Going Against the Grain: Why Do Canada and the United States Market Wheat So Differently?

At the turn of the twentieth century, private grain exchanges settled the daily prices for North American wheat. By the end of the Second World War, the Canadian and US governments had intervened significantly in these markets. The Canadian government required farmers in its western provinces to deliver their product to the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB), a single-selling-desk agency that, by then, had supplanted private wheat marketing in western Canada. Meanwhile, the United States government subsidized farm incomes with domestic-use taxes and import tariffs, but otherwise preserved private wheat marketing. In this article, I demonstrate that these disparate agricultural policies were broadly defined by immutable economic realities imposed on each country by global wheat-trade patterns and triggered by unprecedentedly severe agricultural crises. That is, amidst the precipitous fall in wheat prices in the early 1930s, each government crafted farm-support policies that reflected its domestic-consumption share of wheat production and the importance of wheat to its overall economy.     

To live and let die: Food,famine, and administrative violence in Democratic Kampuchea, 1975–1979

Between 1975 and 1979 approximately two million people died in the Cambodian genocide. We argue that the mass violence that transpired during this period was a manifestation of the Khmer Rouge's attempt to make life. Through a focus on the production of both violence and vulnerability we direct attention to the contradictory policies and practices forwarded by the Khmer Rouge that were designed to maximize life through the maximization of death. Specifically, we consider the mass starvation that accompanied the genocide as a structure of violence; we forward the argument that the rationing of food constitutes a calculated yet contradictory policy, namely that food rations represent in material form an inner contradiction of fostering life and disallowing life. Subsequently, the policy of forced rations—which imposed a particular space of vulnerability on Cambodia's population—resulted in massive loss of life through starvation and disease that were not the unintended side-effects of poor research, poor planning, or poor implementation on behalf of the Khmer Rouge, but rather were the necessary consequences of a proto-capitalist form of state-building.     

20世纪60年代中加小麦贸易对中国的重要意义

1960年中国首次从加拿大进口粮食度荒,并由此改变此前的粮食自给自足现状。中 加小麦贸易不仅可以巩固粮食安全、促进农业改革,也可使中国重返加拿大与西方市场,使外贸渠 道多样化,同时还促进了中加建交、打破美国的封锁孤立政策。     

粮食安全与中国耕地关系的动态调整——基于1980～2004年中国虚拟耕地及其贸易的研究

虚拟耕地是指从具体农产品实物中抽象出来的耕地资源消耗,有了这样一个概念,作为一种不可移易的资源的耕地就可以虚拟地依存于具体农产品的贸易中,并成为一种可以在地区或国际间进行流动和贸易的虚拟资源。对1980～2004年中国虚拟耕地及其贸易量的分析表明,新时期以来,中国粮食虚拟进口耕地和出口耕地对国际市场的依存度都较小;目前中国虚拟耕地贸易最重要的主体已经由粮食让位于油料,影响虚拟耕地数量的主要因素已经不是粮食安全而是生活质量,这是一种更高层次的粮食安全。粮食安全的政治性决定了粮食的战略产品性质,因此任何时候都不能放松粮食生产,但中国应该动态把握耕地的有机调整。     

华洋义赈会的农村合作运动述论

华洋义赈会为防救农村灾害,为复兴农村,而倡办了农村合作社。这逐渐为其他注重农村的团体所仿效,从而形成了民国时期的农村合作运动。该运动中,华洋义赈会的成效最为突出,对当时社会产生了积极影响。     

Food Security and Russia's 2010 Drought

An American specialist on Russia's agricultural sector examines the progression and impact of that country's 2010 drought (the worst in a half-century), leading to a grain harvest one-third smaller than originally forecast. A particular focus is on the country's grain reserves and the government's response to drought in such areas as grain export policy and maintaining the size of the domestic livestock herd, responses which the author argues are conditioned by the drive for food security, a concept that has dominated the political discourse in tandem with resurgent economic nationalism during the post-Soviet period.     

苏丹1884-1898年粮食战争及其影响探析

1884-1898年,苏丹萨瓦金和埃及边疆省的英埃当局利用自身优势持续地引发粮食短缺,试图"饿死马赫迪叛乱"并重新征服苏丹。马赫迪国家采取各种手段积极因应,对外通过走私、袭扰、战争等手段突破封锁,对内通过控制土地和粮食资源分配统驭民众和军队,但整体上处于劣势。从实际效果看,英埃当局在北方尼罗河流域被动的粮食战争有效地遏制了马赫迪军队的进攻,在东部红海山区积极发动的粮食战争却因为当地盟友和英国海军的不配合半途而废。马赫迪国家的覆灭和英埃当局(1898-1956)的建立一定程度上都是粮食危机的发展结果,萨纳特西塔饥荒是19世纪80年代粮食战争的高潮,双方为此展开的冲突和斗争深刻影响了现代苏丹社会。     

THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR DATA-BANK

Several countries have made large investments in building historical Geographical Information Systems (GIS) databases containing census and other quantitative statistics over long periods of time. Making good use of these databases requires approaches that explore spatial and temporal change. The authors use a variety of visualization and spatial analysis techniques to explore population change in Ireland during and after the Great Famine of the late 1840s. Importantly, the techniques allow differences over space and time to be explored, thus stressing the diversity between places, rather than making all places appear the same, a common criticism of many statistical approaches. The authors demonstrate the potential of these techniques to explore geographical and temporal variations in large quantitative GIS datasets.     

