: MacMillan 1973.

______. Harvesting the Earth. New York: Abelard-Shuman, 1973.

______. Too Many: A Study of Earth's Biological Lim itations. London: Macmillan, 1969.

Britnell, G. E. The Wheat Economy. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1939.

Brown, Lester. The Seeds of Change: The Green Revolution and Development in the 1970's. New York: Praeger, 1970.

Callaghan, A. R. and A. J. Millington. The Wheat Industry in Australia. London: Angus and Robertson, 1956.

Carneiro, R. "Slash-and-Burn Agriculture: A Closer Look at its Implications for Settlement Patterns." In Men and Cultures. Edited by Anthony F. C. Wallace. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966.

Chang, Jen-Hu. Climate and Agriculture: An Ecological Survey. Chicago: Aldine, 1968.

Geertz, Clifford. Agricultural Involution: the Process of Ecological Change in Indonesia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963.

G ittinger, J. Price. North American Agriculture in a New World. Washington, D.C.: Canadian American Committee, 1970

Goldberg, Ray A. Agribusiness Coordination: A Systems Approach to Wheat, Soybean and Florida Orange Economies. Harvard: Harvard Business School, 1968.

______and J. Davis. A Concept of Agribusiness. Boston: Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, 1957.

Graham, Edward H. Natural Principles of Land Use. London: Oxford University Press, 1944. 256

Great Plains Wheat, Inc. Wheat: USA. Washington, D.C.: Great Plains Wheat, n.d.

H ill, Albert F. Economic Botany: A Textbook of Useful Plants and Plant Products. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1952.

Hi 11 e l . D. Soil and Water. New York: Academic Press, 1971.

Hutchinson, Sir Joseph. Farming and Food Supply. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.

Iverson, Johannes. "Forest Clearance in the Stone Age." In Man and the Ecosphere. Edited by S cientific American. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1971.

Kellogg, Charles. "Increasing Crop Yields." In Man, Food and Nutrition. Edited by Miloslav Rechcigl. Cleveland: Chemical Rubber Press, 1973.

Magness, J. R. and others. Food and Feed Crops of the United States. Interregional Research Project IR-4. IR Bulletin No. 1. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University, 1971.

Mai in , James C. Winter Wheat in the Golden Belt of Kansas. Lawrence: University of Kansas, 1944.

Mosher, A. T. Getting Agriculture Moving. New York: Praeger for the Agricultural Development Council, 1966.

Pates, Paul W. The Farmer's Age: Agriculture 1815-1860. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1962.

Peterson, R. F. Wheat: Botany, Cultivation and U tiliz a tio n . New York: Interscience, 1965.

Rockefeller Foundation. Progress Report. Toward the Conguest of Hunger, 1965-1966. Program in the Agricultural Sciences. New York: The Rockefeller Foundation, 1966.

Sauer, Carol 0. Agricultural Origins and Dispersals. New York: American Geographical Society, 1952.

Schery, Robert W. Plants for Man. Englewood C liffs , N.J.: Prentice- H all, 1972.

Steinhart, Carol and John. Energy: Sources, Use, and Role in Human A ffa irs . North Scituate, Mass.: Duxbury Press, 1974.

Symons, Leslie. Russian Agriculture: A Geographic Survey. London: G. Bell & Sons, 1972.

______. Agricultural Geography. New York: Praeger, 1967. 257

Third International Wheat Genetics Symposium. "Wheat Breeding and Its Impact on World Food Supply." Proceedings of the Third International Wheat Genetics Symposium. Edited by K. W. Finaly and K. W. Sheperd. Canberra: Australian Academy of Science, 1968.

Timoshenko, V. P. World Wheat Production: Its Regional Fluctuations and Interregional Correlations. Wheat Studies of the Food Research Institute. Stanford: Food Research Institute, Stanford Univer­ s ity , 1942

Uhlig, Harald. "Fields and Field Systems." In Man and His H abitat. Edited by R. H. Buchanan and others. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971.

Vavilov, Nikolai Ivanovich. The Origin, Variation, Immunity and Breeding of Cultivated Plants. Translated by K. Starr Chester. New York: Ronald Press, 1951.

Watts, F. B. "Climate, Vegetation, S o il." In Canada: A Geographical In terp retatio n . Edited by John Warkentin. Toronto: Methuen, 1969.

Watson, J. A. S. and J. A. More. Agriculture. 11th ed. London: 1962.

Zimmerman, Erich W. World Resources and Industries. 2nd ed. New York: Harper Bros., 1933; rep rin t, 1951.

2. A rticles: Journals, Magazines, Newspapers

Allen, Robert. "New Strategy for the Green Revolution," New Scientist, L X III (August 8, 1974).

Downing, C. G. E. and M. Feldman. "Energy and Agriculture," Proceedings, Canadian Farm Economics, IX (February, 1974), 24-31.

Fialka. Washington Star-News

Hirst, Eric. "Living Off the Fuels of the Land," Natural History, LX XII (December, 1973).

Mangelsdorf, P. C. "Genetic Potentials for Increasing Yields of Food Crops and Animals," Proceedings of National Academy of Science, LVI (1966), 370-75.

Pomeranz, Yeshajahu. "From Wheat to Bread: A Biochemical Study," American S c ie n tis t, LXI (November-December, 1963), 683-91.

Shacklady, C. A. "Protein from Paraffins," New Scientist, XLIV (September, 1969), 5. 258

Wade, Nicholas. "Green Revolution: Creators S till Quite Hopeful on World Food," Science, September 6, 1974.

