Global Food & Agriculture Memo: Afghanistan Expanding Pomegranate Farming, Launching $12 Million U.S.-Funded Marketing and Export Program

Ali Akbar, an Afghan pomegranate seller, arranges his product during the World Pomegranate Fair in Badam Bagh Farm in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Nov 20, 2008. Afghan officials have launched a marketing and export campaign for the fruit in the hope that it will give farmers an alternative to growing poppies. (Photo Credit: AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool.)

Afghanistan has been producing the ancient fruit, the pomegranate, know as the Anar in the various regional tribal language spoken there, for about as long as the ancient country has existed in its many forms, from Kingdom to colony and now potentially budding Democracy.

The fruit however has historically been produced by Afghanistan's farmers primarily for national consumption and limited export to neighboring countries, despite the country's capacity to produce enough of the fruit for export.

Today many government officials and others in the country believe and hold out hope that exporting pomegranates could be a positive replacement for Afghanistan's current number one export crop -- the opium poppy.

And such an initiative was announced last week in Afghanistan.

With the help of a $12 million initiative funded by the United States, Afghanistan's government, farmers and others are planning to improve and expand pomegranate farming and processing in the country and launch a global export industry and marketing program designed to sell lots of Afghanistan-produced pomegranates throughout the world, as well as to attempt to position the ancient fruit long-grown in the ancient land as the best pomegranate on the planet.

Last year, Afghanistan exported its first pomegranates to outlets of the French hypermarket chain Carrefour in the Kingdom of Dubai, according to a report by the Associated Press. The fruit, larger and redder than many pomegranates imported from Turkey or North Africa, was a hit. Carrefour, which is the world's second-largest retailer after Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., quickly placed orders for all its Middle East stores, according to U.S. funders and Afghan officials.

This successful effort served as the impetus for the newly launched $12 million, U.S.-funded improvement, marketing and export plan.

Read the story, "Afghanistan markets its brand of pomegranates," from the Associated Press here

Opium production and export has long plagued Afghanistan. And in recent years the production of the crop has soared because the now re-emergent Taliban group is using the growing and sales of the poppy to fund there attempted return to power in the country and war against the elected government and U.S. and NATO troops.

The government under elected President Hamid Karzai has been reluctant to launch a mass poppy eradication program in the country because like it or not, without the poppy crop not only would there be millions more impoverished people in already impoverished Afghanistan, but the central government's major source of revenue besides U.S. aid, taxes paid by citizens, (few people pay taxes in the country but without the poppy crop even fewer would) would likely disappear.

President Karzai has long been arguing for financial assistance to build Afghanistan's agricultural sector. At one time the country was a solid agricultural producer in the region, before the war in the 1980's with the then Soviet Union, before the Taliban took over following that war, and before the current war following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S. But that's been decades ago now -- decades of war and destruction of the country's infrastructure, which wasn't exactly good before that.

Many analysts and others are skeptical is an agricultural improvement, exporting and marketing program can work in the war-torn country, as you can read in the AP piece. However, Natural~Specialty Foods Memo believes it is well worth the $12 billion effort.

We also think the west, the U.S., Canada and Europe, where pomegranate sales have soared in the last few years, should do everything the nations can to open the door to the Afghanistan-grown fruit. After all, it is in the U.S. and Europe where most of the illegal drugs produced from Afghan poppies are bought and used.

The U.S. government under current President George W. Bush has been very vocal about wanting programs to eradicate the opium poppies in Afghanistan. Therefore both the U.S. and Europe should become part of the potential solution, the building of Afghanistan's agricultural and food industry starting with the pomegranate, by doing all that can be done to speeding up the process of allowing Afghanistan-produced pomegranates into the western markets.

Earlier today we wrote and published this piece, " about California-based Paramount Farms and its success in branding and marketing fresh pomegranates and value-added pomegranate products like fresh juice teas and other items under the POM Wonderful brand. William Phillimore, the company's executive vice president, was in Kabul, Afghanistan last Wednesday for the launch of the pomegranate export and marketing program, a marketing effort the California company might play a part in.

