[Radix] A spoonful of history with your metric ton of rice
George Kent
kent at hawaii.edu
Tue Jun 3 10:32:57 PDT 2008
Ben, I completely agree. Indeed, just seconds before reading your
message I sent this off to another list:
/quote/
. . . says, "It would be irresponsible for researchers to concentrate
on methods of food production that hold as yet unquantified risks
while failing to investigate and perhaps incorporate other equally
fecund opportunities in developing the agricultural potential of
Africa and elsewhere."
I agree that it would be irresponsible for agriculture researchers to
focus so narrowly. But, taking a broader view,i see no reason why
people concerned with problems of malnutrition in the world should
limit their focus to methods of food production. Many methods of food
production are known, and huge quantities of food are produced.
Globally, there is not a shortage of food in the world.
If the interest is mainly in providing a better livelihood for low
income people, why limit the focus to food production? Indeed, in some
cases the best opportunities might be found outside agriculture
altogether.
Where people have money in their pockets, food shows up.
/unquote/
There certainly are relationships between agriculture and nutrition
(cf. the World Bank's From Agriculture to Nutrition: Pathways,
Synergies and Outcomes), but the two are not the same. It appears that
some people who are mainly interested in looking after the agriculture
sector are inclined to use the nutrition issue for that purpose.
Simply producing more food is not going to solve the hunger problem.
Aloha, George
On Jun 3, 2008, at 2:10 AM, bwisner at igc.org wrote:
> Nothing is more humiliating than hunger, said UN Secretary General,
> Ban-Ki Moon, at a world conference on rising food prices in Rome
> today. Delegates are discussing what they take to be the root cause
> of the problem: lack on investment in agriculture. Since the surge
> in agricultural productivity in the 1960s and 1970s, investment in
> farming technology has declined.
>
> Conferees in Rome are being told that more than a billion Dollars in
> rapid impact investment and food aid are needed in the short run,
> and more over the next decade. Simultaneously the Islamic
> Development Bank has been meeting in Jeddah, and has voted US$ 1.5
> billion to spur agriculture among that bank’s poorest members
> including Niger and Mauritania in West Africa.
>
> No doubt the impact of rocketing food prices threatens the health
> and well being of hundreds of millions of people. High prices for
> basic foods are undermining the stability of nations only now
> emerging from conflict such as Liberia and Kenya, and they have
> helped to spark the anti-immigrant riots in South Africa. Ban-Ki
> Moon is right: it is also humiliating only to be able to buy your
> family’s rice by the cup rather than by the bag.
>
> But a spoonful of history is necessary to aid policy makers’ and
> donors’ digestion of all this talk of cups and bags and metric tons,
> Dollars, Pounds and Euros.
>
> In Africa during the 1980s there was a failed strategy to combat
> hunger called “production first.” I saw it up close and documented
> its impacts in Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana, and
> Lesotho and wrote about it in a book called “Power and Need in
> Africa.”*
>
> All the investment in crop improvement, mechanization, irrigation
> benefited wealthy farmers and some middle sized farmers – as well as
> an army of highly paid foreign consultants, contractors, and makers
> of machinery. Production did increase, but so did hunger among
> those unable to benefit because they had no land or too little land
> or were too far away from district headquarters to benefit from farm
> extension. Others couldn’t access credit. Ninety percent of farm
> extension time in those days was going to the top ten percent of
> farmers ranked by wealth.
>
> So in 2008 and the decade to follow, will massive increases in
> farming investment rescue the Millennium Development Goal: to reduce
> hunger and halve the number living on less than one Dollar a day by
> 2015? Is lack of investment in agricultural productivity the root
> cause of hunger?
>
> The answer is clearly no.
>
> In the past few years fertilizer subsidy in Malawi has increased
> production of the stable, maize, but poor governance means that the
> Parliament is often deadlocked and farmers remain under the threat
> not only from more variable and uncertain weather but from untimely
> disbursement of fertilizer funds. A long history of rural poverty
> means that rapid deforestation continues because the poor make
> charcoal for sale to supplement their meager incomes. In the long
> run fertilizer input won’t be able to keep up with the resulting
> soil erosion, and there is no sign that Malawi will ever be able to
> afford input subsidies without external donor support.
>
> The current price spike has many causes. These include a
> catastrophically low rice harvest due to drought in Australia – a
> major exporter – and increased grain demand as a growing world wide
> middle class eats more meat. Also implicated are diversion of land
> and food to bio-fuel production, high oil price, and speculation.
>
> Investment in agro-production will not solve all these problems.
>
> If the delegates in Rome are serious about battling hunger and not
> just further enriching chemical companies and agro-engineering
> corporations, they will seek to support small farmers around the
> world with a call for land justice. They will provide money for
> investment in health care and soil conservation. Meanwhile, yes, of
> course, food aid needs to be provided so that the children of small
> farmers in stress don’t have to drop out of school. In countries
> such as North Korea and Somalia food aid is a life or death matter,
> and it has become much more expensive for the World Food
> Organization to purchase and to deliver.
>
> But don’t confuse the price crisis with the hunger crisis. In 1976
> Susan George published a book called, “How the Other Half Dies.”**
> She documented how the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization has
> become a lobbyist and tout for big agricultural machine companies
> and firms producing agro chemicals. In the 1980s the author of
> “Diet for a Small Planet” exposed “myths of hunger” including the
> production first myth. She campaigned for democracy as a cure for
> hunger with the NGOs she formed.*** Nobel Laureat Amartya Sen
> exploded the production myth in 1981 with his book, “Poverty and
> Famines.”++
>
> Let’s not forget so soon. Let’s use this opportunity for a sea
> change in the way that small farmers are supported – building on
> their local knowledge and skill, providing them with access to
> health care, education for their children, clean drinking water,
> credit and removing the huge US, European, and Japanese subsidies to
> their own farmers that block market entry by small farmers in Africa
> and elsewhere.
> ____________________________________________
> *London: Earthscan, 1988.
> **Montclair, NJ: Allanheld Osmun ,1977.
> ** Institute for Food and Development Policy http://
> www.foodfirst.org/; “Hunger: 12 Myths” http://www.foodfirst.org/en/store/book/World_Hunger
> ; “Diet for a Small Planet,” New York: Ballantine Books, 20th
> anniversary edition, 1985 & Small Planet Institute: http://www.smallplanet.org/
> .
> ++Oxford: Oxford Univesity Press, 1981.
>
>
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