Wharton, C lifton R., Jr. "The Green Revolution: Cornucopia or Pandora's Box?" Foreign A ffa irs , April 1960.

3. Official National and International Publications

Budowski, Gerardo. "Climatological Data and Natural Vegetation." Agriclimatological Methods. Symposium on Methods in Agroclimatology. Paris: United Nations S c ien tific and Cultural Organization, 1968.

Dalrymple, Dana G. Developmental Spread of High Yielding Varieties of Wheat and Rice in the Less Developed Nations. Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, Foreign Development Report 95, July 1974.

Keaton, Clyde R. Competition in the Grain Market of Western Europe. Foreign Agriculture Service. Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agriculture Service, May 1962.

International Wheat Council. World Wheat Statistics. Years 1971, 1972, 1973. London: 1971, 1972, 1973.

C. AGRICULTURAL TRADE: EMPHASIS ON

U. S. WHEAT SALE TO RUSSIA, 1972

1. Books

Andrews, Stanley. Agriculture and the Common Market. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1973.

Balassa, Bela. Trade Liberalization among Industrial Countries: Objectives and A lternatives. New York: McGrawHill, 1967.

Bard, Robert L. Food Aid and International Agricultural Trade. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1972.

Blakeslee, Leroy L. and others. World Food Production, Demand, and Trade. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1973.

Bratland, Robert Philemon. "World Wheat Trade Projections for 1975 and 1985." Master's thesis, North Dakota State University of Agricul­ ture, 1968. 259

Bridbury, A. R. England and the Salt Trade in the Later Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955.

Brown, Lester R. By Bread Alone. New York: Praeger, 1974.

Bunge Corporation. New York: Bunge Corporation, n.d.

Campbell, Keith 0. "National Commodity Stabilization Schemes: Some Reflections Based on Australian Experience." In International Explorations of Agricultural Economics. Edited by Roger N. Direy. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press.

Dam, Kenneth W. The GATT Law and International Economic Organisation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Diebold, William, Jr. "Trade Policies Since World War II . " In Foreign Agricultural Trade. Edited by Robert L. Tontz. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1966.

Donnithorne, Audrey. China's Grain: Output, Procurement, Transfers and Trade. Hong Kong: Economic Research Center, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1970.

Goldberg, Ray A. "Facts and Forecasts for Breadstuffs." In The South­ western M ille r Breadstuffs Seminar, 1972. Kansas City: Sosland Publishing, 1972.

______. Agribusiness Coordinator: A Systems Analysis of the Wheat, Soybean and Florida Orange Economies. Boston: Harvard University, Graduate School of Business, 1968.

Grogan, F. 0. International Trade in Temperate Zone Products. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1972.

Hadwiger, Don F. Federal Wheat Commodity Programs. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1972.

Hudson, S. C. Future Market Outlets for Canadian Wheat and Other Grains. Special Study No. 11, Economic Council of Canada. Ottawa: Queens Printer, 1970.

Johnson, Harry, ed. New Trade Strategy for the World Economy. London: Allen and Unwin, 1969.

Keenleyside, Hugh L. International Aid: A Summary. New York: James H. Heineman, 1966.

Keohane, Robert 0. and Joseph S. Nye. Transnational Relations and World P o litic s . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973.

Lowell, Fred R. The Wheat Market. Kansas City, Mo.: Keltner Statistical Service, 1968. 260

McFadzean, Frank. Towards an Open World Economy. London: MacMillan, 1972.

Manzer, W. A. P. The Financial Role of Multinational Enterprises. New York: John Wiley, 1973.

M ille r, James Innes. The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire, 29 B.C. to A.D. 641. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.

Myrdal, Gunner. An International Economy: Problems and Prospects. New York: Harper and Row, 1956; rep rin t, 1969.

Pisar, Samuel. Coexistence and Commerce: Guidelines for Transactions between East and West. New York: McGraw H ill, 1970.

Polk, Judd. "World Companies and the New World Economy." Background Paper No. 1. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1970.

Preeg, Ernest. Traders and Diplomats. Washington: Brookings Institu tio n , 1970.

Rowe, John Wilkenson. Primary Commodities in International Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965.

Schmidt, Stephen C. East-West Trade in Wheat: Present and P otential. Urbana: University of Illin o is , Department of Agricultural Economics, 1973.

Tomek, William G. and Kenneth L. Robinson. Agricultural Product Prices. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973.

Trager, James. Amber Waves of Grain. New York: Arthur Fields, 1973.

Watkins, M elville, ed. The Battle for Control of Our Economy. Toronto: New Press, 1970.

Weightman, P. W. H. "Cereals." International Trade in Temperate Zone Products. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1972.

Wilczynski, John. The Economics of East West Trade. New York: Praeger, 1969.

2. Articles: Journals, Magazines, Newspapers

"Campaign Fodder; Trade with Russia," Time, September 18, 1972, pp. 19-20.

Dyke, Herbert. "Will China Get Part of Our Feed Grain Market?" Wallaces Farmer, October 14, 1972, p. 8.

"Economics of the Wheat Deal," National Review, October 27, 1972, pp. 1168- 1169.

Fialka, John. Articles in Washington Star-News. October 29, 30, 31, and November 1, 1972. Gislason, Conrad. "How Much Has the Canadian Wheat Board Cost the Canadian Farmer?" Journal of Farm Economics, XLI (1959), 185-96.