Phillimore, who works for the company most responsible for boosting consumer demand for pomegranates and pomegranate-based products in the U.S., said at the kick off event: Afghan pomegranates are "as good as anything I've tasted," adding that he thought there is plenty of room in the U.S. market for pomegranates exported from the country, despite the fact Paramount Farms is the largest U.S. grower of domestic pomegranates.

While Afghanistan remains a war-torn country, and in fact all signs are that things are about the worse they've been in the ancient land since the now resurgent Taliban were defeated in 2002, we think it important that initiatives such as the $12 million pomegranate marketing and export plan be initiated. Afghanistan needs economic development programs like this to build not only its economy but also its civil society. The people need reasons not to support the Taliban, and jobs, a decent economy and the civil society that comes with those things are just as important as winning in combat in terms of the outlook for and ultimate state of the country.

After all, it was such a vacuum that was created not so long ago right after the former Soviets were driven out of Afghanistan that paved the way for Taliban rule, which not only created a totalitarian state but also wiped out any economic progress the country had made prior to the war with the former Soviet Union, which of course we all know today as Russia.

Therefore we cheer the pomegranate export and marketing program. And having eaten an Afghanistan-produced pomegranate, we can tell you they indeed are delicious and of a very high quality, which is distinguished by the bright purple color and smoothness of the ancient fruit produced for so long in the ancient land of Afghanistan.

Additionally, on average, Afghanistan's farmers make about $2,000 per acre with pomegranates, versus $1,320 per acre growing opium poppies, according to currently available data. Therefore, if the west opens its markets to pomegranates grown in Afghanistan, the economic premium of producing the fruit over the poppies could, with this expanded export market and thus increased demand for pomegranates, serve as an economic incentive to get the country's farmers to switch from growing poppy to pomegranate. It's worth a try.

Global Food & Agriculture Memo: Will Parts of the Underdeveloped World Become the New Breadbaskets for Companies and Nations in the Developed World?

The practice of tenant farming primarily by family farmers was a common practice in the United States and elsewhere in the western more-developed world until the Dust Bowl years and the Great Depression of the 1930's, which when over ushered in what we see today as modern family-owned farming and corporate agribusiness in the west.

The tenant farming practice (also referred to as sharecropping, which in the U.S. was a common practice during the long period of slavery but also included poor whites), in which farmers rent land from landowners and then share a major portion of the profits from the sale of their crops with the landowners, still goes on in parts of the underdeveloped world. However, in nearly all of these situations the landowners, who reap the majority of the benefits from the arrangement, and the farmers, who are poor and willing to crow crops on land they don't own because they basically have no alternative, are local landlords and poor folks living in the countries where this practice continues today.

This practice, which most people would like to eliminate altogether and replace by giving the tenant farmers in these underdeveloped countries a helping hand to buy the land they work, is making a major comeback though -- but in a corporate way, including the new landowners being corporations and even nation's (Kingdoms mostly) based far away from the underdeveloped countries where the practice is starting to occur.

For example, South Korea's Daewoo Logistics this week announced it had negotiated a 99-year lease on some 3.2 million acres of farmland on the dirt-poor tropical island of Madagascar, off southern Africa's Indian Ocean coast. That's nearly half of Madagascar's arable land, according to the U.N.'s Food and Agricultural Organization, and Daewoo plans to put about three quarters of it under corn. The remainder will be used to produce palm oil - a key commodity for the global biofuels market, according to a story in Time magazine today.

According to the piece in Time.com, 'A Daewoo manager, Hong Jong-wan, told the Financial Times newspaper recently that the crops would "ensure our food security," and would use "totally undeveloped land which had been left untouched."' 'Land is scarce and expensive in South Korea, which makes it the world's third-largest importer of corn. Daewoo says the Madagascar land will be leased for a price of around $12 an acre, which is a fraction of the price for farmland in the corporation's home country,' according to Time.

South Korea's Daewoo, a huge conglomerate which might be best known for the automobiles of the same name, isn't the only entity looking to acquire mass-acreage outside its own nation to grow and then export food back to the country where the company is based.

Time magazine reports in today's article that 'Africa's fertile soil certainly appeals to the countries of the oil-rich Persian Gulf, whose vast deserts force them to import most of their food.'

