Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

Free World Vignettes
markets for US grain producers, allowing them to export more than $20
billion worth of grain under the program. Furthermore, as President
Carter’s Secretary of Agriculture John Block explained, “Food is a
weapon” that we use “to tie countries to us. That way they’ll be
reluctant to upset us.” 99
The picture is the same throughout Latin America, where “the
terrifying reality is that most of the population is hungry, malnourished
and sick” while “the actual purchasing power of the worker has been
declining since the early 1960s” despite impressive growth rates and
“economic miracles” under the National Security states that the US has
helped to impose and sustain. Latin America is a net exporter of foods,
including grains, meats, sugar, bananas, coffee, cacao, and soybeans as
well as non-food crops such as cotton, “because the large landowners,
foreign as well as domestic, earn handsome profits from such exports,
more than they might earn selling food in the domestic market,” as does
US agribusiness with its indirect state subsidies. At the same time, only
about 10% of the arable land is in use. “Latin America is fully capable
not only of feeding its own population well but of contributing
significantly to world food supplies . . . we are challenged to understand
why Incan technology, efficiency and productivity surpassed Western
technology, efficiency, and productivity.” 100 Particularly in the past
quarter-century, the US has made a material contribution to these
consequences with its political, military and economic policies ranging
from subversion to “aid.”
The phenomenon is, in fact, worldwide. The US is the world’s largest
food importer, primarily from the Third World, including countries where
malnutrition is rampant. The US is also the world’s largest food exporter,
but the food rarely goes to the starving. Two-thirds of US agricultural
exports go to developed countries, primarily Europe and Japan. “In
1982, the Netherlands alone received more of our agricultural products
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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