Grain and Feed Journal, July and August, 1972.

"Great Grain Robbert," Nation, October 16, 1972, pp. 324-25.

Keatley, Robert. "Soviet Faces Woes in Paying for U.S. Grain," Wall Street Journal, December 8, 1972.

Luttrell, Clifton B. "The Russian Wheat Deal--Hindsight vs. Foresight Review. Eighth D istrict U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, St. Louis, Missouri, October, 1973, pp. 1-10.

Muller, Ronald E. "National Instability and Global Corporations: Must They Grow Together?" Business and Society Review, XI (Autumn, 1971), 61-72.

Richenbecker, W. F. "Chaff about Wheat," National Review, November 24 1972, p. 1300.

Schorr, Burt. "Secret Study: U.S. Suppressed Data that Might Have Aided Farmers in Grain Deal," Wall Street Journal, September 14, 1972.

Sheehan, Robert. "Proprietors in the World of Big Business," Fortune, June 15, 1967, pp. 178-83.

"The Incredible Empire of Michel Fribourg," Business Week, March 11, 1972, pp. 84-87.

Wennblom, R. D. "Who Knew the Russians Were Coming?" Farm Journal, November, 1972, pp. 19-20.

3. Official National and International Publications

Food and Agricultural Organization. National Grain Policies. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1973.

Bellingham, Andrew B. "Wheat Marketing in Major Exporting Countries: How Their Export Operations Compare." Contrasts in Marketing in Major Wheat Exporting Nations. United States Department of Agriculture, August, 1971.

Neetz, Roger E. Eastern Europe's Agricultural Development and Trade: Patterns and Perspectives. FAER No. 64. Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, July, 1970. 262

Volin, Lazar and Harry Walters. Soviet Grain Imports. ERS-Foreign 135. Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, September 1965.

Comptroller General of the United States. Russian Wheat Sales and Weakness in Agricultural Management of Wheat Export Subsidy Program. Report to the Congress. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing O ffice, July 1973.

U.S., Congress, Senate. Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on Investigations of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Russian Grain Transaction. Hearing, 93 Congress, 1st Sess., July 20, 23, 24, 1973, Part I. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1973.

International Wheat Council. Trends and Problems in the World Grain Economy 1950-1970. Secretariat Paper No. 6. London, 1966.

. World Wheat S tatis tics, 1971, 1972, 1973. London, 1971, 1972, 1973.

Miscellaneous

Herder, Richard. Vice-President, 9th Federal Reserve Bank. Interview, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 24, 1973.

Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co., C ertified Public Accountants. Letter to Cargil. Minneapolis Minnesota, November 1, 1972.

Cargil. "Cargil Reveals Loss on Wheat to Russia." Statement issued by Cargil, November 2, 1972.

Schruben, Leonard A. Address before the Canadian and American Agricultural Economics Association entitled "Grain Marketing Methods in the U.S.: Theory, As Assumptions and Approaches." Edmonton, Canada, September 10, 1973.

D. THE HISTORY OF MAN AND FOOD

1. Books

Adams, Henry. History of the United States of America during the Adminis- tration of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Albert and Charles Ben, 1930.

Altmann, Stuart and Jeanne. Baboon Ecology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Ashley, Sir William. The Bread of Our Forefathers: An Inquiry in Economic History. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928. 263

Baker, Alan R. H. and Harley, J. B. Man Made the Land. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and L ittle fie ld , 1973.

Boas, Franz. The Mind of Prim itive Man. Revised ed. New York: C o llier Books, 1963.

Bohannan, Paul and Laura. Tiv Economy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968.

Braidwood, R. J. "The Agricultural Revolution." In Man and the Ecosphere. Edited by S cien tific American. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1971.

Braidwood, R. J ., and Howe, Bruce. Prehistoric Investigations in Iraqi Kurdistan. Studies in Ancient Civilization No. 31. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.

Brothwell, Don and Patricia. Food in Antiquity: A Survey of the Diets of Early Peoples. New York: Praeger, 1969.

Buchanan, R. H. and others. Man and His Habitat. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971.

Bury, J. B. and others, eds. The Cambridge Ancient History: Egypt and Babylonia to 1580 B.C. Cambridge: University Press, 1950.

Childe, V. Gordon. What Happened in History. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1942.

Cipolla, Carlo M. The Economic History of World Population. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1962; reprint 1967.

Clark, Grahame. Stoneage Hunters. London: Methuen Press, 1961.

Clark, John G. The Grain Trade in the Old Northwest. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966.

Dimbleby, Geoffrey. Plants and Archaeology. London: Baker, 1967.

Eisely, Loren. The Immense Journey. New York: Random House, 1956.

Eldridge, Hope Tisdale. "The Process of Urbanization." In Demographic Analysis. Edited by J. J. Spengler and 0. D. Duncan. Glencoe, Illin o is : Free Press, 1956.

Forde, C. D. Habitat, Economy and Society. London: Dutton, 1955.

Frank, Tenney. An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1933-40.

Furnas, C lifford Cook and Sparkle. Man, Bread and Destiny. New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1937.

Fussell, G. E. The Classical Tradition in West European Farming. Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Press, 1972. 264

Graubard, Mark. Man's Food: Its Rhyme or Reason. New York: Macmillan, 1943.

Hauser, Philip M. and Leo F. Schnore, eds. The Study of Urbanization. New York: John Wiley, 1965.

