The Rat in the Grain

Dan Amstutz and the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture

by Jeffrey St. Clair

The war on Iraq couldn't have come at a worse time for Iraq's beleaguered farmers. Spring is harvest time in the barley and wheat fields of the Tigris River valley.

The war is over, but the situation in the fields of Iraq continues to deteriorate. The banks have been looted, irrigation systems destroyed, road travel restricted, markets closed, warehouses and grain silos pillaged.

To harvest the grain before it rots in the fields Iraqi farmers need more than eight million gallons of diesel fuel to run Iraq's corroding armada of combines and harvesters. But most of the fuel depots were incinerated by US bombing strikes.

Even if the crop can be harvested, there's no clear way for the grain to be marketed and sold. Under the Hussein regime, the crops were bought by the Baghdad government at a fixed priced and then distributed. Iraqi farmers are still owed $75 million for this year's crop, with little sign that the money will ever arrive.

Grain farmers aren't alone. As in the first Gulf War, bombing raids targeted cattle feed lots, poultry farms, fertilizer warehouses, pumping stations, irrigation systems and pesticide factories -- the very infrastructure of Iraqi agriculture.

Many fields in southern Iraq lie fallow, as vegetable farmers have been unable to secure seeds for this summer's crops of melons, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers and beans -- all mainstays of the Iraqi diet.

"We expect failures," said Abdul Aziz Nejefi, a barley farmer from Mosul. "But we never had this situation before. There is no government."

Meanwhile, millions of Iraqis face starvation this summer. A UN staff report from late May paints a bleak portrait. It notes that Iraq's poultry industry has effectively been decimated. Millions of chickens perished during the war. Millions of others face starvation, since nearly all of the chicken feed stored in government warehouses has been looted. Chicken and eggs are staples of the Iraqi, amounting for more than half of the animal protein consumed by the population.

Many other farm animals, including sheep and goats, could be ravaged by disease, since the nation's stockpiles of veterinary medicines and vaccines have been almost totally destroyed or looted.

"Before there is unwarranted military technological triumphalism, let those setting out to manage the peace think mouths," says Tim Land, professor food policy at City University in London. "Grumbling stomachs are bad politics as well as disastrous for the public health. There has to be a food democracy after decades of food totalitarianism."

Into this dire circumstance strides Daniel Amstutz, the Bush administration's choice to oversee the reconstruction of Iraq's agricultural system. Now an international trade lobbyist in DC with a fat roster of big ag clients, Amstutz once served as a top executive at Cargill, the food giant which controls much of the world trade in grain.

Amstutz is no stranger to government, either. During the first Bush administration he served as Undersecretary of Agriculture for International Affairs and Commodity programs. He was also the chief US negotiator on agricultural issues for the Uruguay Round of GATT talks, which led to the WTO.

"Daniel Amstutz, an ex-Cargill executive, is there to push the agribusiness agenda, not a democratic agenda," says George Naylor, president of the National Family Farm Coalition. "He will excel in telling the world that his policy is good for farmers, consumers and the environment when just the opposite is true."

The small farmers of the grain belt of the Midwest have a particular loathing for Amstutz. During his stint in the first Bush administration, Amstutz devised the notorious Freedom to Farm Bill, which eliminated tariffs and slashed federal farm price supports. As a result, thousands of American farmers lost their farms and monopolists like Cargill reaped the benefits.

The contours of Amstutz's plan for Iraq are familiar: a combination of free-market shock therapy and predation by multinational corporations. Gliding over a decade of UN sanctions that have starved the nation and a war that ravaged the nation's infrastructure, Amstutz announced that the real problem facing Iraqi agriculture is, naturally, government subsidies. "Iraqi farmers have had little incentive to increase production because of price controls that have kept food very inexpensive," Amstutz announced. "With a transition to a market economy, we can see health returning to agriculture and incentives to employ good farming practices and modern techniques."

The more likely scenario is that Amstutz will use the destitute condition of Iraq's farmlands as a lucrative opportunity to dump cheap grain from American companies like Cargill, all of it paid for by Iraqi oil. If this scenario plays out, it will spell disaster for Iraq's struggling farmers.

"Someone needs to warn the Iraqi people that other third world countries can already attest that the dependence Amstutz will create surely means that Iraq's sovereignty will be greatly compromised," says Naylor.

And Naylor argues that cash-strapped American farmers won't see any benefits, either. "Even if there will be more exports to Iraq, this little drop in the American farmer's bucket will hardly be noticed," said Naylor. "Amstutz perpetuates the 'more exports' lie because his agribusiness cronies are encouraging overproduction all over the world, thus being able to sell more genetically-modified seeds and chemicals and buying ever cheaper farm commodities."

Outside of the US, Amstutz's most virulent critic has been Kevin Watkins, Oxfam's policy director. Watkins warns that Amstutz is little more than a carpetbagger seeking to advance the interests of the same food titans that his lobbying outfit in DC represents -- Cargill, DuPont, Cenex and Archer-Daniels-Midland.

"This guy is uniquely well-placed to advance the commercial interests of American grain companies and bust open the Iraqi market, but singularly ill-equipped to lead a reconstruction effort in a war torn country," Watkins warns. "Putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of a human rights commission."