"The Gulf states have an incredible surplus to invest and now that the old economies are facing recession they are looking at Africa," says Marie Bos, an analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. 'Although such wealthy countries as South Korea and the Gulf states are easily able to pay for food imports, this turmoil on global food markets may have increased the incentive for food-importing countries to secure their own sources of supply,' writes Vivenne Walt in Time.

Read the full article, "The Breadbasket of South Korea: Madagascar," from today's Time.com here.

This new development in global agriculture, should it become widespread, could change the way crops are grown and food is marketed over time in the world.

For example, if foreign corporations based in Asia like Daewoo, and Kingdoms like those in the middle east mentioned in the story, acquire tens or hundreds of millions of acres of land in underdeveloped countries like Africa and then grow crops for exportation exclusively back to their respective home nations, such a practice could seriously hamper the underdeveloped nations' ability to produce food for its own peoples as well as to eventually develop an agricultural exportation industry which would create jobs.

On the other hand, if it is true like Daewoo says that in its case the 3.2 million acres of land its acquired is otherwise useless land for farming, then the practice would seem to use to be much more benign. We find it hard to believe though that most corporations and foreign nations would be searching for useless land to create their overseas farming programs on. The logic of doing so goes counter to common sense and would seem to result in vastly higher expenses in initial and ongoing land improvements than any for-profit company would want to make, although in the case of Daewoo it is subsidized by the South Korean government. Time will tell if this is the case or not we suspect.

Most important though for Africa and other similar underdeveloped countries is being able to feed their own peoples through a domestic agricultural industry, something they aren't even able to do at present, despite an abundance of land. The mass ownership of land in these countries by foreign corporations and nations also makes it much less likely tenant farmers in these places will be able to own the land they farm anytime in the future.

This emerging new form of corporate and nationalistic global agriculture also could have implications for changes in food exportation. For example, it's likely a giant company like Daewoo would for example sell any surplus product, either in commodity or value-added form, it produces in Africa beyond what the South Korean market doesn't demand, especially if selling it globally to say European countries brings in a significant financial premium.

Many corporations already produce crops on lands outside the countries those firms are based in. However most operate on a corporate agribusiness model rather than using tenant farming practices. And the practice is nowhere as widespread as it would be if other corporations follow the Daewoo model of grabbing massive acreages in one fell swoop.

It's also qualitatively different because the corporations like Daewoo, and the middle eastern nations looking to do the same thing, aren't producing crops in these lands to then sell in these same countries and globally. Instead the express purpose of this overseas farming practice is to bring most if not all of the crops back to their respective home countries.

If such a practice were to prove successful, we could see numerous other corporations copying it. After all, land and labor is far cheaper and much more available in these underdeveloped countries than it is in Europe and even North America. Crops could be produced in Africa and elsewhere using super-low labor (tenant farmers) and then sold at reduced prices globally. This practice also has the potential, if it became widespread, of undercutting agribusiness company's and family farmers in places like the United States, Canada and Europe -- and even Mexico and Central America -- which in all cases likely have higher costs of labor and certainly higher land and production costs for the crops they produce.

This emerging new global farming practice is one worthy of watching closely in our analysis.

Food Safety Memo: U.S. President-Elect Obama Said to Plan On Beefing Up FDA Enforcement, Regulations; Speculation Rampant On New FDA Chief

USA: Election 2008 Special Report

For the last few years under the administration of President George W. Bush, the United States has experienced food safety after food safety problem, with both domestically-grown fresh produce and imported foods.

For example, there have been the major salmonella outbreaks from domestically-grown fresh produce -- first in bagged spinach and lettuce greens, then in Roma tomatoes and peppers. Numerous people died from these outbreaks and many more fell ill.

Then there's been the host of food safety problems from imported foods. The most recent one being Chinese-produced powdered and fluid milk intentionally contaminated with melamine, along with products like candy made in China with the adulterated milk. Additionally, there have been many others as well, including contaminated snack foods from China and candy from Mexico with high lead content, to name just two incidents.

None of the adulterated Chinese powdered milk made it to U.S. shores. But some of the melamine-laced candy did. Fortunately it has thus far been discovered and pulled off the shelves of Asian food stores in the U.S. before it could harm consumers.

