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WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.470 [MUSIC PLAYING] 2 00:00:03.470 --> 00:00:34.720 3 00:00:34.720 --> 00:00:35.460 Greetings. 4 00:00:35.460 --> 00:00:37.240 Welcome to CIBER Focus, your source 5 00:00:37.240 --> 00:00:38.880 for international business information. 6 00:00:38.880 --> 00:00:40.660 I'm your host, Ryan Craven. 7 00:00:40.660 --> 00:00:43.360 And our guest today is Professor Andrew Libby. 8 00:00:43.360 --> 00:00:46.040 Andrew Libby is the assistant director of the human biology 9 00:00:46.040 --> 00:00:47.200 program at IU. 10 00:00:47.200 --> 00:00:49.240 This program is an interdisciplinary major 11 00:00:49.240 --> 00:00:51.040 in the College of Arts and Sciences 12 00:00:51.040 --> 00:00:52.840 that explores the complex human dimensions 13 00:00:52.840 --> 00:00:54.777 of scientific inquiry. 14 00:00:54.777 --> 00:00:56.360 His current teaching interests revolve 15 00:00:56.360 --> 00:00:59.320 around poverty, globalization, and the role 16 00:00:59.320 --> 00:01:01.950 of global financial institutions like the World Bank, 17 00:01:01.950 --> 00:01:04.670 International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization, 18 00:01:04.670 --> 00:01:07.710 in international development and emerging markets. 19 00:01:07.710 --> 00:01:10.222 Prior to this position in the HUBI, 20 00:01:10.222 --> 00:01:12.430 Andrew served as the community engagement coordinator 21 00:01:12.430 --> 00:01:14.450 for the IU service learning program. 22 00:01:14.450 --> 00:01:16.850 And he has a strong commitment to interdisciplinary, 23 00:01:16.850 --> 00:01:18.950 experiential teaching, and learning. 24 00:01:18.950 --> 00:01:20.510 Andrew, thanks for being here. 25 00:01:20.510 --> 00:01:22.990 So you're getting ready to teach the intensive freshman 26 00:01:22.990 --> 00:01:26.190 seminar course food for thought, food policy 27 00:01:26.190 --> 00:01:28.070 from local to global. 28 00:01:28.070 --> 00:01:31.890 What is that intensive seminar style? 29 00:01:31.890 --> 00:01:34.265 And then tell us a bit about that program. 30 00:01:34.265 --> 00:01:36.390 [ANDREW LIBBY] Yeah, the intensive freshman seminar 31 00:01:36.390 --> 00:01:40.550 program is a really, I think, unique, I think, neat program 32 00:01:40.550 --> 00:01:46.790 here at IU where incoming freshmen will come in and take 33 00:01:46.790 --> 00:01:47.970 a seminar class. 34 00:01:47.970 --> 00:01:51.070 It's usually about two and a half to three weeks. 35 00:01:51.070 --> 00:01:53.370 And you can take it on a variety of topics. 36 00:01:53.370 --> 00:01:59.150 There are maybe 20 or 20 plus intensive freshman seminars 37 00:01:59.150 --> 00:02:04.900 offered from disciplines all across the university. 38 00:02:04.900 --> 00:02:08.259 And the topics range wildly. 39 00:02:08.259 --> 00:02:10.600 My class is called Food for Thought. 40 00:02:10.600 --> 00:02:13.580 And I'm part of the human biology program in the College 41 00:02:13.580 --> 00:02:15.220 of Arts and Sciences. 42 00:02:15.220 --> 00:02:19.340 My class is on industrialization of food and its effects 43 00:02:19.340 --> 00:02:21.300 locally and globally. 44 00:02:21.300 --> 00:02:23.140 Awesome. 45 00:02:23.140 --> 00:02:27.420 What makes this topic so interesting to you? 46 00:02:27.420 --> 00:02:30.860 Yeah, that's a good question. 47 00:02:30.860 --> 00:02:33.840 I actually came by this in a winding way. 48 00:02:33.840 --> 00:02:36.560 I was mainly interested in globalization. 