Non Fiction Television #509; Hungry for Profit

Productive in the end the question of pineapple and export activity enterprise is indeed best of countries at least the best possibility to our own economy to maintain what I call the capital base of their operations. But in the underdeveloped countries they have a lot of responsibility towards anybody near the governments not to look at the local population. Their only response ability is truer to shareholders in the small Caribbean island nation of the Dominican Republic. 240000 acres used to be owned by one U.S. company the Gulf and Western They use the land to produce sugar and beef for export go fold their Dominican operations in January 1985. But criticism of their former role in the Dominican Republic remains typical of the charges leveled agribusiness domination of small developing countries.

Oh my God. But then again the government is merely an entity in the service of the monopoly power of the US the one with the. Best. Of the global western is the government of the Dominican government. It's an octopus that controls the economy of politics and also the athletic and cultural activities of this country. Let them go from the Western controls the country's principal productive sectors of the growing refinement of sugar. They participate in 85 percent of all economic activities in the eastern part of the country. Look the Western is not in our country to help us but to exploit us to oppress us to take away our freedom to earn fabulous profit. In a 1982 programme by the British Broadcasting Corporation golf and westerns

chairman denied these charges. Charles blew the horn. The profit motive in a country like that is not enough by any means to do the things that we're doing. Not at all not at all. We pay vast taxes and we really invest our profits and beyond reinvesting profits. We have been willing to plough more money into the company and I must tell you that takes coach today but May 9 boggling. The Gulf and Western invested some of its profits into the Dominican economy. Among their investments two large tourist hotels and housing and medical facilities for some of their employees. For months are an also ran a free trade zone cheap space rented to about 40 mostly American companies. Materials are imported processed and re-exported tax free and duty free.

I don't do this because it's a nice thing to do in that little country and little people. But because I believe that if there were more Gulf Western all over the world out there trying to raise the level of hope for some people would help you know then we might have more to look forward to ensure stability as we go for the only age we are victims of an annual drain of about 200 million dollars. In the Dominican Republic it has been shown that for every dollar invested by Gulf and Western they take out eighty three point seven dollars. They had as yet I mean fortunately our government passed them by serving our

national interests by regulating investment has opened its arms that gotten Western plunders our country sacked. Our family had an oasis from the Gulf and Western is not the problem. Probably my problem is the Dominican government to have done a very very good job in Dominican Republic. It can be taken as an example of what foreign investment can do in a country where they could do a proper activity but for me it is not so important. Most of the company take comparable because of the contrast profit. For me the most important element is how motion they put into the country not just in terms of are they already you know investment but in terms of the their capacity to increase production. Think about the great wealth in the in the country. How long since you've eaten moon the same about a week. They're coming in that. I get food in the streets or leftovers from restaurants or people give me a peso or half a

peso. You know I think you know I am not working and the government doesn't give me anything for my child. It doesn't help anyone not even to cover the basic needs to see that woman. Yes it would if the government fails to satisfy the growing demands of the people. The Dominican will carry the struggle to a level that will merely be equal to that in Central America. It will be even greater. The was. Oh and. I did that. There may well be a connection in the Dominican Republic and other countries. Between the role of US corporations owning so much land and using it for export crops and hunger and malnutrition in the land. Certainly American corporations will benefit and probably American consumers will

benefit as well. People may not benefit are the people who live in those third world countries. We make money. We're not saying we're charity organization. I didn't say that at any time. Gulf and Western Sherman blue horn died in 1983 in July 1984 when the new term announced plans to sell all of the firm's Dominican holdings. He said they plan to concentrate on more profitable consumer products and leisure time businesses such as their Paramount Pictures subsidiary. Whether the new Dominican owners who took over in 1985 operate differently remains to be seen. You know the United States is allowed too often some of its largest multinationals controlling all of the economy. But the politics the social structure the military everything the land policy some of these third world countries. That's one of the reasons we're in the problem we're in Central America. Some of the reason we've had problems around the world.