Hedden, H. P. How Great Cities Are Fed. Boston: D. C. Heath, 1929.

Higbee, Edward. Farms and Farmers in an Urban Age. New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1963.

H illard , Sam Bowers. Hog Meat and Hoecake: Food Supply in the Old South, 1840-1860. Carbondale, Illin o is : Southern Illin o is University Press, 1972.

Iverson, Johannes. "Forest Clearance in the Stone Age." In Man and the Ecosphere. Edited by S cien tific American. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1971.

Jacob, H. E. Six Thousand Years of Bread. Translated by Richard Winston. Garden C ity, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1945.

Krzywicki, L. Primitive Society and Its Vital Statistics. London: Macmillan, 1934.

Larson, Henrietta. The Wheat Market and the Farmer in Minnesota, 1858-1900. New York: Columbia University, 1932.

Le Bonniec, Henri. Le culte de Ceres a Rome des origines a la fin de la Republigue. Paris: Klincksieck, 1958.

Lee, R. B. and I. Devore, eds. Man the Hunter. Chicago: Aldine, 1968.

Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.

Mead, William Edward. The English Medieval Feast. London: George A1len & Unwin, 1931.

Murray, Jacqueline. The First European Agriculture: A Study of Osteological and Botannical Evidence until 2000 B.C. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1970.

Orwin, C. S. The Open Fields. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Paradiso, J. L., ed. Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966.

Piggott, Stuart. Ancient Europe, from the Beginnings of Agriculture to Classical Antiquity. Chicago: Aldine, 1966. 265

______. British Prehistory. London: Oxford University Press, 1944; reprint 1955.

Pospisil, Leonard. Kapauku Papuan Economy. Publications in Anthropology 67. New Haven: Yale University, Department of Anthropology, 1963.

Rickman, Geoffrey. Roman Granaries and Storebuildings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.

Rorig, Fritz. The Medieval Town. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.

Sauer, Carol 0. Agricultural Origins and Dispersals. New York: National Geographic Society, 1952.

Story, R. "Plant Lore of the Bushmen." Ecological Studies in Southern A fric a. Edited by D. H. S. Davish. Hague: Junk, 1964.

Tannahill, R. Food in History. New York: Stein and Day, 1973.

Torrens, R. An Essay on the External Corn Trade. London: Longman, 1815; repri nt I8Z7.

Ucko, P. J. and G. W. Dimbleby, eds. The Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and Animals. London: Duckworth, 1969.

Van Bath, B. H. S. The Agricultural History of Western Europe, A.D. 500- 1800. London: Edward Arnold, 1963.

Wallace, Ben. H ill and Valley Farmers. Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1970.

Walters, A. Harry. Ecology, Food & Civilisation. London: Charles Knight, 1973.

2. Articles: Journals, Magazines, Newspapers

Braidwood, R. J. and Reed, C. A. "The Achievement and Early Consequences of Food Production," Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology,XXII (1957), 19-31.

Helbaek, H. "Early Crops in Southern Britain." Proceedings of the Pre­ historic Society XVIII (1952), 194-233.

Kenyon, K. M. "Jericho and the Origins of Agriculture," Advancement of Science, XVII (1960), 119-31.

Marshall, John. "Hunting Among the Kalahari Bushmen," Natural History, LXVII (1958), 291-309; 376-95. 266

Rodden, R. J. "Excavation at the Early Neolithic Site at Nea Nikomedia, Greek Macedonia," Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, XXVIII (1962), 267-388.

White, K. D. "Wheat Farming in Roman Times," Antiquity, XXXVII (1963), 207-12.

Zohary, Daniel and Maria Hopf. "Domestication of Pulses in the Old World," Science, CLXXXII, No. 4115 (November, 1973), 887-94.

E. CONTEMPORARY WORLD FOOD PROBLEM (Including References on World Food Conference, Rome, November, 1974.)

1. Books

Aldrich, Daniel G. Research for the World Food C risis. Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1970.

American Assembly, The. The Population Dilemma. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University, 1969.

Berg, Alan. The Nutrition Factor. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution.

Borgstrom, George. Harvesting the Earth. New York: Abelard-Shuman, 1973.

______. The Hungry Planet: The Modern World at the Edge of Famine. New York: Macmillan, 1965.

______. Too Many: A Study of the Earth's Biological Limitations. London: Macmillan, 1969.

Bridger, Gordon and Maurice de Soissons. Famine in Retreat? The Fight Against Hunger: A Study and a Strategy. London: 0. M. Dent and Sons, 1970.

Brown, Harrison. The Challenge of Man's Future. New York: Viking Press, 1954.

Brown, Lester R. By Bread Alone. New York: Praeger for the Overseas Development Council, 1974.

______. In the Human Interest: A Strategy to Stabilize World Population. New York: W. W. Norton, 1974. 267

Carr-Saunders, A. M. World Population, Past Growth and Present Trends. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936.

Castro, Josue de. The Black Book of Hunger. Translated by Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1967.

Clark, Colin. Population Growth and Land Use. London: MacMillan, 1967.

Cockrane, W illard W. The World Food Problem--A Guardedly Optimistic View. New York: Crowell, 1969.

Edwin, Ed. Feast or Famine. New York: Charterhouse, 1974.

Ehrlich, Paul R. and Anne H. Population, Resources, Environment: Issues in Human Ecology. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1970.

G riffith , I. T. Population Problems of the Age of Malthus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926.