49 00:02:36.560 --> 00:02:39.580 I was interested in the role of the International Monetary 50 00:02:39.580 --> 00:02:44.140 Fund and the structural adjustment programs 51 00:02:44.140 --> 00:02:46.680 that they broker with developing nations. 52 00:02:46.680 --> 00:02:50.080 And I just was looking at the flows of capital. 53 00:02:50.080 --> 00:02:52.260 And it seemed to me that they were replicating 54 00:02:52.260 --> 00:02:56.420 the time of colonialism where developing nations were paying 55 00:02:56.420 --> 00:03:02.450 huge amounts of debt to their creditors, which were mainly 56 00:03:02.450 --> 00:03:04.110 developed nations. 57 00:03:04.110 --> 00:03:07.970 And I started to see how that had a really negative effect 58 00:03:07.970 --> 00:03:11.410 on farmers, subsistence farmers, especially 59 00:03:11.410 --> 00:03:14.450 in some of the poorest nations on the Earth. 60 00:03:14.450 --> 00:03:19.630 And these policies seemed, if not designed intentionally, 61 00:03:19.630 --> 00:03:25.270 although designed intentionally, to squeeze these economies. 62 00:03:25.270 --> 00:03:28.450 And it depleted their infrastructure 63 00:03:28.450 --> 00:03:33.050 and made it really difficult to be a farmer in these nations. 64 00:03:33.050 --> 00:03:37.770 And that might not matter so much in the United States 65 00:03:37.770 --> 00:03:39.030 because, who's a farmer? 66 00:03:39.030 --> 00:03:41.610 We have, I don't know, 2 million farmers. 67 00:03:41.610 --> 00:03:44.250 Two percent of the population, I think. 68 00:03:44.250 --> 00:03:45.470 Maybe my math isn't so good. 69 00:03:45.470 --> 00:03:48.730 But, I think, it's 2% of the population are farmers now. 70 00:03:48.730 --> 00:03:51.290 But in developing nations, you have sometimes upwards 71 00:03:51.290 --> 00:03:54.610 of 60% or 70% of the population engaged 72 00:03:54.610 --> 00:03:56.570 in subsistence agriculture. 73 00:03:56.570 --> 00:03:58.950 And a lot of times these are women. 74 00:03:58.950 --> 00:04:01.720 So these are issues that really affect food. 75 00:04:01.720 --> 00:04:04.320 And globalization really affect people in poverty and women 76 00:04:04.320 --> 00:04:04.980 in poverty. 77 00:04:04.980 --> 00:04:07.880 And so I thought that was an interesting topic 78 00:04:07.880 --> 00:04:11.720 to start to think about. 79 00:04:11.720 --> 00:04:16.399 Were there any standouts that really blew your mind 80 00:04:16.399 --> 00:04:19.200 or just was a wow factor when you initially 81 00:04:19.200 --> 00:04:24.200 started taking this approach with really the food lens? 82 00:04:24.200 --> 00:04:26.160 Yeah, there were two books. 83 00:04:26.160 --> 00:04:29.080 Are you just asking about books, or other texts, 84 00:04:29.080 --> 00:04:31.600 or experiences I've had? 85 00:04:31.600 --> 00:04:34.160 Yeah, really just whatever. 86 00:04:34.160 --> 00:04:36.660 Something you came across and it was just really eye-opening 87 00:04:36.660 --> 00:04:40.800 and piqued that interest even more. 88 00:04:40.800 --> 00:04:44.040 Yeah, two books really. 89 00:04:44.040 --> 00:04:47.340 One, I don't know if you know Joseph Stiglitz. 90 00:04:47.340 --> 00:04:48.780 He's an economist. 91 00:04:48.780 --> 00:04:54.080 He was the chairman of Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors. 92 00:04:54.080 --> 00:04:55.220 He's no chump. 93 00:04:55.220 --> 00:04:58.240 He's got a Nobel Prize in economics. 94 00:04:58.240 --> 00:05:00.790 He teaches at Princeton. 95 00:05:00.790 --> 00:05:04.230 And really he wrote a book called Globalization 96 00:05:04.230 --> 00:05:05.570 and Its Discontents. 