The awkward years: defining and managing famines, 1944–1947

Abstract

Famines in the years immediately after World War II occurred during a period of global flux, as international famine response evolved from its ambitious, early twentieth century goals toward more modest, technocratic objectives during the second half of the century. For economists, social scientists and politicians immersed in the world of emergency food aid, these were uncertain, awkward years for famine relief. Herbert Hoover’s idealistic large-scale projects of famine relief that had dominated the first three decades of the century had been proven to be expensive and of limited efficacy, but Cold War loyalties had not yet taken over as the primary logic behind large-scale humanitarian assistance projects. Ultimately, when faced with famine conditions between 1944 and 1947, states and experts balanced a call to action against pragmatism that recognized famines were also politically expedient events that could weaken rural resistance to governance and simplify wartime and postwar administration. Ultimately, both science and humanitarian concerns learned to orient themselves toward economic expediency in these awkward years.     

论改善中日贸易结构与转变中日贸易增长方式

改革开放以后,中国外贸取得了举世瞩目的成就。日本曾连续11年成为中国最大的贸易伙伴,中日贸易额在2006年首次突破2000亿美元大关。在对华直接投资中,日本仅次于港澳台地区。但中日贸易结构仍较落后。日本的对华直接投资能否有助于中日贸易结构的改善和中日贸易增长方式的改变,促进中日贸易更好地发展是本文探讨的主要问题。     

20世纪90年代的中日纤维产品贸易

20世纪90年代中日两国贸易结构发生较大变化,即中国对日本出口的食品及矿产等初级产品在对日出口总额中降到不足一成,而纤维产品贸易以几乎每年占中日贸易额的20～30％的速度强劲发展,推动了两国贸易总额的迅速增长,但同时也引起贸易摩擦。尽管纤维产品贸易由垂直贸易分工向初级水平贸易分工发展,以及密切的依存关系两大特征,使中日两国避免了在该领域的贸易战,但是,如何在互补性贸易结构中寻求更多的合作领域以减少贸易摩擦甚至避免贸易战争,是20世纪90年代中日纤维产品贸易带来的重要启示。     

六十年代中日民间贸易述略

60年代 ,中日之间建立了友好贸易和备忘录贸易两条民间贸易渠道。友好贸易 ,是中方出于中日友好的诚意 ,与承认政治三原则、主张中日友好的日本企业的贸易 ;备忘录贸易 ,是中日之间以备忘录的形式发展起来的贸易。友好贸易和备忘录贸易推动了 60年代中日民间贸易的进一步发展 ,有力地促进了中日关系的早日正常化 ,在中日关系史上具有极为重要的意义     

伪满洲国初期的对外贸易

20世纪初至1930年,中国东北地区的对外贸易规模不断扩大。伪满洲国成立后,伪满政府倚仗日本关东军,强行侵占了我国东北各地海关。中国东北地区长期出超的局面在1933年反转,并且入超额出现扩大趋势。伪满政权极力促进所谓的“日满一体化”,使得东北地区的对外贸易更加向对日贸易集中。随着列强的经济利益争夺日趋白热化,伪满洲国逐渐步入统制贸易之途。     

论清代茶叶贸易的社会影响

清代是中国茶叶外销兴盛时期。由于世界茶叶市场的需求拉动和国内茶叶生产的发展,茶叶出口量迅速扩大,成为中西贸易的核心商品,获取了丰厚利润。茶叶贸易对发展茶叶生产、改善交通运输、活跃金融、繁荣经济,产生了积极影响,并成为外交和军事斗争的重要武器。     

中日制成品产业内贸易实证分析

本文通过对1987~2006年的统计数据进行实证分析发现:中日产业内贸易水平20年来总体处于上升趋势;中日产业内贸易主要集中在制成品领域内,其中,机械和运输设备产业内贸易所占比重最高;垂直型产业内贸易是中日产业内贸易的主要形式;中日两国的产业内贸易受多种因素共同影响,其中,中国人均收入水平不断提高以及日本对华直接投资规模的扩大是重要的影响因素。     

宋代粮商的粮食投机

宋代商人在发挥调剂余缺功能的同时,还存在严重的投机行为。宋代粮商的投机行为,多见于三个领域：一是向官府贩粜军需粮草过程中,利用各种非法手段,诈取官府钱物;二是在、城市粮食贸易中投机取巧,从城市居民和城郊农民身上攫取暴利;三是乡村中的地主家庭,趁粮食短缺之机,残酷地压榨农民。这些投机活动,既暴露了宋代粮商惟利是图、为富不仁的丑恶嘴脸,也从一个侧面反映出古代商人的投机性。