THE United States Department of Agriculture confirmed on September 12th what everyone knew: that this year’s American corn (maize) harvest is bad; that three of the biggest wheat exporters, America, Russia and Australia, are suffering from simultaneous droughts; and that the world is experiencing its third food-price spike in five years.
美国今年的玉米收成令人堪忧；世界三大粮食出口国：美国、俄罗斯和澳大利亚，不约而同地受到干旱问题的困扰；全球正经历着五年来第三次粮价的猛增。美国农业部在9月12日发表的上述声明其实早已人尽皆知。
Although the weather is the proximate cause of the price rises, governments are making matters worse. Look at America’s biofuels policy. By ensuring that a third of the country’s maize is turned into ethanol and fed to cars, it has driven up grain prices and made them more volatile by reducing stocks. At the start of this year America scrapped the subsidy for ethanol, and abolished the tariff on imports of the stuff—steps in the right direction. But a certain amount of ethanol still has to be blended with petrol by law. That keeps prices high.
尽管恶劣的气候是造成粮价飞涨的罪魁祸首，但政府的相关政策着实在火上浇油，使事态进一步恶化。好比美国为发展生物燃料而制定的措施：全国种植的玉米中1/3将用于生产乙醇，以供汽车使用。总量的降低促使粮价的上涨，而储备的减少更是其摇摆不定。年初，美国政府取消了对乙醇生产的补贴，还免除了乙醇进口的关税，这些都是有助于稳定粮价的举措。不过，依据美国的相关法律，汽油里必须掺杂一定比例的乙醇方可使用，而这又使粮价居高不下。
Bad policies in America are encouraging bad policies elsewhere. Higher prices have spooked importing and exporting countries alike, causing them to turn away from volatile world markets and seek to insulate themselves. Between 2007 and 2011, 33 countries imposed export restrictions on food. Agriculture accounts for less than 10% of world trade, but more than two-thirds of the cost of all border distortions.
这些政策的施行，严重阻碍粮价的稳定，而其所引发的多米诺效应，也迫使他国制定出同样会产生不利后果的应对措施。无论粮食进口国还是出口国，都对“高高在上”的粮价谈虎色变。各国纷纷“自扫门前雪”，远离波动的国际市场。从07年至11年，有35个国家对粮食出口实行了限制。农业在全球贸易中的比重还不到10%，可是在因贸易政策扭曲而造成的贸易损失中，农业却占到了2/3.
Export bans are designed to protect consumers from the effects of high prices. From the point of view of a single nation, such a policy might seem to have the desired effect: as world prices spiral upwards, domestic prices are shielded from the full impact. But when many countries do the same thing—as now—so much food disappears from global markets that prices rocket more than they would have done if governments had left well alone. One study calculated that 45% of the huge increase in rice prices in 2006-08 was attributable to trade restrictions. So export bans exaggerate the very thing they seek to defend against.
出口禁令旨在帮助消费者免受粮价上涨之苦。对某一个国家而言，这种政策能够发挥不错的效果：面对节节攀升的全球粮价，国内粮价依旧泰然自若，乱中求稳。可一旦该政策为诸国所共用，每个国家都“事不关己高高挂起”，全球粮价就会因粮食总量的大幅削减在短期内迅速蹿升，而这就是我们当前所面临的情形。据一项研究估算，06年至08年间，45%的米价上涨都归结于贸易限制。天不遂人愿，出口禁令反倒加剧了粮价的飙升。
Some 2.5 billion reasons to be concerned
需要担心的理由多得很
Higher prices, if sustained, can help poor households in the countryside, many of whom depend on agriculture for their livelihood. But a spike in food prices merely jacks up the cost of living without generating much in the way of income or jobs in the short term; and for the urban poor—who make up an increasing slice of most emerging-country populations—higher food prices are almost entirely bad news. That is why farm-trade restrictions do not cut poverty, but increase it. Scrapping them would pull about 3m people above the poverty line.
如果粮价持续走高，的确能帮助改善农民们贫寒的生活，他们中的许多人都靠务农糊口。可是粮价的上升并没有在短期内大幅提高居民收入或是增加就业机会，相反，它只是让生活费用又往上翻了几番；除此之外，对于那些构成大多数新兴国家主要人口组成部分的穷民而言，粮价的上升是一枚不折不扣的“糖衣炮弹”。这就是为什么限制粮食贸易只会使贫穷有增无减。然而，只要贸易限制被取消，300万左右的人口就能实现脱贫。
As if all that were not enough, there is a long-term reason for worrying about government meddling in farming: its rising incidence in China and India. Total state support to Chinese farmers has more than doubled since 2004. China and India are following the ignoble path trodden by Japan, America and Europe in the 1980s: developing an agricultural industry dependent on handouts. It was bad when this happened in the richest parts of the world. Having 2.5 billion people fed by subsidised farming, with its attendant inefficiencies, is worse.
如果说这些理由都缺乏说服力的话，下面这个定会使那些农业国如坐针毡，头悬利剑：那便是粮食出口禁令在中国和印度的愈演愈烈。从04年起，中国政府对本国农民提供的资助翻了不止一番。中国和印度的农业遵循着20世纪80年代日本、美国和欧洲的发展道路，这套用政府拨款的资金来发展农业的模式因滥用而被世人所诟病。事实证明，它在发达国家的施行均已失败告终。目前，政府资助发展的农业肩负着供养全球25亿人口的重担，而一系列随之而来的低效问题都使其弊端日益凸显。
Farm protection is like a weed: it grows everywhere and seems impossible to eradicate. This newspaper has been making the case against it since 1843, when we were founded to oppose Britain’s protectionist Corn Laws. Sadly we seem to have made too little progress. At the moment governments are making farming less efficient than it should be. They are increasing poverty. Their policies are otiose, since there are better ways to help the poor, such as direct cash transfers. And they are counterproductive, because they exacerbate the problems they seek to solve.
农业保护性措施好似野草：广泛遍布却又难以根除。自1843年创刊以来，本刊就一直致力于寻求反对农业保护性措施的理由，遥想成立之际，我们就对英国带有贸易保护主义色彩的《谷物法》持反对意见。遗憾的是，我们的努力并没有带来丰硕的成果。当前，政府的举措不仅降低了农业生产的效率，还加剧了贫穷。很多举措只是用来装饰门面的，要是真想改善穷人的生活，诸如直接给予现金资助这样的办法岂不是更好。尽管政府竭力解决问题，可提出的办法却适得其反，反而深陷泥淖不能自拔了。
This latest spike in food prices will hurt the world’s worst-off. Governments that try to help them by restricting food trade are likely to make things worse still.
粮价的再一次增长只会使原本就不堪重负的全球市场更加雪上加霜。而政府欲缓解危机而制定的粮食贸易限制措施犹如压死骆驼的那最后一根稻草。
from the print edition | Leaders
【后记】就像温家宝总理在达沃斯答记者问时反复说到的，我们要加强交流与共同，如果各国都只关注解决自身的问题（当然这是前提），而置整个国际大环境于不顾，那么长久下去，对谁都是有弊的。加强沟通，真心实意的沟通最能解决办法了。
P.S. 谷物法（Corn Laws，或称“玉米法案”）指英国1672年制订的限制谷物进口的法律，并在1815年通过新的谷物法提高对农业的保护力度.