Milk laced with higher than trace amounts of melamine, like the Chinese milk and milk-related products have been, can cause serious kidney damage, particularly in small children. As of yet there haven't been any reported deaths or cases of serious illness in the U.S. from the milk-based candy containing melamine.

Most experts and observers -- including many agricultural and food industry companies -- blame the rash of food safety problems in both domestic and imported foods in the U.S. on the deregulation policies over the last eight years of the Bush Administration, along with a lack of proper funding of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) by both the President and Congress.

The lack of enforcement is likely to change under the new administration of President-Elect Brarack Obama though, Neera Tanden, a senior Obama advisor, tells the Associated Press (AP).

Food safety will be a priority for Obama's FDA, she says. "He (Obama) thinks this is a fundamental role of government to ensure that people's food is safe and he has been concerned that we are not in a position to ensure that."

Read the AP's full report (in Italics) below:

Obama expected to bolster FDA oversigh for domestic, imported foods
By Ricardo Alonzo-Zaldivar
October 10, 2008

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), bedeviled by a salmonella outbreak and tainted medicine and milk from China, is likely to monitor imports and fresh produce more closely under an Obama administration.

With President Bush no longer a roadblock, health officials also can expect new powers to control tobacco, from cigarettes to the recently introduced smokeless products called snus.

President-elect Obama, a former smoker struggling to avoid relapse, is a sponsor of legislation giving the FDA authority to control, but not ban, tobacco and nicotine.

Long seen as the government's premier consumer protection agency, the FDA stumbled under Bush. Recurring drug and food safety lapses came against a backdrop of shrinking budgets and long periods without a permanent leader. In Congress, a senior Republican complained the FDA had gotten too cozy with industry.

Obama is being urged to move quickly to appoint an FDA commissioner. Already more than a half-dozen names are in circulation: outside critics such as Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Dr. Steven Nissen; insiders such as Susan Wood, a former director of the FDA's women's health office; and public health advocates such as Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, Baltimore's health chief.

Food safety will be a priority for Obama's FDA. "He thinks this is a fundamental role of government to ensure that people's food is safe and he has been concerned that we are not in a position to ensure that," said Neera Tanden, a senior campaign adviser.

Obama will be working with a Democratic-led Congress, including lawmakers who have written legislation to bolster import inspections.

Only a fraction of imported food is inspected now. Foreign drug manufacturing plants can go years without an FDA visit. Democrats had considered fees on industry to pay for more FDA inspectors, but could not persuade the Bush administration to go along. They expect Obama to be receptive.

Tanden said Obama is open to the idea of requiring a tracing system for fresh produce. That became an issue during this summer's salmonella outbreak, after the FDA spent weeks hunting for tainted tomatoes only to find the culprit might have been hot peppers.

"An Obama administration would swing the pendulum back more to protection of public health," said William Hubbard, a retired FDA official who held top posts. "This bodes well for greater regulation in the food safety area, on imports, and on drug safety."

Under the tobacco proposal, the agency would be able to order changes in tobacco products to make them less toxic and addictive, but could not ban tobacco or nicotine. The bill passed the House and Senate with bipartisan support, but a veto threat from Bush kept it from getting out of Congress.

Aides to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., co-author of the tobacco bill, say there is strong interest in getting the legislation passed soon after the new Congress convenes in January. Obama is a co-sponsor.

Natural~Specialty Foods Memo Issue Analysis

As the AP story also discusses, speculation is rampant over who President-Elect Obama will name to head the FDA. The names are all informed speculation right now. But one thing we know for sure is Obama won't carry the current Bush Administration FDA chief over into his administration like some are suggesting he might do with Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The stories linked below further discuss and offer some analysis about the speculation on who Obama might name to head the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, including naming names:

Scientific American - November 7, 2008: Speculation swirls about Obama's EPA and FDA heads....Baltimore Sun - November 7, 2008: Baltimore's Sharfstein mentioned as possible FDA commissioner....Bloomberg - November 6, 2008: Woodcock Gains Support From Drugmakers for US FDA's Top Job. [Note: We think former Senator and Democratic candidate for President in 2004 Howard Dean, who is a medical doctor and announced yesterday he plans to leave his position as chairman of the Democratic Party when it is up next year, could be a candidate as well for FDA Commissioner, although we peg him more likely for Suregeon General if President-Elect Obama names him to a post in the administration.]

