{"id":982,"date":"2014-11-01T18:54:17","date_gmt":"2014-11-01T22:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=982"},"modified":"2014-11-01T18:54:17","modified_gmt":"2014-11-01T22:54:17","slug":"global-finance-and-the-privatization-of-rural-livelihoods-roar-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=982","title":{"rendered":"Global finance and the privatization of rural livelihoods | ROAR Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/roarmag.org\/2014\/11\/financialization-agriculture-rural-livelihoods\/\">Global finance and the privatization of rural livelihoods | ROAR Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.571em 0px;\">A big piece of news for food politics enthusiasts this summer was India\u2019s veto over a proposed agreement \u2014 to be concluded within the legal framework of the World Trade Organization \u2014 on \u2018trade facilitation measures\u2019. The agreement was meant to regulate a number of sensitive issues, mostly related to customs infrastructure and procedures, which are liable to affect trade between WTO members. As it often happens with international agreements, however, exceptions and exemptions are as important as the rules being agreed. In Bali, which is where the \u2018trade facilitation\u2019 negotiations were happening, the bone of contention happened to be India\u2019s request for a permanent exemption from further trade liberalization of its public stockpiling and distribution system for food staples.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.571em 0px;\">In fact, the centerpiece of India\u2019s food security infrastructure is the Food Corporation of India (FCI). This is a public body, established in 1964, that acts like a hybrid between a marketing board, a food bank and a subsidy scheme. It stockpiles grains and other food staples (which it buys at controlled prices that give farmers some protection against fluctuations). It then uses this reserve to distribute grains at times when market prices become too high, both as a way to bring those prices down (this is what a marketing board does) as well as to ensure access to essential dietary staples (the \u2018food bank\u2019 aspect of the FCI). In other words, the FCI is like a public insurance mechanism against the fluctuation of food prices. The issue in Bali, then, was whether India should be allowed to \u2018keep\u2019 the FCI indefinitely, or whether it should gradually phase it out, in order to leave free reign to private actors.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.571em 0px;\">&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Global finance and the privatization of rural livelihoods | ROAR Magazine. A big piece of news for food politics enthusiasts this summer was India\u2019s veto over a proposed agreement \u2014 to be concluded within the legal framework of the World Trade Organization \u2014 on \u2018trade facilitation measures\u2019. The agreement was meant to regulate a number [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,6],"tags":[20,337,437,805,896],"class_list":["post-982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","category-liberty","tag-agriculture","tag-free-trade","tag-international-trade","tag-trade","tag-wto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}