Well historically there were activities of dominance but clearly since we've been discussing the kissing report and other initiatives the fact is that many Americans I think most members of Congress would like to be helpful in the development of the Central American economy in other words Senator Lugar are you saying the U.S. is not seeking domination in Latin America. No we're not seeking dominance. We are seeking new partnerships a new customers new trading relationships. We are seeking to boost regional groups which the Contador group the OAS the Caribbean States in their groupings. And it seems to me that this is been a period of very strong cooperation and boosting indigenous governments and democratic institutions. In the Philippines the U.S. government is a strong supporter of the Marcos administration. Since the 1960s President Marcos and his government have actively encouraged agribusiness to expand in the Philippines.

I welcome all of you but this is baiting and this. Income from food exports is one of the major sources of Philippine government funds. NDC the National Development Company is a Philippine government agency which aggressively takes over large tracts of land and leases them to transnational firms. According to local church leaders. The system there includes torture and murder as a way of pressuring small farmers off their land to make way for agribusiness. That's what they say happened at this Guthrie plantation. A British financed palm oil business. Palm nuts are processed into vegetable oil and soap for export. A former farmer now a day laborer for Guthrie. You believe in you. I sold my land because they asked me to and I really had no choice. If I didn't sell it they would keep on coming back to me

until I finally gave in and sold out to the company. So you see through it like us to sell our land to them. But now if an owner won't sell the land there are middlemen who interfere who would like to get the land from us. Now if a farmer won't sell to the middlemen they get armed men to try to frighten him off. So these armed men are not really the company. They're a group the company trusts. Look the farmers left because of fear because if they would not sell their land their lives would be taken they would be killed. There are even some farmers who gave their land away to the company. Lowland farmers face a loss in their way of life from expanding agribusiness.

And even if you don't believe our life and the life our family has made us in our land. Well that's why I don't want you would come here. We cannot allow that. There will be no future for the people here because they have no other way of surviving. Let me lighten up and look and I will think about working in offices and look about the children I will have no education. He said. You need look OK. Look at that so you look back to life is really tied to the land. You

cannot be prevented from taking our land. It is really one way of killing that people will say impossible. Within view of the ships that carry those produce over seas are the shanty towns in the shacks that house has and who have left their small farms. Some come to the city with dreams of a better life for their children. Others crowd in these squatter areas because there is no other place they can find to

live. The movement of hundreds of millions of peasants and their families from their farms to the enormous urban centers of the Third World is the largest mass migration of people in all history. When any kind of intensive agriculture program is undertaken there will be some displacement and some movement of people and certainly of facilities to support those people. But the trade offs it would seem in every place that they have occurred and that we're familiar with are to the side of the plus. I mean I have always been a farmer. My crops were coffee coconuts and cocoa. Now that the company has taken over my land I'm not able to continue planting because the company is going to use it since there is really nothing more I can do there. I came here to live in the city.

I have no job. My children are really hungry. My only wish is that they can eat at least one meal a day. Fifty percent of the food grown in the Philippines is exported. Seventy five percent of Philippine children under age 5 are malnourished. Chronic malnutrition is often a hidden problem. If children are not fed properly their ability to learn may be impaired. They become more vulnerable to disease. Problems which come from the agribusiness system leading to mass migration of rural people to cities are not unique to the Philippines. We saw these problems in every country we filmed. And it is true for virtually every other country in the Third

World. That the transnational Baghdad Piri have strengthened landowners throwing the people out and making them live in very very severe conditions so that people have had to migrate into the cities. They have no land anymore. They have no work. And so this has had very very destructive effects. Instead of. Helping the people to better their conditions it has listened to conditions as you can easily see in the badges of the cities when people are living in caves he said puny conditions. This neighborhood that we're here in now in fact is one of the older settlement areas of the of the city. It is an area that was settled by.