The Obama Administration isn't likely to get much opposition to strengthening the regulation of domestic and imported fresh produce and other foods from America's agriculture and food industries. For the last couple years the industries has been lobbying the Bush Administration for stronger enforcement of regulations , and higher FDA budgets, because the numerous food safety problems have not only hurt sales, they've also damaged the reputation of the food and agriculture industries among consumers.

In fact, earlier this year, the Bush Administration added a a couple billion dollars to the budget of the FDA as a reaction both to the numerous food safety problems as well as in response to requests directly from the industry to do so.

There's a particular across the board concern about stopping the food safety problems from goods imported into the U.S. -- and China just happens to be the country that time and again has had the most serious problems.

The U.S. (and the world) is locked in a financial and credit crisis, the U.S. is in an economic recession and the U.S. government has a record deficit and debt.

So far Since $700 billion has been appropriated -- $700 billion the U.S. doesn't have in real money -- to bail out America's banks and financial institutions.

Another nearly $100 billion has already been spent for a economic stimulus package (tax rebates to citizens). Those checks went out months ago and have seemed to do little to help the U.S. economy.

Congress is now talking about another stimulus package of $100 -to- $125 billion, perhaps enacted before the year is over.

Add just these three items together and you are talking about one trillion dollars. And there is more spending to come.

And of course, the U.S. doesn't have this trillion dollars. Rather, it just fires up the government printing presses, already running 24 hours a day, prints the currency, and then sells government-backed securities to the Chinese, Saudis, Japanese and Europeans to back the new money, greater a bigger deficit.

With the financial crisis and economic recession situation so pressing, we wonder how fast the Obama Administration will want to and be able to move on beefing up the FDA, which will cost at least a couple billion more to start? The new President can issue an immediate order right away though when he takes office on January 20, telling the agency the days of lax regulation enforcement are over, which should help if it does nothing else but sends a clear message to the tens of thousands who work at the FDA.

It's clear the economy is domestic priority number one for the President-Elect, who becomes the 44th U.S. President in 72 days. And that is how it should be. But it's also clear food safety will be pressed on the new President as a top concern as well -- from consumer advocates, health officials and even the food and agricultural industries.

It's going to be a tough, and expensive, 2009. But that's what HOPE is all about -- along with some good plans and strategies -- and a whole lot of good luck along with them.

Food & Society Guest Memo: While It Won't Result in Starvation; Japan Faces Self-Created Butter Shortage None the Less

Butter spread thin in Japan

Bread is buttered on neither side as the milk product has become hard to find. There are reasons, but try telling that to the bakeries.

By Bruce Wallace, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

May 18, 2008

TOKYO -- The food shortage that has hit Japan is announced by the glaring gap on supermarket shelves next to the margarine and the sour cream and just above the cheese.

The butter shelf is empty.

The rich yellow stuff has all but vanished from grocery stores across Japan, with the world's second-biggest economy, where fine foods are prized and aisles otherwise groan with abundance. Some stores have tried to ration the few bricks that occasionally arrive by limiting customers to a pack or two, but in most places merchants have been reduced to posting signs apologizing for having none.

Nor does anyone know when butter will be back. Japanese milk production has dropped over the last two years, leaving less available to be churned into butter.

Even bakeries that buy in bulk are finding it hard to get enough, which crimps their ability to turn out the croissants, cakes and quiches that have shouldered their way into the Japanese diet.

"We're in trouble," says Seiko Nakano, 27, who runs Levain, a small but well-known French bakery in a residential neighborhood of Tokyo, who has been told she will not receive any more butter until Tuesday, a month later than expected.

In an attempt to stretch its stock, the bakery has cut down on the number of pies it produces and cut out the extra croissants it usually bakes for the weekend rush.

"We've had to come up with some new items that use less butter, like cookies," Nakano says, standing in front of cleaned-out shelves on a weekday afternoon. "But you're talking about flavor. How can you replace butter?"

As global food shortages and ballooning prices are rocking the desperately poor from Africa to Southeast Asia, Japan's pastry problems qualify as barely more than an inconvenience. No one expects the famously controlled Japanese to riot in the refrigerated sections of supermarkets.

