Nino Galloni

Africa Can Now Become Self-Sufficient in
Food Production Again

This is the edited transcript of the presentation of Nino Galloni to Panel 2, “Runaway Inflation or Glass-Steagall?” of the Schiller Institute’s June 18-19 Conference, “There Can Be No Peace Without the Bankruptcy Reorganization of the Dying Trans-Atlantic Financial System.” Mr. Galloni is an economist and former Director General of the Italian Labor Ministry.

Dear Helga, good evening to you and all our friends.

In the past years, globalization has lost steam more and more each year. The basic reason is that it has been mainly, if not exclusively, about costs, and so there has been competition among national economies on costs, forcing some countries to lower wages and also to degrade quality. Let’s call this “modern globalization,” because a globalization was also there in the time of the Roman Empire which first imported grain from Sicily but switched to Egypt because Egyptian grain was cheaper.

What has changed in our time is a fundamental issue, and that is that in practice this globalization could not be exercised on quality. Thus, in practice, countries like Italy have been forced to lower wages to compete with countries that instead had to export based on their lower wages, creating inextricable problems. This globalization began when workers’ wages were lowered in the United States, so it was necessary to import low-quality, low-priced products to maintain the level of demand and consumption. This allowed countries like China to develop. That is, they took advantage of the situation, while countries like Italy, instead of integrating with countries like China and competing on the basis of the quality of our products, took paths that did not bring any results.

Today we suffer the consequences. During the 1960s, for example, hunger in Africa did not exist because Africans produced their own grains, their own millet, their own sorghum. But at some point, they started importing cheap wheat and flour from North America and they uprooted all their indigenous production. When prices went up in the 1970s, there was the debt problem of African countries because the ruling classes born out of independence struggles had been ousted and replaced with corrupt classes that imported arms and luxury goods. It turned out that with inflation, the mass of Africans no longer had the money to buy the baguettes and flour that came from North America.

Now we have, in my opinion, a great opportunity. Prices (rather than costs, which remained the same), of these grains are going up because there is no availability of these grains due to no investment in infrastructure, or rather because the ships are stopped in the Black Sea.

At this point an agreement should be made between Russia, Italy and African countries, especially those that have shown they care about their peoples, to use these Ukrainian grains while the African countries are reorganizing—because prices are going up—to start producing their own millet, their own sorghum that can be planted in the rainy season, that is, in a few months. They have to use these grains that are under the control of Russia, to get to the rainy season. And what will be planted? Besides millet and sorghum, also ancient grains.

Today in Italy and particularly in Sicily, in Apulia, in Campania, in Calabria, so many young people have gone back to the land, allowing us to replace €40 billion in food imports. We are world leaders in organic and biodynamic.

At this point, I believe that we can reverse the perspective and take advantage of this war to give back to Africans what has always been theirs—and that is, a productive capacity.

I will also tell you about an experience I had in Congo with my missionary brother. We put water on plowed land, and ears of corn sprouted, and people who did not have the money to buy baguettes got their bread, made from their grains. Of course, the productivity of that land is low and so we need to get out of the capitalist logic and globalization. And especially in a few years when, hypothetically cheap grains and cereals come back, I believe that these African countries—that have demonstrated their strength, their independence and who will dialogue with Russia, and I hope with Italy when we will be freed from the yoke of these subjects who have been dominating us and denying our democracy for years, and will have been overcome by the just revolt of my country, of my fellow countrymen—I believe that these African countries will refuse to import again the low-priced grains and cereals to supplant their own. And that will be the end of globalization and the restoration of an economy where quality, independence, democracy and dialogue among all peoples will return.

In order to go against the trend of the last decades, I hope we take advantage of this geopolitical situation that is forcing a very important change on the planet. There is no longer the unipolar world under American command, but a multipolar world that will have to dialogue. That means we have to investigate what will be the new Bretton Woods as Lyndon LaRouche said so many years ago and continued to advocate as long as he was alive until a few years ago. That is the way also to regulate economies and revive economic development, with a system of credit, or at any rate, non-debt currency.

It is a matter of redoing the infrastructure, having more and more efficient international connections, advancing scientific research in all fields, and then creating a world where there is harmony among local producers, where there are also basic ones for countries that have this characteristic: food, clothing, housing, household products, etc. on the one hand, and on the other hand, develop all those technologies that will allow humanity to grow.

This will allow us to show that there are not too many of us on the planet, but exactly the opposite. Because if we look at the problems of Africa, for example, we see that it is underpopulated. But in order for Africa to be properly populated, we have to revive projects like Transaqua, to bring water from the Congo River Basin to Lake Chad. Also, [build] drainage projects to minimize the evaporation of the Nile.

Today, unlike a few decades ago, desalinators work very well; they can be powered by atomic energy with thorium generators and in other ways and produce very good water. I experienced in recent years some plants that the Italian company ENEL built to produce water with desalination on some islands and it was no different from bottled mineral water; it was very good. It is not like it used to be, such that you couldn’t drink it. Today it is good, it is very good for irrigation. There are Arab countries that are becoming gardens, thanks to these technologies. Why not extend to the whole planet this opportunity that always comes from collaboration between peoples, in a democratic logic, according to agreements, as we said, of a new Bretton Woods that takes into account monetary aspects, credit aspects, and in general those of economic collaboration?