countries at cheap cost for rich consumers in rich countries. It shifts control over resources from small farmers and fishermen to agribusiness corporations, destroys the natural resource base through non-sustainable use and in the process destroys livelihoods of the small producers and creates poverty instead of removing it.

All Third World countries are being required by the World Bank to shift their agriculture to export oriented agriculture with a focus on exports of meat, marine products and flowers and vegetables. Oxfam's "new" recipe is the old World Bank recipe of export first. The only difference is that Oxfam labels it in the W.T.O. jargon of "market access" while the Bank calls it trade liberalisation and economic reforms. The recipe fails the poor on 3 counts.

Firstly, it diverts scarce land and water resources from meeting local food needs to providing for export markets thus creating hunger and conditions for famine of the most vulnerable and marginal communities. This is what happened during colonialism and is happening under the recolonisation of globalisation. As Utsa Patnaik, a renowned Indian economist has shown, under British rule per capita consumption in India declined from 200kg/ha in 1918 to 150 kg in 1947. Non-food grain crops expanded 10 times faster than food grains, feeding export markets. The Great Bengal Famine which killed 2 million people was the result. In Java, under Dutch rule, export crops expanded by 600% while paddy consumption declined from 199kg/cop in 1885 to 162 Kg/cop in 1940.

The inverse relation between increasing exports and declining food consumption locally and nationally has been exhibited under export led strategies of World Bank Structural Adjustment Programmes. In Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania and Zaire which account from 60% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, there has been a 33% decline in cereal output per head and 20 per cent decline in overall food per head in less than a decade. All the countries saw rising agricultural exports per head along with declining food output of food consumption per head.

Oxfam which started as a famine relief agency seems to have forgotten its roots and has not once raised the issue of food entitlements and famine in its chapter on agricultural exports.

Secondly, the figure of an added $100b income for exporting countries hides the costs to local ecosystems and local livelihoods when peasants and fishermen are displaced by export corporations and agribusiness who use non-sustainable systems to maximize gains and profits. In the preferred sectors of meat, flowers and shrimps, a shadow cost of 10$ is left in terms of ecological, devastation and ruined livelihoods for each $ of export earnings to companies. Oxfam's magical figure of $100b increased export earning thus hides one trillion dollars of social and ecological destruction in local economies, leaving local communities poorer. That is why every shrimp farm, every flower unit, every slaughter house is protested against by local people.

Three areas of exports which have been heavily promoted under the new trade liberalisation regime are aquaculture, floriculture and meat. According to the received ideology of free-trade the export earnings from exports of farmed shrimp, flowers and meat would finance imports of food and hence any short fall created by diversion of productive capacity from growing food for domestic consumption to growing luxury items for consumption by rich northern consumers would be more than made up.

However, it is neither efficient nor sustainable to grow shrimp, flowers and meat for export in India. In each case more food production capacity is destroyed domestically through diversion of resources and destruction of ecosystems than the food that can be purchased on global markets through exports. In the case of flower exports, India spent Rs. 1.37 billion as foreign exchange for promoting floriculture exports, and a mere Rs. 0.32 billion were earned. India can buy only one fourth the food it could have grown with export earnings from floriculture.

Our food security has therefore declined by seventy five percent, and our foreign exchange drain increased by more than Rs. 1 billion. In the case of meat exports, for every dollar earned, India is destroying fifteen dollars worth of ecological functions performed by farm animals for sustainable agriculture. Cattle in India are the sources of organic fertilisers and renewable energy. When they are killed for exports, these essential services given freely by the cattle to the farmer are destroyed and we have to import chemical ferti