There seem to be several holes in Professor Cowen's arguement. I do not think he understands the dynamics of 3rd world agrarian economics. Indeed, his primary research area seems to be the economics of culture and a leaning towards writing food guides (source : wikipedia).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shek
Export restrictions send a message to farmers that their crops are least profitable precisely when they are most needed. There is little incentive to plant, harvest or store enough rice — or any other crop, for that matter — as a hedge against bad times.
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Professor Cowen probably does not realise that the average farmer he is talking about does not have any other option but to continue farming rice, regardless of the price that he would get. There would be many factors to this, such as lack of alternatives (the only alterative for rice cultivation in many of those areas would probably be jute), land holding type, irrigaton. Many of these factors are not directly influenced by any government policy. Factor like rainfall would have an exponentially greater impact in any loss of cultivation area than any government policy.
Rice production declines in Bengal-Kolkata-Cities-The Times of India
Apart from this limitation in production, there are areas where government policy can benefit, such as processing and procurement. In many of the regions where rice is produced, procurement is in the hands of licensed procurement agents (middlemen) who are supposed to procure through a transparent auctioning process, but instead collude amongst themselves and rob the farmers. This is where Big Retail is trying, unsuccessfully, to break in and provide farmers another venue for selling their products.
Another thing, every country absolutely has the right to regard its own food security above the needs of others and take any measure necessary...