Hathaway, Dale E. "Food Prices and In fla tio n ." In Brookings Papers in Economic A c tiv ity . No. 1. Edited by Arthur George Pery. Washington, D.C.: Brookings In s titu tio n , 1974.

Heady, Earl 0 ., ed. Alternatives for Balancing World Food Production and Needs. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1967.

Hutchinson, Sir Joseph, ed. Population and Food Supply. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

Lowry, J. H. World Population and Food Supply. Maidenhead: Edward Arnold, 1970.

Mudd, Stuart, ed. The Population Crisis and the Use of World Resources. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966.

N icol, Hugh. The Limits of Man. London: Constable, 1967.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The Food Problem of Developing Countries. Paris: OECD, 1968.

Paddock, William and Paul. Famine--1975: America's Decision--Who Will Survive. Boston: L itt le , Brown, 1967.

Schnitter, John A. "The 1972-1973 Food Price S p iral." In Brookings Papers in Economic A ctivity. Washington, D.C.: Brookings In stitu tio n , 1973.

Shourie, H. D. UNCTAD—I I : A Step Forward. New Delhi: Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, 1968.

Simon, Arthur. Breaking Bread with the Hungry. Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsberg, 1971.

Wilson, Thomas. World Food: The P o litical Dimension. Washington, D.C.: Aspen In stitute for Humanist Studies, 1974. 268

2. A rticles: Journals, Magazines, Newspapers

Abbott, J. C. "The Efficient Use of World Protein Supplies," Monthly Bulletin of Agricultural Economics and Statistics, XXI (1972), 1-8.

Abercrombie. "Changing Views on the Man-Food Relationship," Ceres, IV (1971), 23-26.

Barraclough, Geoffrey. "The Great World Crisis, I," The New York Review of Books, XXI (January 22, 1975), 20-29.

Batisse, Michel. "Global Prospects fo r Natural Resources," Nature and Resources, X (January-March, 1974).

Borlaug, Norman. Interview. "The Shrinking Margin," Ceres, VII (March-April, 1974).

Borgstrom, Georg. "The Food-Population Dilemma," Science and Public Policy, I (December, 1974), 406-12.

Brown, Lester. "The Next Crisis? Food," Foreign Policy, No. 12 (Winter, 1973-74), 10-12.

Brown, Lester and Erik P. Eckholm. "Grim Reaping: This Year the Whole World is Short of Grain," New York Times, September 15, 1974, Section E, p. 6, cols. 1-4.

Choucri, N. and R. C. North. "Some Policy Implications of Population, Resources and Technology," World P o litic s , XXIV (1972), 80-122.

Drieberg, Trevor. "The Lessons of the Drought," Ceres, VII (March- April, 1974), 15.

Flores Edmundo. "Why There Is a Crisis," Ceres, VII (March-April, 1974), 8-11.

Id y ll, C. P. "The Anchovy C risis," S c ien tific American, CCXXVIII (June, 1973).

Jackson, Dudley. "The Third World Food C risis," New Society, May 17, 1974, pp. 381-82.

Lewis, Anthony. "Rome: Can the World Organize to Save Itself?" New York Times, November 10, 1974.

McLean, Mike and Mike Hopkins. "Problems of World Food and Agricul­ ture," Futures, VI (August, 1974), 309-18.

Mansholt, Sicco L. "Man or Pig?" Ceres, V II (May-June, 1974), 48-49.

Mayer, Jean. "Coping with Famine," Foreign A ffa irs , LI11 (October, 1974), 98-120. 269

Mesarovic, Mihajlo D. "Four Options for Tomorrow," Science and Public Policy, I (September, 1974).

Nanus, B. "The World of Hunger: A Management Challenge," Columbia Journal of World Business, VI (1971), 51-58.

Pimentel, David and others. "Food Production and the Energy C risis," Science, CLXXXII (November 21, 1973), 443-48.

Reubens, Edwin. "The Food Shortage Is Not Inevitable," Challenge, XVII (March-April, 1974), 48-52.

Revelle, Roger. "Food and Population," S cien tific American (September, 1974), 168-76.

"Surplus and Shortage: The Paradox of World Food Supplies," Barclays Bank Review, XLVI (London, 1971), 29-31.

3. Official National and International Publications

United Nations [World Food Conference]. Preliminary Assessment of the World Food Situation Present and Future. E/CONF.65/PREP y (April, 1974).

United Nations. Aftab Ahmad Khan. Rapporteur General. "Draft Report of the World Food Conference." Document E/CONF.65/L/3/Add; November 12, 1974.

United Nations. Economic and Social Council. World Food Conference: Report of the Preparatory Committee on its First Session. Document E/5454, February 20, 1974.

United Nations. Economic and Social Council. World Food Conference: Report of the Provision Preparatory Committee on its Second Session. Document E/5454, June 11, 1974.

United Nations. World Food Congress. Assessment of the World Food Situation: Present and Future. Item 8 of the Provisional Agenda. Document E/CONF. 653, n.d. (1974).

United Nations. World Food Conference. The World Food Problem: Proposals for National and International Action. Item 9 of the Provisional Agenda. Document E/CONF.65/4, August, 1974.

Food and Agricultural Organization. United Nations. Report of the Second World Food Congress. The Hague, Netherlands, June 10-30, 1970: Vol. I (1970). Document MR/A6252/11.70/E/1/7200, Rome, 1970.

