production of cash crops has meant that the best land is used to produce crops for export rather than for local consumption. Hence, poverty in the
Third World has often been produced by the process of "development," as
small farmers dispossessed of land requisitioned by colonialists or bought
by the multinationals become laborers working for subsistence wages on
large plantations rather than earning a living in their old way. Cash crops
are useless for local purposes. One cannot survive by eating sugar, coffee,
rubber, strawberries, or carnations-the crops that have replaced the more
traditional produce. One can survive only by selling one's labor, earning
wages, and buying food. But because local food production has largely
been replaced by the cash crops, it is extremely expensive. Thus people
even in agriculturally fertile countries are often forced into poverty. Many
critics of the multinationals see them as actually creating and sustaining
many of the problems now being experienced in the Third World. Even liberal
economists recognize the way multinationals widen rather than close
the gap between rich and poor. AB Teresa Hayter has put it, they are
involved in "the creation of world poverty." It is estimated that the richest
20 percent of the world's population now have an average per capita
income 60 times greater than the poorest 20 percent.