But the case of the disappearing butter has unnerved people here, delivering a psychological blow to shoppers utterly unaccustomed to dealing with shortages.

The butter deficit arises from a convergence of market factors that has chased hundreds of domestic dairy farmers out of business in the last two years. The sequence began when Japanese consumers began to drink less milk, a decline that coincided with a deluge of media coverage airing claims that milk is bad for your health.

Experts say consumption also has been affected by a low birthrate, which means fewer elementary school students getting a free daily carton.

The shrinking demand left the country so awash in milk two years ago that producers on the northern island of Hokkaido were dumping it down sewers. A Hokkaido beer company tried to use some of the excess by brewing a low-malt beer that was one-third milk. Called "bilk" and described as having a sweet taste, the concoction didn't catch on.

But though popularity has declined for milk as a beverage, its use in the production of cheese is expected to jump 15% this year, and demand for the less profitable butter holds steady. The result, the Japanese dairy association explains, is that there is not much milk left to make butter.

"We have plenty of milk; just no butter," dairy deliveryman Kazunari Shimakura says as he unloads cartons of milk outside Levain. Shimakura had never seen a shortage in his 20 years of delivering supplies. When he parks his truck these days, people come up to ask whether he can sell them a pack or two of butter on the side.

Last month, the government stepped in to urge the country's four largest dairy product companies to churn out more butter. And the agriculture board is moving up its scheduled purchases of butter imported from Australia and elsewhere by six months in an attempt to get some back on the shelves. Japan imports about 10% of its butter, but usually does not go to international markets until fall.

This year's butter imports are expected to hit an all-time high and are almost certain to send prices sharply higher.

Food & Society Guest Memo: Policies That Are Making Global Food Crisis Worse

Policies that are making food crisis worse
Rich, poor countries alike contribute to the problem
By SEBASTIAN MALLABY

We are now several months into the global food crisis, which is a much bigger deal than the subprime meltdown for most people in the world. Food prices have almost doubled in three years, threatening to push 100 million people into absolute poverty, undoing much of the development progress of the past few years. The hunger has triggered riots from Haiti to Egypt to Ethiopia, threatening political stability; it has conjured up a raft of protectionist policies, threatening globalization. And yet the response to this crisis from governments the world over has been lackadaisical or worse.

Start with the lunatic story of rice stockpiles in Japan. A new paper from the Center for Global Development describes how Japan's government imports rice to comply with its global trade commitments but withholds most of that rice from consumers lest they decide they prefer it to the local sort. Japanese traditionalists view the consumption of sticky, short-grained rice as a patriotic duty. So rather than letting prototypical Mrs. Watanabe corrupt her children's dietary habits, Japan stores much of its imported rice until it has become unfit for human consumption, whereupon it is sold to feed livestock.

From the perspective of Japan, stockpiling rice is a costly exercise in chauvinism, but Japan can afford that. From the world's perspective, the stockpiling is more serious. More than 3 billion people depend on rice as their daily staple, and half of them are very poor. Japan could save many of them from hunger if it released its stocks.

The scandal is not just Japanese, however. For Japan to sell its rice outside its borders, it needs permission from the countries that supplied it -- the United States, Thailand and Vietnam.

A bit of U.S. leadership could deliver that permission easily, but the Bush administration is apparently worried about a backlash from American rice wholesalers, who see no downside in high prices, thank you very much.

Congress passed a farm bill last week with thunderous bipartisan support. The bill includes reasonable subsidies for low-income Americans hit by high food prices, but it also sprays money at farmers who already earn more than the average taxpayer and it contains shockingly little for the world's poor. Congress is considering a separate bill that would boost international food aid more substantially. But that measure has been met with shameful indifference by lawmakers and consequently has stalled.

Congress won't even act on a common sense proposal from the Bush administration that food aid be reformed. If the United States bought some of the food that it donates from other countries, it could get aid to the needy faster and more cheaply. But that would upset American farmers and shipping interests, as a new Council on Foreign Relations paper emphasizes. The president's proposal has few takers on the Hill.

The Europeans, for their part, have their own way of entrenching hunger. Just as Japan is wedded to its rice culture, Europe is irrationally hostile to genetically modified food. Study after study has found no danger in seeds that have been manipulated to grow better, withstand insects or survive in arid soil. But the Europeans still feel squeamish, and their hang-up deters Africans from taking advantage of crop science lest their exports be barred from European markets. Again, a peccadillo that to Europeans is affordable starves people in the poor world.