97 00:05:05.570 --> 00:05:11.110 And it was published in 2001 maybe, something like that. 98 00:05:11.110 --> 00:05:16.830 And he really explained in an accessible way, 99 00:05:16.830 --> 00:05:19.950 for someone like me who was new to the topic of 21st century 100 00:05:19.950 --> 00:05:25.070 globalization, what structural adjustment programs were, 101 00:05:25.070 --> 00:05:29.250 how they operated, historically what they emerged from, 102 00:05:29.250 --> 00:05:31.650 which is something called the Washington Consensus, 103 00:05:31.650 --> 00:05:34.910 which was something developed by Ronald Reagan and Margaret 104 00:05:34.910 --> 00:05:38.790 Thatcher in the '80s. 105 00:05:38.790 --> 00:05:43.510 And it was part of a general global push to liberalize trade 106 00:05:43.510 --> 00:05:46.170 and to encourage globalization. 107 00:05:46.170 --> 00:05:52.830 I think the enactment of NAFTA, the WTO in the '90s followed 108 00:05:52.830 --> 00:05:54.010 logically from this. 109 00:05:54.010 --> 00:05:55.910 But there was a little bit of a dark side 110 00:05:55.910 --> 00:05:58.570 to the story of, like, happy globalization. 111 00:05:58.570 --> 00:06:00.540 And so Stiglitz pointed that out. 112 00:06:00.540 --> 00:06:02.680 But I thought he did it in a even-handed way. 113 00:06:02.680 --> 00:06:04.660 He didn't-- 114 00:06:04.660 --> 00:06:07.080 He talked about some of the triumphs of globalization, 115 00:06:07.080 --> 00:06:10.560 as well as some of the negative consequences of it. 116 00:06:10.560 --> 00:06:12.320 And he used a really interesting phrase. 117 00:06:12.320 --> 00:06:16.240 He said, like, globalization is like, it's a neutral term. 118 00:06:16.240 --> 00:06:18.280 He's like, it's not a good term or a bad term. 119 00:06:18.280 --> 00:06:20.380 You can have good globalization and you 120 00:06:20.380 --> 00:06:22.160 can have bad globalization. 121 00:06:22.160 --> 00:06:23.660 I thought that was interesting. 122 00:06:23.660 --> 00:06:31.340 And I think the food system is an example of bad globalization 123 00:06:31.340 --> 00:06:36.320 because it's driven by perverse economic incentives. 124 00:06:36.320 --> 00:06:40.380 It's a market system that's dominated by subsidies 125 00:06:40.380 --> 00:06:41.487 from Western nations. 126 00:06:41.487 --> 00:06:43.320 And I usually think about the United States, 127 00:06:43.320 --> 00:06:46.000 but you could also think about the European Union as well. 128 00:06:46.000 --> 00:06:50.820 And these are the most developed economic regions of the globe. 129 00:06:50.820 --> 00:06:54.740 They're the ones that subsidize the agricultural most heavily. 130 00:06:54.740 --> 00:06:57.880 And this really distorts the market in a lot of ways, 131 00:06:57.880 --> 00:07:00.650 both in terms of what ends up on our plate here 132 00:07:00.650 --> 00:07:03.610 in Bloomington, Indiana, as well as 133 00:07:03.610 --> 00:07:06.410 the opportunity for people in developing nations in emerging 134 00:07:06.410 --> 00:07:13.450 markets to have a successful, secure food system that's 135 00:07:13.450 --> 00:07:19.450 localized and not so vulnerable to exogenous shocks 136 00:07:19.450 --> 00:07:21.810 on a globalized supply chain. 137 00:07:21.810 --> 00:07:24.110 And so that was one book. 138 00:07:24.110 --> 00:07:25.690 So Stiglitz was amazing. 139 00:07:25.690 --> 00:07:26.670 He's just amazing. 140 00:07:26.670 --> 00:07:27.590 And he's an economist. 141 00:07:27.590 --> 00:07:29.632 He could have written a book filled with formulas 142 00:07:29.632 --> 00:07:31.310 that nobody can understand. 