From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWERprogrammes (SAPs) were indeed corrupt and inefficient, and paidfarmers little and late, if at all. Excessive taxation of farmers and pricecontrols on their products funnelled resources away from deprivedrural areas towards the cities and industries that leaders judged to bethe future of their countries.Weak as public institutions were, however, they provided some ofthe essential services that poor farmers needed. In the wake of SAPs,credit, veterinary care, and technical advice virtually disappeared inmany countries, and prices fluctuated wildly, both within andbetween seasons. 70 Cuts in public credit left what the World Banktermed ‘huge gaps in financial services, still largely unfilled’. 71 AsJoseph Stiglitz once remarked, the ‘invisible hand’ of the market wasinvisible because it was simply not there. 72Structural adjustment also had profound impacts on the ‘unpaideconomy’ by reducing state investment in services and infrastructure,thus increasing the burden on women in their roles as family caregiversand water-carriers. Farmers in better-connected areas, such asthose close to urban markets, benefited from improved prices, whilethose without market power – either because they had little land orwere from largely excluded groups, such as women or indigenouscommunities – found the deregulated market much less likely to workfor them.Structural adjustment’s cure for agricultural stagnation provedworse than the disease. Thankfully, the political and economic tidesare now flowing towards an enhanced role for the state and otherinstitutions and away from the market fundamentalism of the 1990s.At the same time, governments and aid donors are re-evaluating therole of agriculture in development, as witnessed by the World Bank’sWorld Development Report 2008, the first on agriculture in 25 years. 73The report advocated what it called a ‘new agriculture for developmentagenda’, involving efforts to increase productivity in the staplefoods sector; connect smallholders to rapidly expanding high-valuehorticulture, poultry, and aquaculture, as well as dairy markets; andgenerate jobs in the rural non-farm economy. 74However, there is a great deal of inertia in politics and, despite thesoftening of the rhetoric, the default position of promoting deregulationand withdrawal of the state remains strong within governments,140