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PAGE 16
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, SEPTEMBER 16, 1986
Soviet Union and sugar to China, traditional Australian markets, could
undermine the defense ties be
t
ween the two nations, finishing off what's
left of the ANZUS alliance.
Beginning September 15, the 92 members of GATT (General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade) begin major deliberations in Punta del. Este, Uruguay.
GATT rules have heretofore dealt only with global trade in manufactured
goods, but the Reagan Administrat1on, it is said, is going to push for the
elimination of governmental subsidies of farm .products. Just how the U.S.
will be able to enthusiastically push this proposal when price and income
supports to its own farmers will total $26 billion for fiscal 1986 is a
big question mark.
The European Community can hardly endorse the idea either.
About 70
percent of the total EC budget is allocated to agricultural supports to
keep farmers in the 12 countries from being thrown out of work and into
the cities, producing dangerous politic'al and social side-effects. The
EC's "butter mountains" and "wine lakes" continue to surge upward. The EC
spends $63,000 every hour just to store its 1.4 million tons of surplus
butter in refrigerated warehouses. The Community produces so much more
wine than it consumes that the annual wine surplus would fill 1,500
Olympic-sized swimming pools.
(California wine producers, themsel ·ves
struggling with mounting overproduction, are trying to limit low-cost
European wine sales in the U.S.)
Still, some experts are a bit edgj of claiming that the worldwide surplus
is "permanent." Too many potentially negative factors--such as dependence
upon today's "miracle grains"--could quickly move the situation in the
opposite direction. Here is a report from the Sept. 9 NEW YOR..� TIMES:
Food production in developing countries has been increasing by
4.4 percent annually..•faster than in the developed world and
more than twice the rate of population growth.
Dozens of
countries that were once on the verge of famine are now self
sufficient in grain production.
Even Bangladesh, which once
seemed doomed to perennial malnutrition, has become self
sufficient in food. India, which suffered a famine in 1965-67,
is exporting food.
Experts say agriculture worldwide is in the midst of a third
production revolution. The first was the change from animal to
mechanical power that occurred in the first four decades of the
century in the developed countries and that is still going on
in underdeveloped lands.
The second was the creation and
widespread use of pesticides, fertilizers and other farm
chemicals after World War II.
The third revolution, these experts say, is in improved plant
genetics. Breeders have used a variety of techniques--and are
now beginning to use genetic engineering--to produce crops that
grow faster, are less expensive to plant and have better
defenses against insects, diseases and harsh weather•••• "This
revolution could be considerably more powerful than the two
that preceded it," says Dennis T. Avery, an agriculture analyst
at the State Department. "The first two farming revolutions
•