143 00:07:31.310 --> 00:07:33.970 But he didn't-- he wrote a book that and I think he really 144 00:07:33.970 --> 00:07:37.770 wanted people to see this. 145 00:07:37.770 --> 00:07:42.650 And then Michael Pollan, who's a very popular author, journalism 146 00:07:42.650 --> 00:07:46.410 professor, and food writer at Berkeley, 147 00:07:46.410 --> 00:07:50.130 at UC Berkeley, who actually came and spoke at IU a few years 148 00:07:50.130 --> 00:07:52.690 ago, was an interesting talk. 149 00:07:52.690 --> 00:07:55.090 He wrote a book called The Omnivore's Dilemma, which 150 00:07:55.090 --> 00:07:56.170 I read. 151 00:07:56.170 --> 00:07:59.020 And the premise of his book is so interesting. 152 00:07:59.020 --> 00:08:03.240 He basically says, gee, I wonder what's in my food. 153 00:08:03.240 --> 00:08:05.240 And he looked at the ingredients. 154 00:08:05.240 --> 00:08:07.680 I can't actually tell what's in my food. 155 00:08:07.680 --> 00:08:08.180 Who knows? 156 00:08:08.180 --> 00:08:10.320 So he did an investigation to figure out, 157 00:08:10.320 --> 00:08:14.320 what's in his McDonald's Big Mac and Coke? 158 00:08:14.320 --> 00:08:15.900 And it turns out that a lot of this, 159 00:08:15.900 --> 00:08:20.960 a lot of the answer to that was most of the ingredients 160 00:08:20.960 --> 00:08:23.940 are based, are corn- and soy-based. 161 00:08:23.940 --> 00:08:27.383 And so he-- his book helped explain to me something 162 00:08:27.383 --> 00:08:28.800 that was right in front of my face 163 00:08:28.800 --> 00:08:31.520 that didn't make any sense to me, which is, who in the world 164 00:08:31.520 --> 00:08:33.559 is eating all this corn? 165 00:08:33.559 --> 00:08:35.320 Well, I live in Indiana. 166 00:08:35.320 --> 00:08:37.960 And I see corn every time I leave Bloomington 167 00:08:37.960 --> 00:08:40.340 and go 30 miles in any direction. 168 00:08:40.340 --> 00:08:42.360 There's nothing but corn and soy fields. 169 00:08:42.360 --> 00:08:43.780 I only eat a little bit of corn. 170 00:08:43.780 --> 00:08:44.820 So who's eating it all? 171 00:08:44.820 --> 00:08:48.920 So Pollan explained how the system works, how corn is just 172 00:08:48.920 --> 00:08:53.360 a commodity crop that can just be taken apart and reassembled 173 00:08:53.360 --> 00:08:57.400 in all of these amazing formulations 174 00:08:57.400 --> 00:08:59.950 that you see on the back of all the processed food 175 00:08:59.950 --> 00:09:03.070 that you like, dextrose and this stuff 176 00:09:03.070 --> 00:09:06.170 and sorbate and xanthan gum and all that. 177 00:09:06.170 --> 00:09:07.210 That's all corn. 178 00:09:07.210 --> 00:09:11.250 And so Pollan puts it all together on the domestic front. 179 00:09:11.250 --> 00:09:14.470 So all of a sudden, I started to see Pollan and Stiglitz coming 180 00:09:14.470 --> 00:09:15.670 together. 181 00:09:15.670 --> 00:09:17.990 And that was really interesting. 182 00:09:17.990 --> 00:09:19.940 And then I worked at the food bank. 183 00:09:19.940 --> 00:09:22.190 And so I saw people who didn't have enough food to eat 184 00:09:22.190 --> 00:09:24.250 or who had plenty of food to eat, 185 00:09:24.250 --> 00:09:26.190 but it was all terrible for them. 186 00:09:26.190 --> 00:09:29.310 And I started to think about poor people and their diet 187 00:09:29.310 --> 00:09:33.347 and the obesity rates as it affects people in poverty 188 00:09:33.347 --> 00:09:35.430 and starting to think about how our food system is 189 00:09:35.430 --> 00:09:37.870 a huge set of trade offs. 190 00:09:37.870 --> 00:09:42.230 And so that intersection between food globalization and poverty 191 00:09:42.230 --> 00:09:47.510 emerged from that nexus of texts and experience. 