Food and Agriculture Organization. United Nations. World Food Congress, A Report of the World Food Congress. Washington, D.C., June 4-18, 1963. Vol. I. Document 11/63/6600, Rome, 1963. 270

Food and Agriculture Organization. United Nations. Report of the World Food Congress: Major Addresses and Speeches. Vol. 11. Document 17942/2.65/E.1/2500, Rome, February, 1965.

Food and Agriculture Organization. United Nations. Report of the Second World Food Conference. Vol. 11. Document MR/A6252/2.71/E .1/7200, Rome, 1970.

United States Department of Agriculture. The World Food Situation and Prospects to 1985. Foreign Agricultural Economic Report No. 98. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing O ffice, 1974.

United States Department of State. Bureau of Public A ffairs. Special Report: World Food Situation. Publication 8769, July 1974.

Miscellaneous

Cottam, Howard R. "International Cooperation for Development." Notes for address delivered at University of Arizona, Spring 1971.

Herder, Richard. Vice-President, Eighth Federal Reserve Bank. Interview in Minneapolis, Minnesota, October, 1973.

F. GLOBALIZATION (Including Problems of the Modern World)

1. Books

Boulding, Kenneth. The Meaning of the Twentieth Century: The Great Transition. New York: Harper and Row, 1964.

______. "The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth." In Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy. Edited by Henry Jarrett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966.

______. "The Concept of World Interest." In Disarmament and Economic Development. Edited by Richard A. Falk and Saul H. Menlovitz. The Strategy of World Order. Vol. IV. New York: World Law Fund, 1966.

Brown, Lester. The Interdependence of Nations. Washington, D.C.: Foreign Policy Association, 1972.

Caldwell, Lynton Keith. Environment: A Challenge to Modern Society. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971.

Daly, Herman, ed. Toward a Steady State Economy. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1973.

Dobzhansky, Theodosius. Mankind Evolving: The Evolution of the Human Species. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962; reprint 1969. 271

Dubo, Rene and Barbara Ward. Only One Earth. New York: Norton, 1972.

E rlich, Paul A. and Anne H. Population, Resources, Environment: Issues in Human Ecology. Revised ed. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1973.

Falk, Richard A. This Endangered Planet. Random House, 1971.

Forrester, Jay Wright. World Dynamics. Cambridge, Mass.: Wright-Alien Press, 1971.

Fuller, R. Buckminster. Utopia or Oblivion: The Prospects for Humanity. New York: Bantam, 1969.

Goldsmith, Howard and others. Blueprint for Survival. Boston: Houghton M ifflin, 1972.

Hardin, Garrett James. Exploring New Ethics for Survival: The Voyage of the Spaceship Beagle. New York: Penguin, 1973.

Heilbroner, Robert L. An Inguiry into the Human Prospect. New York: W. W. Norton, 1974.

Huxley, Aldous. The P olitics of Ecology: The Question of Survival. Santa Barbara: Center for the Study of Democratic In stitutions, 1963.

Inger, Robert F. Man in the Living Environment. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press for The In stitu te of Ecology, 1972.

Kahn, Herman and B. Bruce-Briggs. Things to Come: Thinking about the Seventies and Eighties. New York: MacMillan, 1972.

McHale, John. The Ecological Context. New York: B ra z ille r, 1971.

McLuhan, Marshall. War in a Global V illag e. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969.

Meadows, Dennis and Done!la. The Limits to Growth: A Report of the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament of Mankind. New York: Universe, 1972.

Osborn, F a irfie ld . Limits of the Earth. Boston: L ittle , Brown, 1953.

Peccei, Aurelio. The Chasm Ahead. New York: Macmillan, 1969.

Steinhart, Carol E. and John S. Energy: Sources, Use and Role in Human A ffa irs . North Scituate, Mass.: Suxbury Press, 1974.

Thompson, William Irwin. Passages about Earth: An Exploration of the New Planetary Culture. New York: Harper and Row, 1974.

______. On the Edge of History. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. Ill

Wagar, W. Warren. Building the City of Man: Outlines of a World C iv iliz a tio n . New York: Grossman, 1971.

Wagner, Philip L. The Human Use of the Earth. New York: The Free Press, 1960.

Ward, Barbara. Spaceship Earth. New York: Columbia University Press, 1966.

2. A rticles: Journals, Magazines, Newspapers

Darling, F. Fraser. "The Danger of Simplified Ecosystems." Transactions of the New York Academy of Science XXII (April 1960), 408-18.

Hardin, Garrett. "The Tragedy of the Commons." Science, CLXII (December 13, 1968), 1243-1248.

White, Lynn H., Jr. "The Historic Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis." Science CLV (March 10, 1967).

G. POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

1. Books

Alexandrowicz, Charles Henry. World Economic Agencies. New York: Praeger, 1962.

Angel 1, Robert. Peace on the March: Transnational Participation. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1969.

Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959.

Aron, Raymond. Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966.

B a ll, R. J. The International Linkage of National Economic Models. Amsterdam: North Holland, 1973.

Barnet, Richard J. and Muller, Ronald E. Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporation. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974.

Barros, R. J.,ed. The United Nations: Past, Present, and Future. New York: Free Press, 1972.

Black, C. E. The Dynamics of Modernization. New York: Harper and Row, 1967.

Boulding, Kenneth. "The Concept of World Interest." In Disarmament and Economic Development. Edited by Richard A. Falk and Saul H. Mendlovitz. New York: World Law Fund, 1966. 273

Brown, Michael Barratt. After Imperialism. London: Heinemann, 1970.