Land invasions 15 20 years ago. Ironically in spite of the fact that people here. Have An infant mortality rate. Four or five times what it is in the United States. This area represents prosperity in Mexico because people here have a way of eking out a living. In Costa Rica urban migration has created similar conditions. Reverend Edwardo dissuasion. Well usually the results is this type of misery situation of injustice in which these people live. Some of them come from the rural area. They have not been able to make it and then they. Try to find some type of solution for their existence by coming to this place and taking over. Don't they go on with their DNA socio and eastern A Dominican Republic where golf is

based. There should be prosperity but nevertheless statistics show that it's one of the areas with the highest level of malnutrition. My Your Where are the largest number of children who die at an early age. And where the people don't have the minimum resources to sustain themselves in a dignified and decent manner. In the Dominican Republic 75 percent of the entire population is malnourished. Half the population is unemployed or underemployed. Virtually all experts agree. Hunger is not due to overpopulation. They argue most hunger is the result of an equitable distribution of food

land and income. The. Return on peanuts but used a huge and migration to the city is enough for God and the glowing bullshit of the population of those cities really that if it the pool was the presence and even poor in many cases and not said to be not benefitting from the peanut industry. In parts of Africa. War and drought also have been major factors in the migration of millions of people to urban squalor. Emergency feeding programs provide a temporary solution but 5 million children in Africa will die from hunger this year alone. Oh. There. It is. What do. You.

Know. In north east Brazil a 10 year long drought has forced 20 million people to leave their farms and migrate to the cities. But a few hung on hoping somehow for a break in the weather that has never come. Now those who are left like this man and his family survive from food occasionally given them by a local church. How old are your children. I think this one is 10. This one is one. This one is for quiet. What did they need today for breakfast. Oh here for today they had tea with sweet herbs. Yeah without bread but yeah. And the baby. Oh no. I mean how do I if I was free to herbs also so much better. What

is the future for your children the future for my children. I'm waiting to see the hour when they will die of hunger. People have fled north east Brazil because without rain or irrigation they could no longer grow food. However there is fertile land just a few hours from where many of them live. It is not used to feed the hungry. It is used as part of a Brazilian government plan to grow sugarcane to be made into an alcohol substitute for gasoline. Economist glottis loud. Well we have the second country in the world presently intensity of dependence on cars for transportation. This makes us much more dependent on oil. We do present oil. Prices.

Alcohol is being produced from sugarcane as an alternative for foreign. Oil problems. We are not meeting presently solutions for the luxury sector of the country. What we are needing is food for those who are hungry. Many of the victims of the drought have moved to receive a large city on the northeast coast of Brazil. Some survive by eating what they find in the local garbage dump. They face a future with no education inadequate health care living in unsanitary squalor. Into cities. You have at least. 10 to 15 million. People who are. Either unemployed or under-employed. Well the nutrition situation is the following. We had thirty two point

eight percent of the population with adequate diet. This means two thirds of the population. Are hungry. A long drought leads to a severe famine. Then to millions fleeing the barren land some of their children face the ultimate consequence of a society that places a higher priority on auto fuel than food. You know. This hospital the Institute of Pernambuco is in the state of receiving. This child's condition is critical. It has to do with malnutrition. He has third degree malnutrition represent a degree that is very

critical. The child died a few days later. Oh yes. Thank. You. Thank you. These riots happened when Brazil's government raised prices of imported goods cut wages and devalued their currency. They were following the orders of the International Monetary Fund the IMF. Brazil like virtually every developing country borrowed heavily from U.S. and European banks in the 1970s and low rates of interest. Now these countries are in crisis because they are so deeply in debt. When a country has trouble paying its foreign debts the IMF has the bank of last resort will lend more money to that country. But they will lend only if stringent austerity measures are followed to free up money to

pay off the country's obligations. One austerity measure is expanding food exports even if this means increasing hunger in the country that is in debt. Once a country followed all austerity measures the IMF and private banks like Citibank one of the largest will lend more money but it has often been at a higher rate of interest. Well countries that are on the debt treadmill now some of them are at the point where they are supposed to be paying more for the service of the debt than they earn all year from their all of their exports. So if they are not allowed to earn a just return for their export crops if they cannot control the interest rates on the debts that they have incurred and up to now they have been able to neither of these two things then I see no hope a tool for these countries being able