192 00:09:47.510 --> 00:09:53.910 Well, and you mentioned it too that so much of the populations 193 00:09:53.910 --> 00:09:56.790 in some of these areas and markets 194 00:09:56.790 --> 00:09:59.980 is in the agricultural side and the food side. 195 00:09:59.980 --> 00:10:03.180 And so when you look at it in those terms too, 196 00:10:03.180 --> 00:10:06.740 this conversation is such a huge economic impact 197 00:10:06.740 --> 00:10:11.220 for those regions and areas getting back to what's grown 198 00:10:11.220 --> 00:10:12.000 and why. 199 00:10:12.000 --> 00:10:14.660 And so much of it is determined by factors 200 00:10:14.660 --> 00:10:18.000 that aren't necessarily the local environment. 201 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:22.360 Is this the right food for really everybody to be eating 202 00:10:22.360 --> 00:10:24.820 and beyond nutrition? 203 00:10:24.820 --> 00:10:28.645 Are there any key policies or any part 204 00:10:28.645 --> 00:10:30.020 of that process that really stand 205 00:10:30.020 --> 00:10:32.180 out, that showcase that for you? 206 00:10:32.180 --> 00:10:32.700 Yeah. 207 00:10:32.700 --> 00:10:35.900 I mean, to me, the prime mover in the whole system 208 00:10:35.900 --> 00:10:36.960 is subsidies. 209 00:10:36.960 --> 00:10:38.680 So much goes back to subsidies. 210 00:10:38.680 --> 00:10:43.340 We subsidize our agribusinesses to the tune of $20 billion 211 00:10:43.340 --> 00:10:46.100 a year. 212 00:10:46.100 --> 00:10:49.020 And what that gets us, what we're 213 00:10:49.020 --> 00:10:51.780 paying for there is the overproduction 214 00:10:51.780 --> 00:10:57.530 of just a small select set of crops like corn, soy, wheat, 215 00:10:57.530 --> 00:10:59.650 rice, and cotton. 216 00:10:59.650 --> 00:11:06.970 And so we get the processed food that comes 217 00:11:06.970 --> 00:11:09.990 from those basic ingredients. 218 00:11:09.990 --> 00:11:14.330 But if we subsidize something different, 219 00:11:14.330 --> 00:11:19.790 if we subsidize tomatoes, we'd have a lot of tomatoes. 220 00:11:19.790 --> 00:11:22.610 If we subsidize the things that were healthy and are 221 00:11:22.610 --> 00:11:26.730 good for us, then we would have those things 222 00:11:26.730 --> 00:11:30.030 more available to us at a cheaper price. 223 00:11:30.030 --> 00:11:32.010 And the stuff, the stuff that's bad 224 00:11:32.010 --> 00:11:35.930 for us would be more expensive. 225 00:11:35.930 --> 00:11:37.150 But you don't see it. 226 00:11:37.150 --> 00:11:40.970 That's why they can add 79 ounces of Coke 227 00:11:40.970 --> 00:11:47.450 to your cup for an extra penny because the raw ingredient, 228 00:11:47.450 --> 00:11:50.840 high fructose corn syrup, is nothing, 229 00:11:50.840 --> 00:11:53.370 nothing on the dollar, pennies on the dollar. 230 00:11:53.370 --> 00:11:57.200 And so it would be great if we reoriented our federal subsidy 231 00:11:57.200 --> 00:11:58.020 system. 232 00:11:58.020 --> 00:12:01.440 A lot of these questions are questions of poverty. 233 00:12:01.440 --> 00:12:04.580 I mean, people eat what they can afford, so. 234 00:12:04.580 --> 00:12:08.580 But that's an appealing part of the food system to me too, 235 00:12:08.580 --> 00:12:10.920 is this is an area of poverty that I 236 00:12:10.920 --> 00:12:13.960 think if we thought about our priorities 237 00:12:13.960 --> 00:12:17.200 and we prioritize public health, I think we could 238 00:12:17.200 --> 00:12:18.860 have an effect on the system. 239 00:12:18.860 --> 00:12:22.560 This is not an intractable impossible problem. 240 00:12:22.560 --> 00:12:26.760 This is the problem with good, good potential solutions 241 00:12:26.760 --> 00:12:31.640 all oriented around trying to localize our food system just 242 00:12:31.640 --> 00:12:32.960 a little bit more. 243 00:12:32.960 --> 00:12:37.280 We don't all have to survive on berries and twigs. 