One of the main themes of You Can Hear Me Now is that cell phones give both producers and consumers much better pricing information and thus help create fairer and more efficient markets. Much of the evidence in support of this theory is anecdotal, and most of the rgiorous academic support is at the macro level. For example, I cite Leonard Waverman of the London Business School and his econometric “proof” that adding 10 phones per 100 in a developing country adds .6 points to annual GDP — i.e., it will rise from 4% to 4.6%.

An upcoming paper by Harvard’s Robert Jensen (The Digital Provide: Information (technology), market performance and welfare in the South Indian fisheries sector, to be published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in August) looks at the impact of cell phones at the micro level — that is, how have cell phones affected the economic gains of fishermen in Kerala, India.

As reported in To do with the price of fish (The Economist, May 12, 2007), Jensen studies fishermen in several villages before and after cell phones were introduced, beginning in 1997. (This, of course, is what econometric research tries to do — simulate change while holding all other factors equal.) Before phones, fishermen late to their local market would find it oversupplied and have to dump some or all of their catch for lack of buyers. Once phones were introduced, they could shop amongst other markets along the coast, and bring their supply to meet the demand. Over time, this reduced waste and smoothed prices, leading to the Law of One Price. Fishermen’s profits increased by 8%, and consumer prices have dropped by 4%. Yes, a win-win — except, of course, for the middle man, who has had to reduce payouts to reflect an efficient market.

Two recent radio interviews:

Entrepreneur radio with Lee Mirabel

Worldview (Chicago Public Radio) with Jerome McDonnell (April 25, “Eradicating Global Poverty with Cell Phones”)

And two recent Internet interviews:

“IT spreads  throughout society at all levels, and is not concentrated in the hands of the few,” from The Association for Progressive Communications (South Africa)

“Hear Me Now — An Interview with Nicholas Sullivan,” from Women in Perspective

I recently spoke to Bread for the World at two different events in Chicago and was very amazed that various of the listeners drew a parallel between rural Bangladesh and rural America. Bread is a national Christian organization (started by Art Simon, brother of late Senator Paul Simon of Illinois) focused on eradicating hunger and poverty. The group’s main cause celebre is lobbying AGAINST the U.S. farm bill, which awards subsidies to agri-businesses. Farm subsidies, of course, are the bete noire of WTO agitators, who claim that rich countries are artificially reducing food prices and thus hindering imports of sugar, corn, cotton etc. from poor countries. They are right!

But the parallel with the story of You Can Hear Me Now is more subtle, and more interesting. Just as foreign aid to governments soldifies power in capital cities to the exclusion of remote rural areas, farm subsidies to big corporate farmers gives small family farms zero chance of competing. The small farm has already been driven out of the big money crops (corn, cotton, sugar), but many small farmers would still like to grow, say, organic vegetables, for which there is a growing market (see Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s). But they get no subsidies or support, when in fact they are the farmers who need support.

There is little hue and cry in the U.S. about the farm bill, because everybody loves farms and think we are preserving a charming way of life. INSANE! We are protecting a very strong lobby of corporate farms that is working against the very life we imagine worth saving — and we are contributing to global poverty by cutting off imports of what should be lower priced foodstuffs.

Visit www.bread.org and get involved in changing the farm bill!