The number of proposals, strategies and initiatives how to improve food security and agricultural production have become vast and hard to follow up. Suspiciously, one aspect is missing in these debates, or if it comes up, it is rejected outright by most proponents: Could import restrictions help to stimulate agricultural production and benefit small-scale farming families? What are the preconditions for a rational and „smart“ implementation of import regulation to achieve these objectives?
While it is obvious that the availability of cheap food for several decades and the liberalized trade regime did a lot of harm to agriculture and trade in the importing countries, especially in the poorest countries, thinking about at least a partial and targeted reversal of this approach and the trade liberalisation dogma is a taboo in official trade and development circles.
But a number of countries have already begun to put some kind of import regulation back into practice after several experiences where this had positive impacts on local production and supply, incomes and poverty reduction. Therefore there are many good reasons to have a closer look at this trade instrument, its advantages and risks, especially when looking for alternative solutions to support local peasant agriculture and food security.
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Trade, imports and exports are of course part of every economic development. But if they lead to dependency, like negative trade balances and accordingly to negative balances of payments, they can become problematic. Similarly, food imports itself are nothing negative. But experience shows that imports of basic foods, on which many people and especially poor people depend, can become “a weapon”. This is what India experienced in the 1960s, when the USA withheld food deliveries under the programme PL 480 for political reasons7, or Southern Africa in 2002, when the US insisted to send GM-maize as food aid8. Market forces too can create havoc, as the current food crises underlines: Because of mechanisms, which are beyond the control of the people and the government themselves, people are not getting enough food. Thus, States are losing their food sovereignty.
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There is an urgent need to rethink dependency on food imports, because it threatens food security and the development of sustainable domestic food production systems. This paper dealt mainly with two aspects of how to achieve this. One is the improvement of food self-sufficiency by increasing domestic production. It is being argued, that this should mainly focus on the available potentials of small-scale family farmers, because this can not only increase food supply, but also generate employment, rural development and environmental protection. The second issue relates to necessary changes in the international trade regime, allowing for more protection to give space for the development of domestic food production by family farms. Instead of further trade liberalisation in agricultural products, countries should be in a position to prioritize food production over trade interests.