244 00:12:37.280 --> 00:12:43.120 But we've got a system that's really, really industrialized. 245 00:12:43.120 --> 00:12:45.320 And we could probably do a little bit 246 00:12:45.320 --> 00:12:50.080 of shifting back towards the way the food system used to be. 247 00:12:50.080 --> 00:12:52.960 But one of the obstacles to that is 248 00:12:52.960 --> 00:12:55.720 that we pay not very much for our food now. 249 00:12:55.720 --> 00:13:00.370 We pay just 12% of our annual income as a household for food. 250 00:13:00.370 --> 00:13:04.230 Whereas 50, 75 years ago we paid a third of our income. 251 00:13:04.230 --> 00:13:07.930 So we get what we pay for nowadays. 252 00:13:07.930 --> 00:13:11.430 We get an excess of unhealthy abundance. 253 00:13:11.430 --> 00:13:14.030 Yeah, does uh, we kinda thought-- been circling around 254 00:13:14.030 --> 00:13:15.130 a little bit. 255 00:13:15.130 --> 00:13:18.310 But you're starting to see a little bit more 256 00:13:18.310 --> 00:13:21.870 of a trend towards locally sourced food 257 00:13:21.870 --> 00:13:25.510 and eating what your local farmers and your environment 258 00:13:25.510 --> 00:13:28.150 can produce in your own regions. 259 00:13:28.150 --> 00:13:30.910 Is that kinda the right direction? 260 00:13:30.910 --> 00:13:31.930 That's amazing. 261 00:13:31.930 --> 00:13:34.350 That's what we should-- that'd be great. 262 00:13:34.350 --> 00:13:36.670 Circling back over to the policy piece of it 263 00:13:36.670 --> 00:13:40.113 a little bit, what gets made, and you've 264 00:13:40.113 --> 00:13:41.530 spoken to it a little bit already, 265 00:13:41.530 --> 00:13:47.510 but the international trade factor of the food policy 266 00:13:47.510 --> 00:13:50.910 and kind of its influence, do you 267 00:13:50.910 --> 00:13:58.580 think that the current COVID, situation showcases that value, 268 00:13:58.580 --> 00:14:02.860 the benefits of that locally sourced food? 269 00:14:02.860 --> 00:14:05.140 I don't know. 270 00:14:05.140 --> 00:14:09.020 I mean, I've been looking at newspaper articles 271 00:14:09.020 --> 00:14:11.260 or just whatever's on my newsfeed 272 00:14:11.260 --> 00:14:13.580 and trying to see if there seem like there are 273 00:14:13.580 --> 00:14:15.740 stories about food shortages. 274 00:14:15.740 --> 00:14:17.700 And I have not really seen anything 275 00:14:17.700 --> 00:14:21.220 like that anywhere across the globe. 276 00:14:21.220 --> 00:14:24.020 So I have not seen the-- 277 00:14:24.020 --> 00:14:29.320 COVID has not disrupted markets in any way that I've noticed. 278 00:14:29.320 --> 00:14:36.820 But I think what can happen is countries 279 00:14:36.820 --> 00:14:39.380 that don't have a strong agricultural sector, that they 280 00:14:39.380 --> 00:14:43.060 rely too heavily on imports because their own sector has 281 00:14:43.060 --> 00:14:44.360 been-- 282 00:14:44.360 --> 00:14:46.380 agricultural sector has been made 283 00:14:46.380 --> 00:14:53.500 uncompetitive or urban-biased policies and commodity dumping 284 00:14:53.500 --> 00:14:54.620 and things like that. 285 00:14:54.620 --> 00:14:57.430 Then if there is a problem in the supply chain like, 286 00:14:57.430 --> 00:15:00.290 I guess not COVID, but I'm thinking more 287 00:15:00.290 --> 00:15:08.210 like climate-related problems, droughts, fires, floods. 288 00:15:08.210 --> 00:15:10.050 And there was a really interesting story 289 00:15:10.050 --> 00:15:11.967 from a while ago from the Wall Street Journal. 290 00:15:11.967 --> 00:15:18.130 It's like 2010, there was a heat wave across the wheat 291 00:15:18.130 --> 00:15:19.890 belt in Russia. 