Finally, poor countries themselves have made things worse. Panicked at the prospect of food riots, countries with crop surpluses have forbidden exports in an attempt to bottle up supply and keep prices down. More than 40 countries have imposed some kind of export restraint, with the result that countries suffering food deficits have seen prices hit the roof. This nationalized hoarding is frustrating international relief efforts. The World Food Program has sought to buy food from countries with surpluses, such as Pakistan, to ship to desperate neighbors such as Afghanistan. But Pakistan drags its feet about selling.

Part of the solution to the food crisis, as Oxford economist Paul Collier has written, is to promote large-scale commercial agriculture in the poor world. But for that to happen, investors have to know that there will be a market for their exports. They won't risk their money if Congress is going to subsidize their American competitors. They won't risk their money if European prejudice is going to prevent them from using the best seeds that scientists offer.

And they won't risk their money if the governments of developing countries short-circuit their profits with crazy export bans.

In short, the governments of the world are conspiring to undermine farming in developing countries. Do they mean to inflict hunger on tens of millions of people?

Natural~Specialty Foods Memo Editor's Note: Mr. Mallaby is a fellow for International Economics with the Council on Foreign Relations. The opinions expressed in Mr. Mallaby's essay are his. The essay first appeared in the Washington Post.

Food & Society Memo: The Poor Get Diabetes, the Rich Get Local and Organic

In an excerpt from his new book, Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty, Mark Winne, a writer and the longtime director of the Hartford Food System in Hartford, Connecticut, analyzes and writes about what he says is a dangerous dietary split between those who have substantial economic means in the U.S. and those who don't.

Winne says the residents he worked with for 25 years in the low-income neighborhoods of Hartford knew all about organic and local fresh foods--and desired to have them--but were in the main unable to obtain the foods, not only for economic reasons, but because of logistical ones as well. Chief among these logistical or distribution reasons, is the lack of quality food stores in the inner-cities that offer healthy, fresh, organic and local foods at a reasonable price.

In his piece, Winne argues there are a variety of market-based and government-oriented public policy programs that could bring more fresh and healthy foods to poor people, especially those in the inner-city.

Further, he offers examples and potential solutions from his years running the Hartford Food System, and describes other innovative solutions to this serious problem being successfully implemented in places like Oakland, California, Massachusetts, and other places in the U.S.

Winnie's piece is thought-provoking, and offers some good solutions to this serious dietary problem faced by people living in America's inner cities (and rural regions as well).

The healthy "food gap" between America's haves and have-nots, as Winnie puts it, does continue to grow. Smart, creative and innovative solutions are needed to bridge this economic and social divide. These solutions also need to be provided in a partnership consisting of government, the private sector, non-profit groups, retailers and citizens.

We would also like to see America's food industry, especially retailers, work in partnership with food manufacturers, community groups and others to launch real, healthy food and shopping education programs in communities throughout the U.S., especially in the inner-cities and poor rural regions.

It's amazing how much money a person can save, and how much healthier they can eat, when they have knowledge. That knowledge needs to include a primer on how to shop economically: shopping weekly sales, the fact that "real" foods are cheaper than highly-processed ones, and other facts.

Home food preparation also needs to be a part of the classes. Scientific research has demonstrated that those people who cook and eat at home most often are far healthier than those who eat foods away from home most often. Cooking at home also is at least 50% cheaper overall than eating out regularly, even at fast food places.

Lastly--but far from least--there needs to be a nutritional element in these community-based classes. A primer on the basic food groups, differences between proteins, carbs and fats, and the importance of eating a balanced diet all need to be included.

These three elements--shopping economics, cooking at home, and diet and health--can be tied together easily in a series of community-based classes, and brought to community centers and churches throughout America's inner-cities and rural areas.

If done in a real, comprehensive way, and backed by both the private and public sectors, such classes--along with other private and public initiatives--will go a long way towards helping many people eat better, stay healthier, and live longer.

Read Winnie's piece, The Poor Get Diabetes, the Rich Get Local and Organic, here.