FW: WHICH ROAD TO QATAR: FOOD FIRST OR EXPORT FIRST?

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Mark Jones wrote:
>
>>Doug Henwood wrote:
>>>  Do farmers not want to export their crops?
>>
>>Which farmers? And why would the "farmers" in question want to export their
>>crops?
>
>Well let's ask them. I know U.S. farmers certainly like exporting 
>their crops. What about Indian farmers? Have we heard from them, or 
>is V. Shiva the designated spokesperson for them in their speechless 
>subalternity?
>
>Doug

Surely Cubans want to export their sugar, tobacco, genetically 
engineered medicine, etc. to the USA & elsewhere.  They need forex 
earned through exports to finance imports.

Even Jose Bove, a militant left-wing sheep farmer against "corporate 
globalization," wants to export Roquefort cheese.  His trashing of 
McDonald's was in reaction to the punitive 100 percent tariff on some 
French products -- among them Roquefort cheese -- that the US 
government placed in retaliation against a French ban of unlabeled 
hormone-treated American beef.

The question is balance.  No nation can afford to rely primarily on 
exports of such neocolonial products as minerals & agricultural 
produce to develop their productive forces.

Yoshie