292 00:15:19.890 --> 00:15:24.090 So whatever part of Russia, it is some part to the West 293 00:15:24.090 --> 00:15:25.407 where they grow lots of wheat. 294 00:15:25.407 --> 00:15:27.490 So Russia just kept all their wheat to themselves. 295 00:15:27.490 --> 00:15:30.170 So they didn't have as much to export. 296 00:15:30.170 --> 00:15:36.410 So countries that were dependent on Russian wheat exports all 297 00:15:36.410 --> 00:15:41.950 of a sudden found themselves very vulnerable to shortages. 298 00:15:41.950 --> 00:15:48.330 And in that case, you did see price spikes and riots and food 299 00:15:48.330 --> 00:15:53.590 riots, I think, in places pretty far away from Russia. 300 00:15:53.590 --> 00:15:57.980 I mean down in, I think, in Africa, North Africa. 301 00:15:57.980 --> 00:16:01.760 So I think, in terms of policy, it's 302 00:16:01.760 --> 00:16:07.960 probably good as international development policy for us 303 00:16:07.960 --> 00:16:12.040 to help developing nations build infrastructure 304 00:16:12.040 --> 00:16:19.200 that they need to have a strong agricultural sector. 305 00:16:19.200 --> 00:16:22.360 So we don't do that, as far as I know, 306 00:16:22.360 --> 00:16:26.000 going back to that idea of structural adjustment programs. 307 00:16:26.000 --> 00:16:29.600 I mean, basically what we do is we tell developing nations that 308 00:16:29.600 --> 00:16:35.120 are in debt that they should cut their budgets for agriculture 309 00:16:35.120 --> 00:16:39.880 and for health and for education so they can pay down their debt 310 00:16:39.880 --> 00:16:40.560 load. 311 00:16:40.560 --> 00:16:44.180 So that's just sacrificing the future for the past. 312 00:16:44.180 --> 00:16:46.400 I mean, that's just driving them into a cycle 313 00:16:46.400 --> 00:16:47.753 of further impoverishment. 314 00:16:47.753 --> 00:16:49.920 Every once in a while, we'll cut them a little break 315 00:16:49.920 --> 00:16:51.220 and restructure the debt load. 316 00:16:51.220 --> 00:16:54.680 But we never let them get out from under our thumb. 317 00:16:54.680 --> 00:16:57.430 And so as a result of that, that just 318 00:16:57.430 --> 00:17:01.090 weakens agricultural sectors in these developing nations. 319 00:17:01.090 --> 00:17:04.290 They don't have funds for irrigation system and for seeds. 320 00:17:04.290 --> 00:17:06.052 They don't get credit. 321 00:17:06.052 --> 00:17:07.510 And if they don't have credit, they 322 00:17:07.510 --> 00:17:09.910 can't buy the materials they need for the next growing 323 00:17:09.910 --> 00:17:10.750 season. 324 00:17:10.750 --> 00:17:13.430 And then they become even more dependent on imports 325 00:17:13.430 --> 00:17:15.950 from the West, heavily subsidized imports 326 00:17:15.950 --> 00:17:17.065 from the West. 327 00:17:17.065 --> 00:17:18.690 So then they get in a really bad cycle. 328 00:17:18.690 --> 00:17:21.310 And then where will all those farmers go? 329 00:17:21.310 --> 00:17:23.450 Well, then that's a big demographic move. 330 00:17:23.450 --> 00:17:25.150 They move to the cities. 331 00:17:25.150 --> 00:17:27.650 They look for opportunities, but it's not good urbanization. 332 00:17:27.650 --> 00:17:30.230 It's not urbanization from the 19th century in the United 333 00:17:30.230 --> 00:17:33.310 States or in England where people moved to the cities 334 00:17:33.310 --> 00:17:34.730 because there were jobs. 335 00:17:34.730 --> 00:17:36.313 These people are moving to the cities. 336 00:17:36.313 --> 00:17:39.470 And they're just living in slums, these informal housing 337 00:17:39.470 --> 00:17:41.710 settlements with poor sanitation. 