Free Trade and World Hunger Persuasive Essay by Top Papers

The paper discusses how as trade barriers come down and as the world grows more inter-connected and inter-dependent, it is tempting to suggest that free trade is the antidote to world hunger. After all, more permeable national boundaries and unhindered trade between one region and the other would seem, on the surface, to make it easier for foodstuffs to travel from one location to another, thereby resulting in food finding its way into the hands of people who desperately need it. Unfortunately, the paper argues, free trade and the global marketplace do not work in quite that way. Specifically, this paper explores how free trade globalization has compelled some areas of the globe to specialize or concentrate in the harvesting/cultivation of foodstuffs that are anticipated to sell well in foreign (western) markets or have done so in the past. The paper highlights how this development has led to the unhappy conversion of local agricultural ecologies into something that is as unnatural for them as it is fiscally beneficial for agricultural capitalists.