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food / hungerjuly'08 The dictionary defines food as 'what one takes into the body to maintain life and growth'. It goes without saying then that everyone has to eat to live. According to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) there is enough food in the world today for every man, woman and child to lead healthy and productive lives. Even though the world's population has grown 6-fold in the past 200 hundred years, food production has grown even faster thanks mainly to hybrid seeds and better fertilisers. In the rich countries of the North, where individually we spend on average $14 (£7) per day on food, the supply and variety has never been better. Visit any supermarket and you will find shelves stacked with affordable produce from countries all over the world. Going out for a meal, too, in our towns and cities also affords us a choice of restaurants which serve drinks and dishes from every continent. As a result, on average, people in the North exceed the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) recommended daily minimum intake of 2,350 calories by some distance. Yet, on
the other side of the globe in the South, life could not be more different.
Here most people are subsistence farmers often eking out a perilous existence
using methods of farming that have barely changed through the centuries.
Bad harvests are a continual hazard in this part of the world where some
54 nations do not produce enough food to feed their people. And the trouble
for these countries is that although there may be plentiful supplies of
food in the world for everyone's need, these, for the most part, lie in
the wrong grain store in the wrong country on the wrong continent. In contrast,
in the North, a combination of over-abundance, changed eating habits and
less-active lifestyles has led to a situation where a large proportion
of the population is overweight. In the UK, for example, it is estimated
that more than 50% of adults are overweight* including 20% who are obese
which leads to 30,000 premature deaths annually at a cost to the National
Health Service (NHS) of $968m (£484m). And this 'epidemic' also
has the knock-on effect of 18m days being lost every year in the work
place through sickness leading to a loss of output totalling $3.7bn (£1.85bn).
And to cap it all the UK spends $158m (£79m) every year on slimming. [Here we should perhaps mention one more stark statistic. 30% of all food grown in the UK ends up in the rubbish bin at a cost of $840 (£420) a year for every adult. That is shameful and says much about the throwaway lifestyles we all now seem to lead. Yet more food for thought!] At the Millennium Summit in 2000, the United Nations (UN) drew up a list of Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by the year 2015. The very first target set was to halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. Sadly, even with the great progress made by China in recent years this very first millennium goal is now almost certain to be missed - by a mile! So what needs to happen for UN rhetoric to become a reality and for all countries to be able to feed their own people? To start with, surplus food supplies from the North urgently need to be sent to countries where they are desperately needed. Politics should not be played with hunger and starving people need immediate help. But this should not be seen as a permanent solution as shipping food will not improve the prospects of the world's desperately poor, three quarters of whom live in rural areas in developing countries. Next governments in developing countries need to aim to work towards self-sufficiency in food.
One of the first tasks, then, for governments and state authorities in the South should be to work to vest every farmer in the title to his own land. In this way the home/farm could be used as security to borrow money for better seeds, fertilisers, tools and machinery which would lead to a big increase in crop production. Furthermore farmers could also be encouraged to amalgamate their small plots into co-operatives. This should further boost production and the resulting harvest and any profits could be shared according to the size of land contributed and the hours of work put in. Having certificates of ownership in a co-operative would also allow other farmers to join in and allow those wanting out the means to do so. Coming together like this would also help those families where the bread winner was no longer there or incapable of work. It would also allow children to get back to school instead of having to work in the fields in order to help grow food. Governments in countries with food deficits should also spend more of their annual budgets on agricultural research - it is surely ridiculous that in food-deficit countries where 80% of people are farmers that some governments spend as little as 5% of income to promote farming. The main cause of food shortages in poor countries is usually blamed by governments on drought but all too often this can be used as an excuse. Nobody disputes that hunger is aggravated by bad weather but bad government is a much greater enemy of the people. For example, in many parts of Africa water is readily available in countries lacking in food but too many governments either through neglect, other priorities, incompetence or lack of finance are not using the water resources available. Take Ethiopia, for example. Today water from the Ethiopian Highlands and the huge expanse of Lake Tana is hardly tapped at all by a government more concerned about arguing over a worthless town in a useless piece of desert on its border with Eritrea than encouraging farmers to move to more fertile parts of the country where