[lbo-talk] The Cancun Delusion

[Brad DeLong]

>Michael Pollak wrote:
>
>>
>>On Fri, 12 Sep 2003, boddhisatva wrote:
>>
>>>  The challenge is to modernize agriculture in the best way feasible.
>>
>>I don't think anyone by a straw man would argue with that.
>
>Not necessarily. Walden Bello told me that the consensus at Porto 
>Alegre was against industrialization and in favor of the 
>preservation of the rural third world. (Others disagree that that 
>was the consensus.) That rules out "modernization," which would 
>inevitably mean reducing the need for farm labor and increasing the 
>need for industrial labor.
>
>Doug

But... but... but the rural Third World as we know it--the 2.5 
billion peasants--is entirely a creation of the twentieth century. 
The rural Third World held something like 0.5 million peasants back 
in 1850, each with about four time the effective farm size of today.

Are we calling for a radical reduction in Third World peasant 
populations back to the 'sustainable' levels of a century and a half 
ago, or what?

Brad DeLong