48 SOCIAL SCIENTIST landlords and the rich farmers who would be the beneficiaries from it. They would get higher prices and even though their costs of production would go up owing to the cut-back in subsidies of various kinds, they would nonetheless be net gainers. But eventually, even greater gainers will be the TNCs involved in agri-business. The question sometimes is asked: what is wrong with it? After all no country produces all its requirements. Each country should produce that commodity where it has a comparative advantage and import where it does not. So if the third world countries produc and export a variety of non-traditional agricultural commodities and use the proceeds to buy foodgrains from abroad, is that not in their best interests? The basic problem with this argument is that it assumes that the foreign exchange earned by exporting these non- traditional goods is all of it available at the disposal of the country to use as it pleases. As a matter of fact, however, much of it is taken out by the TNCs as profits. What is left is used partly for servicing past debt and partly for the import of all kinds of luxury goods which in the free market context have no lower a priority than. basic foodgrains. Thus, once prioritisatiol), self-sufficiency and food-security through the PDS is given up, no matter how high the export earnings, there is no guarantee that famines would not occur. The African example is a telling one in this respect. At a time when there were plenty of foodstocks in the world, Africa, having been an early victim of export agriculture and of the adverse terms of trade movement against primary commodities, simply did not have enough freely available foreign exchange, i.e. over and above meeting debt-service and other obligations, to avert famines over its large sub-Saharan tracts. Countries caught in this bind then turn to western nations for 'food aid* and those very agencies, which are responsible for the calamity in the first place, appear in the guise of saviours, and, ironically, 'advise* them to push even more firmly towards export-oriented agriculture. XI The shift towards export-oriented agriculture in the country as a whole cannot but affect the fortunes of food deficit states, such as Kerala. But there are two different kinds of effect that we should distinguish between. First, there is the empirical effect, namely that of a rise in food prices. T^ie working people are directly hit by this; moreover, since the income distributional gains of the surplus farmers accrue to those located in other states, they are also indirectly affected in so far as they are insulated from the possible multiplier effects of the extra expenditures of the surplus farmers.