The Editor,

Re. “FACE TO FACE: Are more open markets the answer to world’s hunger woes?” (The Tri-City News, Oct. 9).

Truly open markets might be the answer but open markets don’t stay open without regulation or intervention.

Former U.S. president Teddy Roosevelt broke up the big oil companies and later U.S. administrations broke up the Bell empire because “free enterprise” is not free without competition.

World agribusiness has reached the point now where competition is limited and can only be restored by an increase in the number of competitors.

But that would not be a satisfactory solution for the millions of small farmers, particularly in developed countries, who are unable to carry on their business, not because there is insufficient demand for their products but because so many people who desperately need their products cannot pay the cost of production.

The solutions needed will involve two major changes:

• Countries that cannot afford to import food will have to increase production of food products for their own consumption, even at the cost of reducing production of export crops.

• Developed nations, which have been able to coerce low prices for products such as coffee, cocoa and bananas, will have to get used to paying more or grow their own.

In order to achieve these changes, it may be necessary to return to controlled currency markets so that less developed countries will not continue to be at a disadvantage in international trade. It may also require a prolonged period of government intervention in the way large international agribusiness and mineral extraction corporations operate throughout the world.

Now, before readers on the right side of the political spectrum start foaming at the mouth about socialist conspiracies, let me state this: I don’t believe in conspiracies but I do believe in business plans.

The nations of the world need a business plan dictated not by the needs of multinational corporations but by the needs of people. There’s lots of money to be made there.

Richard Hollins, Coquitlam