irrigation channels, bore-holes and wells could be constructed to provide water for all their needs. Good communications are also essential for moving food supplies within a country. And here again Ethiopia suffers from government inaction. Telecommunications throughout the country are poor and so even in good years surplus food can lie rotting in one part of the country whilst people starve in another. But even when the message does gets through there are few roads in Ethiopia and most of them are potholed. So moving grain around the country can be perilous and costly as can be seen from the experience of one enterprising grain merchant who tried to take a truck load of grain from the south to the north of the country. The journey of 900k (560 miles) meant 17 days on the road to reach his destination. In that time he was stopped 10 times by local officials whom he had to bribe in order to be allowed to move on. And at the end of his ordeal he found that the roads had been so rough that many of his grain sacks had burst open. However, his problems didn't end there. Selling in Ethiopia is also made hazardous by the fact that there is no legal system to enforce contracts and very few traders have bank accounts. As a result vendors only sell for cash and buyers must inspect and weigh every bag of grain to ensure that they haven't been cheated. So as he couldn't find a trustworthy trader prepared to pay in cash he finished up literally giving what was left of his load away. Needless to say that grain merchant is unlikely to undertake such a journey again. Conflicts and wars also cause hunger as rampaging armies roam through the countryside destroying everything in their path. Displaced and injured people then are left to find food and refuge wherever they can. There is no greater example of this at present than in Darfur in Sudan where refugees are having to seek aid and shelter from international charities or in neighbouring Chad, itself one of the world's poorest countries. And it is here at times like these that the international aid agencies do a wonderful job of feeding the refugees and helping them to pick up the pieces whilst the Sudanese government blames everyone but itself for the tragedy. Of the 40 poorest countries in the world, 24 are either in the midst of armed conflict or have recently emerged from it. And in Africa, 20% of the population live in countries affected by war or its aftermath. All of this
means that food aid will continue to be important if mass starvation is
to be prevented. In 2003 WFP distributed food to 104m people in relief
operations in 70 different countries. In total 5.9m tons of food was shipped
at a cost of $3.3bn (£1.65bn). And in a complete transformation
in recent years almost all food aid is now relief aid with very little
now being used for development. However, to be fair, Ethiopia is only one of many poor countries whose governments fail in this goal. *The healthy weight range is based on a measurement known as the Body Mass Index (BMI). To calculate your BMI you divide your weight in kilograms by your height in metres squared. The ideal weight is a reading between 18.5 and 25 but you are underweight if it is below 18.5. Between 25 and 30 people are considered overweight and above 30 they are classified as obese. |
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just1world@just1world.org |
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It is not surprising to learn, therefore, that the FAO estimates that
more than 840m people go hungry every day - including 1 in 3 of people
living in sub-Saharan Africa. As a result 24,000 people die every day
from malnutrition and hunger-related diseases - many of them children
under 5. That means that malnutrition kills more children in the world
today than any infectious diseases, war or natural disasters yet it remains
a 'silent emergency' arousing little public concern until the next famine
is thrust onto our TV screens. Underfed children also succumb more easily
to disease and are often both mentally and physically stunted which usually
scars them for life.
At
present almost 80% of Africa's population is engaged in farming - mostly
subsistence. But despite this huge presence on the land, food security
continues to remain elusive due to worn out soils and tiny plot sizes.
As a result it is not surprising that many farmers are barely able to
produce enough food for their own families nevermind having any left over
to sell to people living in country's towns. These farmers also need advice
and help in buying seeds with higher yields and which are more disease
resistant. They also could do with better fertilisers. Farmers in too
many poor countries, most of whom are incidentally women, also suffer
from not owning their own land which makes it almost impossible for them
to put up security to borrow money to help bring about improvements. 
In
1973 famine struck 1.5m people in Ethiopia, in 1984 6m people were affected
and in 2003 14m people faced famine. Ethiopians are a deeply religious
people wedded to the Coptic Church. And when they are visited by famine
they don't blame the weather, their rulers or the outside world - they
blame themselves. They shouldn't. The weather is as always a law unto
itself and in the last 20 years Ethiopia has received more relief aid
than any other country on earth. And Ethiopians, themselves, work as hard
on their plots as any other nationality. So the finger of blame for this
continuing tragedy has to be pointed in another direction to the government
of Meles Zenawi, Prime Minister of one of the poorest countries in the
world which year in year out fails in its duty to create the conditions
necessary to secure food supplies for its impoverished people.