Brown, Seyom. New Forces in World P o litic s . Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1974.

Camps, Miriam. The Management of Interdependence: A Preliminary View. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1974.

Carr, Edward Hallett. Nationalism and After. London: MacMillan, 1968.

______. The Twenty Year Crisis: An Introduction to the Study of Inter­ national Relations. London: MacMillan, 1939; reprint, 1961.

Claude, Inis L ., Jr. The Changing United Nations. New York: Random House, 1967.

______. Swords into Plowshares: The Problems and Progress of In te r­ national Organizations. New York: Random House, 1964.

Cox, Robert W. International Organization: World P o litic s . London: MacMillan, 1969. de Hevesy, Paul. The Unification of the World. London: Pergamon, 1966.

Dunn, F. S. The Practice and Procedure of International Conferences. Baltimorel Johns Hopkins, 1929.

E tzioni, Amitai. The Active Society. New York: Free Press, 1968.

Falk, Richard A. What's Wrong with Henry Kissinger's Foreign Policy. Princeton: Princeton University; Center of International Studies, July 1974.

Galtung, Johann. "On the Future of the International System." In Mankind: 2000. Edited by Robert Jungk and Johan Galtung. London: Allen and Unwin, 1967.

Geiger, Theodore. The Fortunes of the West: The Future of the Atlantic Nations. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1973.

Goodspeed, Stephen S. The Nature and Function of International Organization. New York: Oxford Press, 1967.

Gottman, Jean. The Significance of Territory. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1973.

Gregg, Robert W. and Michael Barkun. The United Nations System and Its Functions. Princeton: D. Van Nostrand, 1965.

Gross, Bertram M. The Managing of Organizations. Vol. I I . New York: Free Press, 1964.

Haas, Ernst B. Tangle of Hopes: American Commitments and World Order. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1960. 274

______. The Uniting of Europe. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959.

Haas, Michael. International Systems: A Behavioral Approach. New York: Chandler, 1974.

H ill, Norman. The Public International Conference. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1922.

Huxley, T. H. and J. S. Touchstone for Ethics. New York: Harper and Row, 1947.

Jackson, Sir Robert. A Study of the Capacity of the United Nations Development System^ Vol. 2. Geneva: United Nations, 1969.

Jenks, C. W ilfred. The World Beyond the Charter. London: Allen and Unwin, 1969.

Kaplan, Morton. Macropolitics: Selected Essays on the Philosophy and Science of Politics. Chicago: Aldine, 1969.

Kaufmann, Johan. Conference Diplomacy. Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana Publications, 1968.

Kay, David A. and Eugene B. Skolnikoff. World Eco-Crisis: International Organizations in Response. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1972.

Keohane, Robert 0. and Joseph S. Nye. "World P olitics and the In te r­ national Economic System." The Future of the International Order: An Agenda for Research. Edited by C. Fred Bergson. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973.

Kissinger, Henry A. "Power and Diplomacy." In The Dimensions of Diplomacy. Edited by E. A. J. Johnson. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Univer­ s ity Press, 1967.

Knorr, Klaus and James N. Rosenau. Contending Approaches to International Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.

Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of S cientific Revolutions. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.

Lasswell, Harold D. Politics: Who Gets What, When, How. New York: Pete Smith, 1950.

Laszlo, Erwin. A Strategy for the Future. The Systems Approach to World Order. New York: B ra z ille r, 1974.

Luard, Evan. The Evolution of International Organization. London: Thames and Hudson, 1966.

Magdoff, Harry. The Age of Imperialism: Economics of United States Foreign P olicy. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969. 275

M aily, Gerhard. The European Community in Perspective: The New Europe, the United States and the World. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973.

Mesarovic, Mihajlo and Edward Pestel. Mankind at the Turning Point. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1974.

Michels, Robert. Political Parties: a Sociological Study of the Tendencies of Modern Democracy. New York: Dover, 1915, 1970.

M ille r, Lynn H. Organizing Mankind: An Analysis of Contemporary In te r­ national Organization. Boston: Holbrook, 1972.

Mitrany, David. "The Prospect of Integration: Federal or Functional?" In International Regionalism. Edited by Joseph Nye. Boston: Little, Brown, 1968.

______. A Working Peace System. New York: Quadrangle Books, 1966.

______. A Working Peace System. 4th ed. London: National Peace Council, 1946.

Mumford, Lewis. The Transformations of Man. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1956.

Morenthau, Hans. P olitics Among Nations. 4th ed. New York: Knopf, 1967.

Nye, J. S. Peace in Parts: Integration and Conflict in Regional Organization. Boston: L ittle , Brown, 1971.

Odum, Eugene. Fundamentals of Ecology. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Company, 1959; rep rin t, 1969.

Pareto, Vilfredo. The Rise and Fall of the E lite s . Totowa, N.J.: Bedminster Press, 1968.

Plano, Jack C. and Robert E. Riggs. Forging World Order: The Politics of International Organization. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1967.

Presthus, Robert. The Organizational Society. New York: Vintage, 1962.

Reinsch, Paul S. Public International Unions. Boston: Ginn, 1911.

Reuter, Paul. International In stitu tio n s. New York: Rinehart, 1958.

Rosenau, James N. Linkage Politics: Essays on the Convergence of National and International Systems. New York: Free Press, 1969.

Schelling, Thomas. The Strategy of C onflict. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960. 276

Schumpeter, Joseph A. The Theory of Economic Development. New York: Oxford University Press, 1961.

