CREATING A MARKET FOR GRAIN.

CREATING A MARKET FOR GRAIN. This article by Roger Thurow from the July 1, 2003 Wall Street Journal illustrates the difficulties of encouraging economic development. Just five years ago, Ethiopia was confronted with a famine. Ironically, the article attributes much of the shortage of food to an emphasis on increasing food production while dismantling the government role in the agriculture sector. The private sector was inadequate to take on the burdens of inadequate storage and distribution facilities. In the old days, Communist governments which scorned the role of the middlemen who provided services, and valued only physical production, wound up with food rotting in the fields. Just as it is easy to overlook the importance of distribution, it is easy to overlook the active role that American governments have played in the agricultural sector. The new Ethiopian Commodity Exchange has a lot of problems to deal with.