Remember back in the 1990s, when Hillary-Care was being bandied about as a program to provide free medical care for all Americans. During that debate I thought it was only a matter of time until someone went further and started pushing, seriously, for a program advocating free food for all. Perhaps we’ve reached that point.
Per an article at GlobalGovernanceWatch.org, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations recently produced a five volume guide entitled the Methodological Toolbox on the Right to Food, the contents of which are very interesting. Let’s discuss how the implementation of this publication’s call-to-action could lead to free food and, with it, economic instability in the food industry and perhaps social uncertainty.
The article on the Global Governance Watch site states that, since the United Nation’s founding in 1948, it has been a goal of the UN that individuals worldwide have the right to an adequate standard of living. In the United States, we call this the “pursuit of happiness.” Global Governance Watch (GGW) also says that in 1999, the United Nations clarified this position with General Comment 12 of the UN’s International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights:
. . . the right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has the physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement.
As I interpret this quote, its key idea is that governments create an environment where individuals have economic access to food or access to its means of procurement. Very reasonable. In simplified terms, we can call that access a politically-supported environment where those who want a job can have a job so that they can economically access and procure, i.e., buy, food. Again, you have the right to the pursuit of happiness. I support that wholeheartedly.
But GGW reports that in 2005, the game began to change at the United Nations because in that year the General Assembly passed a resolution calling:
upon States to implement legal and political strategies to ensure that the right to food was not compromised.
Hmm. That’s a bit of a shift in thinking, isn’t it?
GGW says that for the UN to give “traction” to General Comment 12 and the 2005 resolution, the UN produced the aforementioned Methodological Toolbox on the Right to Food. The Toolbox was recently published (October 23, 2009) and in its website article about the Toolbox, GGW calls specific attention to the first of the five Toolbox volumes. The first volume is entitled “A Guide on Legislating for the Right to Food. In its synopsis of the Guide, GGW interprets the Guide as saying that:
. . . States must incorporate the right to food into national constitutions . . . (and) they must establish a “framework” law on the right to food, which sets out obligations for state authorities and private actors and establishes “necessary” institutional mechanisms to enforce right to food legislation and policies.
(The mention of States here is taken to be member states of the United Nations.)
Right now, I’ll make a very astute comment, one I’m sure is very often used within academic circles and by political consultants, as well.
“Are you kidding me?”
The United Nations wants to butt into our, the American, constitution to guarantee a right to food? And the UN wants to force the participation of “private actors,” let’s read that as companies, to participate in that right to food?
What appears to be happening here is that the United Nations wants us to recast that phrase, “the pursuit of happiness,” one so engrained in our national consciousness, into a new phrase, something like “the guarantee of happiness.”
Let’s put the national sovereignty issues aside. I’ll leave those to the political scientists to hash out. Right here in this blog, I deal with business issues and how they are affected by social trends and particularly by activists and NGOs. NGOs like the UN. And one of those business issues is that it should be clear to anyone with at least a basic understanding of economics, capitalist economics that is, that a free food policy could be disastrous.
If food companies are forced to participate in a “right to food” rather than a “right to economic access,” serious repercussions will be felt within that industry, compromising the food supply for all. Such actions, although very charitable and humanitarian in their intent, would actually be counterproductive. Here’s the scenario.
Let’s say there is a legal demand on food companies to make a portion of their production available at no charge. If food companies must provide a significant portion of their output for free, doing so will force prices to rise on the food for which the companies will be remunerated. The result of this scenario would be that there would be less food consumed.
The decrease in food consumption would begin with paying customers on the lower end of the income scale. As food prices rise, to cover production and distribution of the food for which the company receives no compensation, lower income consumers would not be able to absorb the increases. They would buy less food, and indeed most likely join the ranks of individuals receiving the free food, thereby increasing the proportion of the market which receives the free food. This increase in free food recipients would raise food prices further.
Spiraling increases of food prices would occur, with the paying market segment becoming smaller and smaller and, accordingly, profits becoming smaller and smaller or non-existent. At some point the food company would decide to exit the progressively unprofitable market or go bankrupt. The exit of the food company would necessitate other food companies to feed the defunct company’s non-paying consumers, for free of course, and the cycle would repeat. Food companies would fall progressively, like dominos.
And as the food companies fall, unless supported by government subsidies which presents different economic problems, “food fights” may begin. Not fights with food. Fights for food.
No. Although this idea the UN has might seem like an altruistically good idea, in practicality the concept of free food, like free health care, only brings negative results and exacerbates the problem it was intended to solve in the first place.