Schwebel, Stephen M. The Effectiveness of International Decisions. Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana Publications, 1971.

Sewell, James Patrick. Functionalism and World Politics: A Study Based on United Nations Programs Financing Economic Development. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966.

Skolnikoff, Eugene B. The International Imperatives of Technology. Research Series No. 16. Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1972.

Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. New York: Modern Library, 1937.

Sprout, Harold and Margaret. An Ecological Paradigm for the Study of International Politics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University, Center of International Studies, March, 1968.

______. Man-Milieu Relationship Hypotheses in the Context of Inter­ national Politics. Princeton, N.J.: Center of International Studies, 1956.

______. Toward a Politics of the Planet Earth. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1971.

Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Translatedby Rex Warner. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1972.

Twitchett, Kenneth J. and Carol Ann Cosgrove, eds. The New Interna­ tional Actors: The United Nations and the European Economic Community. London: Macmillan Co., 1970.

Vickers, Geoffrey. "Is Adaptability Enough?" In Behavioral Science, IV (1959). Reprinted in Modern Systems Research for the Behavioral S c ien tist. Edited by Walter Buckley. Chicago: Aldine, 1968.

Walters, Francis P. A History of the League of Nations. London: Oxford, 1952; reprint, 1960.

Waltz, Kenneth. Man and the State and War. New York: Columbia University Press, 1959.

Wilcox, Francis 0. and Carl M. March. Proposals for Changes in the United Nations. Washington, D.C.: Brookings In stitu tio n , 1955.

Yearbook of International Organizations. Brussels: Union of Inter­ national Organizations, 1968-1969.

Young, Oran. Systems of P o litical Science. Englewood C liffs , N.J.: Prentice-Hal1 , 1968. 277

Zimmern, Alfred E. The League of Nations and the Rule of Law: 1918- 1935. London: Macmillan, 1936.

2. Articles: Journals, Magazines, Newspapers

Angell, Robert. "National Support for World Order," Conflict Resolution, XVII (September, 1973), 429-54.

Bergson, C. Fred. "The Response to the Third World," Foreign Policy, No. 17 (Winter, 1974-75), 3-34.

______. "The Threat is Real," Foreign Policy, No. 14 (Spring, 1974), 84-87.

Bull, Hedley. "Order versus Justice in International Society," P olitical Studies, XXVI, No. 19 (1971), 18-283. de Seynes, Philippe. "Prospects for a Future Whole World," International Organization, XXVI (Winter, 1972), 1-17.

Falk, Richard. "Toward Equilibrium in the World Order System," Proceedings of the American Society of International Law (September, 1970), 217-24.

Frolich, Norman. "Self Interest or Altruism, What Difference?" Conflict Resolution, XVII (March, 1974), 55-73.

Hoffman, Stanley. "Obstinate or Obsolete? The Fate of the Nation- State and the Case of Western Europe," Daedalus, XCIV (Summer, 1966), 862-915.

Kennan, George F. "To Prevent a World Wasteland: A Proposal," Foreign A ffa irs , XLVIII (A p ril, 1970), 401-13.

Keohane, Robert 0. and Joseph S. Nye, eds. "Transnational Relations and World Politics," International Organization, XXV (Summer, 1971).

Lijphart, Arend. "The Structure of the Theoretical Revolution in International Relations." International Studies Quarterly, XVIII (March, 1974), 41-74.

Livingston, Dennis. "Science Fiction Models of Future World Order Systems," International Organization, XXV (1971), 254-70.

Orr, Lord Boyd. "The Food Problem," S cien tific American, CLXXXIII (August, 1950), 72-91.

Puchala, Donald and Stuart Fagan. "International Politics in the 1970's: The Search for a Perspective," International Organization, XXVIII, 247-66. 278

Rosenfeld, Steven. "The Politics of Food." Foreign Policy, No. 13 (September, 1974), 17-34.

Schertz, Lyle P. "World Food Prices and the Poor," Foreign Affairs, No. 52 (April, 1974), 511-37.

Scrimshaw, Nevin. "Good," S cien tific American, CCIX (September, 1963), 72-91.

Singer, J. David and Michael Wallace. "Intergovernmental Organization in the Global System, 1815-1964: A Quantitative Description," International Organization, XXIV (Spring, 1970), 239-87.

Vickers, Geoffrey. "Is Adaptability Enough?" Behavioral Science, IV (1959), 219-34.

Wallace, Michael and J. David Singer. "Intergovernmental Organization in the Global System, 1815: A Quantitative Description," International Organization, XXIV (Spring, 1970), 239-87.

Walters, Robert. "International Organization and Political Communi­ cation: The Use of UNCTAD by Less Developed Countries," International Organization, XXV (Autumn, 1971), 818-35.

Ward, Barbara. "The Fat Years and the Lean," The Economist, November 2, 1974, pp. 19-25.

3. Official National and International Publications; Miscellaneous

Cottam, Howard R. "Internationalism: David Lubin Model," Address at Stockton, California, April, 1973.

United Nations. Food and Agriculture Organization. Report on the World Food Program by the Executive D irector. Document 27400/ 12/65/E/1/3600, Rome, 1965.

U.S. Department of State Bulletin, LXXI (October 21, 1974), 525.

U.S. Senate. A Decade of American Foreign Policy: Basic Documents, 1941-49. Senate Document No. 123, 81st Congress, 1st Session. Washington: Government Printing O ffice, 1950, Part IV.