338 00:17:41.710 --> 00:17:44.830 And so that's bad for their health. 339 00:17:44.830 --> 00:17:46.990 So now you have bad health on both sides 340 00:17:46.990 --> 00:17:52.830 of the globe driven by the same economic incentive: farm 341 00:17:52.830 --> 00:17:53.650 subsidies. 342 00:17:53.650 --> 00:17:56.482 343 00:17:56.482 --> 00:17:58.040 And do I say go on? 344 00:17:58.040 --> 00:17:59.060 It's even worse. 345 00:17:59.060 --> 00:18:02.320 Then what we do if we don't dump all the excess food on them, 346 00:18:02.320 --> 00:18:04.960 we give it to them as food aid, which is so cynical. 347 00:18:04.960 --> 00:18:12.500 That's just a payoff to the shipping industry [laughs] 348 00:18:12.500 --> 00:18:14.100 and all the-- 349 00:18:14.100 --> 00:18:14.600 everything. 350 00:18:14.600 --> 00:18:16.080 We don't even know all this stuff. 351 00:18:16.080 --> 00:18:17.788 It has to be shipped to the United States 352 00:18:17.788 --> 00:18:19.580 on US flag vessels. 353 00:18:19.580 --> 00:18:22.120 And then how can they compete? 354 00:18:22.120 --> 00:18:24.580 How can a country like Ethiopia compete 355 00:18:24.580 --> 00:18:27.220 against food that's free? 356 00:18:27.220 --> 00:18:29.580 I mean, so that's putting their farmers even further out 357 00:18:29.580 --> 00:18:30.280 of business. 358 00:18:30.280 --> 00:18:32.420 So they're getting food aid delivered to them 359 00:18:32.420 --> 00:18:35.820 while they have warehouses full of their own rotting 360 00:18:35.820 --> 00:18:38.260 domestic food products. 361 00:18:38.260 --> 00:18:41.000 How would you feel about that if you were an Ethiopian farmer? 362 00:18:41.000 --> 00:18:43.940 So these two journalists, these guys from New York Times, 363 00:18:43.940 --> 00:18:45.500 Thoreau and-- 364 00:18:45.500 --> 00:18:47.040 no, the Wall Street Journal. 365 00:18:47.040 --> 00:18:50.500 They were Wall Street Journal journalists, Roger Thoreau 366 00:18:50.500 --> 00:18:53.380 and something Keilman wrote a book called Enough where they 367 00:18:53.380 --> 00:18:55.450 talked about this from 2013. 368 00:18:55.450 --> 00:18:59.930 They talked about how we're shipping food aid to Ethiopia 369 00:18:59.930 --> 00:19:02.610 while they have plenty of food. 370 00:19:02.610 --> 00:19:05.050 But why would their people buy their food? 371 00:19:05.050 --> 00:19:07.950 Why not just dig a bag of free American grain? 372 00:19:07.950 --> 00:19:09.950 So the whole system is perverse. 373 00:19:09.950 --> 00:19:13.710 And the people who are winning are the big agribusinesses. 374 00:19:13.710 --> 00:19:15.590 If you want to really understand the system, 375 00:19:15.590 --> 00:19:17.590 you just have to follow the profits. 376 00:19:17.590 --> 00:19:19.850 And that's where the profits are. 377 00:19:19.850 --> 00:19:23.130 They are in the companies like Archer Daniels Midland 378 00:19:23.130 --> 00:19:28.530 and Cargill and Smithfield that control the whole supply 379 00:19:28.530 --> 00:19:33.050 chain from the farm to the distribution center. 380 00:19:33.050 --> 00:19:37.690 And they're the winners because they 381 00:19:37.690 --> 00:19:42.490 add value [laughs] along every step of this increasingly 382 00:19:42.490 --> 00:19:45.790 complex globalized supply chain that works for them, 383 00:19:45.790 --> 00:19:48.530 but not so much for everybody else, I think. 384 00:19:48.530 --> 00:19:50.333 That's it for this edition of CIBER Focus. 385 00:19:50.333 --> 00:19:52.750 If you have any comments or suggestions for future topics, 386 00:19:52.750 --> 00:19:56.200 please let us know at ciber@indiana.edu.