to pay off their debt or to be able to continue to exist as societies under present circumstances. Susan George's analysis may sound unduly pessimistic but misuse and abuse of international loans in the Philippines have contributed to a nationwide crisis. Now the International Monetary Fund and the commercial banks are pressing us to repay these debts these debts. Won't loan out to the privileged in this country. And utilize to develop hotels look shabby. And tourist resorts primarily teach projects that did not add to the productive capability of this country. I had all these debts were never applied for projects that help the poor. But the austerity program. To which the whole nation has been

forced by the international monetary means in effect. That the poor. Have to sacrifice to pay for the debts. Incurred by the privileged in this case. This is actually the situation in the Philippines and that is why it is a situation which I feel is so very explosive because it is a situation that smacks. Of. Pure injustice. As the Philippines follow the IMF austerity program they actively encourage expansion of food exports. Dolan Delmonte plan to take over more land to increase pineapple banana production for overseas markets. The government claims the small farmers do not have legal title to the land even though many of them have been working it for generations. So when the farmer loses his land a motion may reach the boiling point.

If you live in it why should I not be angry especially for me who was helping my mother here one didn't want to took away our land just because they were rich and they were enjoying their wealth. They still take our land away from us. Anyone with the rage of their land was taken away like. The outrage of peasant farmers in the Philippines has led to rebellion. Trying to crush it. The government has forced hundreds of thousands of peasant farmers off their land and ordered them to live in strategic hamlets. They say they do this to separate the people from the enemy. We who live in the mountains natives of this place. We believe that the land taken from us is ours. No matter how many times we ask that our land be returned we can no longer own it. Instead the military come here interrogate us and are very abusive.

They say that the enemy is living among us but we insist that we are only trying to live and work on our own no matter how much they try to control. Many more were aware of the reality. More soldiers are patrolling the countryside but the rebel movement is growing. It is estimated there are as many as 20000 armed rebels. Are going to be to the. Family so people will rebel. Life is very difficult. If we cannot get any food. They said there is no land to cultivate. A man who is hungry will fight back no matter what will happen to him. So you will fight me. He will always look for ways so he can eat. He will look for ways even if it is bad so he can eat my stomach.

But he asked a man who has no food is like an animal. When I used such a man will not be in his right mind anymore. And he will rebel no matter what happens. If US policy. Towards the Third World. That's not change. Then what will happen. Is that the peoples of the wood. Will be forced to change. And overturn. Their governments which are responsible for the acceptance of American policy. Which means. The agribusiness revolution is producing more food while fewer people are being fed the hungry. Some agribusiness and a few policy makers are searching for a solution. At some point we're going to realize that our foreign policy has to be based on a sense of social justice. But our allies are going to face that too.

I think would be very difficult for Congress through U.S. law to control American multinational corporations in what they do overseas. It would be very difficult mechanically to control extraterritorial policies of those corporations. But even before you get to that point it would be next to impossible politically. I think to get a majority of votes in Congress to even try to do that. What I think we should do. Is to work with those who hold hold the mortgage so to speak all the debts ease up a little bit. Quid pro quo would be that the country has to change their methods of production instead of setting aside most of their land for export crops. Let them have some export certainly. But set aside enough land. Growing crops for internal consumption so that people aren't starving.

That is what is going on in one project in an area of Kenya called the US small subsistence farms are interspersed with small plots of sugarcane. It is part of the sugar growing and processing operation managed by a British agribusiness called a book or agriculture International. General manager for Booker and loneliness is Robert Glasper and. From Topeka run a profitable operation. Run deficiency and at the same time. Create a life. President. Just established. In conjunction with the government to get them mean most of the thanks again from farmers.

You could see it kill two birds with one stone. Supply the factory with sufficient key and while it is running a profitable operation you move your skins your. Cash crop. While very important at the same time leaving them sufficient land. They're all in for for us to continue to maintain their families down there. Booker provides the farmer with seed fertilizer advice manages the harvest and runs the sugar mill farmers are permitted to contract up to half their land in sugar. Farmers each grow an average of four acres of cane for the mill leaving them enough land to grow food for their own family. The movies don't ship though it has a local facilities that it had. It 10 years ago. There are a lot more consumer goods or such.

