Hunger - Blogabond

Sahelian Niger experienced food shortages as recently as 2 years ago, and I looked to World Hunger, Twelve Myths by Frances Moore Lappe, Joseph Collins and Peter Rosset (Grove Press, 1998) for some understanding of the issue. I learned the following surprising facts:
1. Food is abundant. 78% of all malnourished children under five in the developing world live in countries with food surpluses. Countries like India and Brazil with massive malnourishment export large quantities of food. Countries like Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia and Mali have many times more farmable land then is actually utilized. The real issue is not scarcity. The issues are third world debt incurred to pay for dubious projects serving established elites to the exclusion of majority interests, subsequent pressure to raise and export cash crops to the exclusion of local food supply to pay down foreign debt, and war fueled by superpower geopolitical meddling.
2. Droughts do not cause famine: they are simply the last straw. The real problem is increased vulnerability brought about by man-made factors. All but one Sahelian nation suffering prolonged drought actually produced enough food to feed itself. Unfortunately, poor farmers in debt to rich farmers and merchants were forced to sell them their production at rock-bottom prices, leaving them without enough food to survive the hunger season. Purchasing food was impossible because merchants raised their prices in the face of shortfalls. Debt, not drought, killed the Sahelian peasant.
3. Population density does not cause hunger, poverty and inequality does. World population growth rates are actually plummeting. In Africa, fertility peaked in the early sixties and has dropped ever since. That decline is expected to accelerate. Hunger and high fertility rates coexist primarily where societies deny security and opportunity to the majority, and deny education to women.
4. Desertification may best be addressed by population increase, not decrease. Marginal soils require irrigation, terracing, intensive crop and livestock rotations and incorporation of organic matter. This takes a lot of labor: success of these strategies has historically depended on population densities approximating 110 people/square kilometer, while sub-Saharan Africa in 1995 recorded approximately 24 people/square kilometer.
5. Pesticides, originally intended to increase farm yields have fed a cycle resulting in financial and ecological ruin. By destroying natural population control among insects, and through growing resistance to insecticides among insect populations, pesticide use results in increased pesticide use, until the pesticides assume a disproportionate cost, making production unprofitable. Farms are abandoned. Only the chemical companies profit.
6. Small farms are more efficient than large farms, even in the United States. Small farms utilizing traditional practices produce between 5 and 50 calories for every 1 calorie of input, while large scale mechanized farming yields a single calorie for every 10 calories expended. Small farms also have almost double the total output and profit margin per acre of large farms. Unfortunately, that profit margin is so low for any size farm due to the monopolization of farm products by large corporations that only large farms earn enough through sheer volume to survive.
7. The free market alone will never solve hunger because it responds to money and power, not need. It also fails to account for environmental destruction and the increased vulnerability of the majority resulting from the concentration of wealth. For example, structural adjustments imposed by the IMF and World Bank on debtor nations requiring loans to restructure existing debt have had disastrous results on the living conditions of the majority in those countries. These structural adjustments generally eliminated governmental control in favor of free market principles, essentially prying open these countries to foreign investment. As capital was sucked out of these economies, poverty and hunger increased dramatically. Cheap imported grain drove farmers out of business, resulting in rising unemployment, further exacerbating the cycle of hunger.
8. Government policies that insure the dispersion of wealth and power to the majority create consumers and so assist the market in better meeting actual need.

The book goes on to expose the immorality of food aid programs that bankrupt local economies and insure financial dependence, the destruction wreaked by the corporate structure operating free of governmental constraints, the tremendous support especially large corporations get from the US government (that would be our tax dollars), both overtly and covertly, in penetrating and dominating foreign markets, and the role of arms and militarism in protecting the status quo.

As the balance of power increasingly favors corporations and the concentration of wealth, the security of the majority world-wide diminishes. These effects are felt even in the United States, where regions race to the bottom to attract business, the divide between rich and poor continues to increase, and the buying power of the majority continues to diminish. The status quo is eroding our own security. Globalization means that security for the factory worker in Guatemala or the computer scientist in India is ever more inextricably tied to our own security at home: we are all seeking the same work.

I look forward to an American government committed to real security instead of a “war against terrorism”, that favors the language of international cooperation over the language of dominance, and that understands the link between national and global interests. It’s almost enough to consider becoming an American citizen.

written by

roel krabbendam on February 18, 2007 from Dosso, Niger

from the travel blog: Harmattan

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When you get back, read "The End of Poverty" by Jeffrey Sachs. Pretty eye opening stuff (although, your eyes are probably pretty open at this point) . The rich world could completely end extreme world poverty very quickly, if we just bothered to care.

Add to your myths the myth that we give a large amount of foreign aid, but it is squandered due to corruption. The truth is the amount of foreign we supply to places like Africa is trivially small, is much less than we used to provide as a percentage of national income and largely goes to service debt.

http://www.millenniumcampaign.org/

Hurry home.

written by Chris Schaffner on February 22, 2007

We keep missing each other and since I had not heard from you in several days, I thought perhaps you had suprised me and taken the truck all the way through Benin and were on your way home.....Most importantly, I am glad to read that all is well and that the adventure continues. I like where your thoughts are heading and can't wait to hear your voice...we have much to chat about...call home!
I love you.

written by P on February 23, 2007

Hoi H.R.,'tIs wel een super trip zeg. Verloopt het een beetje als je verwacht had ? Je ontloopt in ieder geval een lading sneeuw en kou .Zijn de nachten wel koud of valt dat mee ? Niels zit momenteel in Noorwegen waar het vorige week 33 graden onder nul was in de nacht.Hij heeft daar drie groepen mariniers leren skieen. En ze waren allemaal geslaagd. Nu moet hij zelf daar op overlevings oefening. Sommige familieleden zoeken wel uitdagingen in het leven. M'n petje af hoor !Succes met voortzetting van je avontuur.Groetjes,

written by Nell Krabbendam on February 24, 2007

very nice book report...it will be mandatory reading in our household! have a great rest of the trip.

written by nieke on February 26, 2007

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