A lot more people and you get into it. This is something that they weren't able to do it or 10 years ago. When you would if instead of create a no growth scheme. We had. Purchased all the love that we needed around the factory. We would have thought a dislocation of something like 15 families. No. There isn't that much. Government would have had a very very serious problem with. It. The success of money as an Booker's operation there is an example of how an agribusiness can make a profit contribute to local food needs and help earn foreign exchange for a third world country. All this without impoverishing the people or making them landless. But some critics believe drastic changes are needed.

I think the best thing that the United States could do is to withdraw. From the third wood cutters and leave these countries to their own resources allow them to work out their problems on their own set up their own priorities. Pat Pallies the pilot is now determined exclusively but has national capital. If critics suggested agribusiness men all over the world withdraw from the Third World somebodies are there mine because I have no idea what anyone would do at that point. I have no idea how it out anything would make any progress or any country make any progress. After that the currents would take place. The abandoned wreckage of an American agribusiness called Bud and hold. They can

illustrate what happens when agribusiness withdraws from a third world country as Ernest fetter advocates. But add Hola California based agribusiness expanded into Senegal in 1972 with funding from the World Bank. Advanced drip irrigation technology was used to grow green beans melons tomatoes and strawberries for wintertime export to Europe. In 1974 at the height of another West African famine bug destroyed its entire grain being crop because the price was not profitable enough in Europe. A few years later they abandon their estate and left Senegal to figure out what to do about it. It is possible that in the beginning this would present for the third world gave problems. But on the other side it would be extremely important

a challenge to all the NIEs production and they're opposed to seeing any nutrition for themselves. In the past few years local farmers have taken over what had been the bad Angela state. They have started to grow produce again. They have formed a cooperative for growing and selling their crocs. Some of what they grow is for their own consumption some is for local markets. But you cannot continue to promote the development that has foreign roots. You have to base development on local forces. What I think is that you have to turn things over start

from local necessities like the devil the country says meat respond to the local SS days and then organize your exports organize your foreign relations according to the logic of your surplus and not to the logic of what is being needed in North and countries. In northwest Mexico the two revolutions that we've seen at work in this film have given birth to something new. These farm laborers don't work for a foreign agribusiness. They own the land they work on. The agribusiness revolution had resulted in the removal of thousands of peasant farmers from their land in this area. Five thousand of these landless peasant then created their own small scale social revolution in the late 1970s. They fought for and took over 50000 acres of vital farmland. At first there were battles and some peasants were killed by government troops.

The peasants persisted and the government acquiesced to their land takeover. Present leaders recognize they could not go back to each family farming their own small part of land. They saw that modern farm technology makes for efficient food production. So they worked the fifty thousand acres as one large farm. They run it as a cooperative. Each member owning a share of the business. They also set up their own credit union. And they have started a small industry for building their own houses. I. Would like to hear those there's a familiar compass for the peasant family.

Pollution represents economic and social freedom as opposed to their traditional oppression. Before we were all day laborers and we were unable to have many things we do for the jobs we did on the farms owned by others. Now we have the land. And we receive what we are. Oh. The fruits of our labor. These. Countries work out their own. The better it will be for this country and even for the industrious if we don't. I think our system will be totally uncapable if it is not already totally incapable of the problems the catastrophic pol rooms of hunger unemployment and poverty. We feel very outraged about foreign intervention in

affairs and we would much rather have a country which is completely independent which has the ability to to determine what had its people and for its future. The video was so I don't think we need to subordinate all our agricultural policy and production to the needs of exports to pay off our foreign debt. I mean I have a firm conviction that if we don't modify the economic policy of our country in a way to improve things to give more attention to the internal necessities of the people here then we will bring our countries 20 even bigger internal crisis. I think what the American population needs is to understand that the gravity of the

problems they two thirds of the population going hungry is so great the transformations must be started and the support for these transformation the support of the American public is extremely important. Time. For a transcript. Send $4 to nonfiction television hungry for profit.

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