The Coming Hunger Tsunami And The Politics Of Food
By Reuben Abati

The world faces a food supply catastrophe, a hunger tsunami that is threatening the sovereignty of nations and the future of the human race. The World Bank estimates that the cost of grains alone has gone up by about 83 per cent. In the last six months there have been hunger and food riots in 33 countries in Africa, Asia, and Ibero-America. This includes Haiti, Guatemala, Liberia, Kenya, Senegal, Yemen, Indonesia, the Ivory Coast, Honduras, Egypt, Bolivia, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Mozambique, Uzbekistan, Jordan, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Malnutrition is also a problem in North Korea, Burundi, Congo, Afghanistan, and Colombia in addition to other countries. Nigeria is not left out.

Our country is listed by the World Bank as one of the countries in sub-saharan Africa facing a food crisis. And the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources has since responded by promising to do something about the problem. President Umaru Yar'Adua is back from his sick bed in Weisbaden, Germany. We have been told that one of his priorities on his return is to tackle the food crisis. It is ironic that the whole world is talking about the threat of famine at a time when farmers should be dutifully at work especially in Africa where the planting season is on. In Nigeria, indeed, the food crisis is obvious, and it is calculated in terms of the spread of poverty, the gap between the rich and the poor, the rising cost of food, and the increasing population of families that can no longer afford to eat three times daily.

A bag of rice which used to be about N7, 000 per bag is now N12, 000 in the market. The price of a loaf of bread has gone up by about 25 per cent. A bag of melon which used to be N15, 000 is now N25, 000. The price of corn has also gone up as is the case with the price of everything else, including wheat and soybean.. It is natural that the rising cost of food is having a corresponding effect on other prices: transporters, ever so uncharitable, have increased fares, landlords are serving notice that with the rise in the price of food items, rent rates will also go up.

The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources has promised to activate the National Food Strategic Reserve, which was set up in collaboration with the World Bank. But the idea of a food reserve in Nigeria is a pipe dream. The World Bank is offering countries in sub-saharan Africa loan facilities to enable them address the crisis but Nigeria must not travel that road. However, nations must wake up and do something about the spread of food insecurity. Food security is at the very centre of national security, food sovereignty largely determines national integrity. How food is produced, processed and distributed has becme a major item in international relations.

That food is important to the sustenance of life is certainly not in doubt. Without food, humanity is dead. Food production and food gathering is one of the most original occupations ever engaged in by man. The rich suffer from too much food, the poor from starvation, and over the centuries, the battle of the classes has always been fought over access to food, or access to opportunities that may guarantee man's ability to feed.. Those who eat too little suffer from bulimia, those who eat too much groan under the weight of obesity, those who have nothing to eat at all, or eat too much of bad food end up with kwashiorkor and all those other diseases that are associated with poor nutrition. Food is tied to human health, the environment and the power or the powerlessness of national economies. Hunger has been both a cause and the effect of all wars. Indeed, all wars in human history have been invariably food wars, whatever may be the source of conflict: land, oil, water or spice.

Remember Ethiopia, Eritrea, Vietnam, our own Biafra with all those children with funny bellies, Sudan, Iraq, and similar disaster zones. Even in the face of natural disasters, the first casualty is man's access to food, and this is why always, food relief constitutes an important part of the UN Relief Programme. Universally, food is considered one of the basic necessities of life, the other two being shelter and clothing. Even when there is neither shelter nor clothing, life continues because it is through food that metabolism is sustained and by extension the ecology of human existence.

But at the moment, this strategic resource is under threat. What we are witnessing is in part the downside of globalisation and the free market system. Food is still being produced in many developing countries where the majority of the world's poor live, but for poor farmers it is far more profitable to export the food that they produce. The immediate effect is that there is not enough for domestic consumption. Whatever is available for local consumption is affected by the forces of poverty as invaribaly only the rich can afford to buy food. In this sense, the cuurent food crisis plays up most poignantly, the great disparities and inequities in the world.

There is also the tyranny of the rich against the poor. Even in the face of the decalared food crisis, the developed world is embarking on an aggressive alternative energy programme that is meant to address a preceived energy gap. This consists of the production of bio fuels or ethanol, whose raw material is grains and other food items. Human beings do not have enough food to eat, but so much energy is being devoted to the production of fuel, using human food, to get the capitalist production system going. Would it not be better to free the food for human consumption in order to guarantee world peace? The amount of biofuel that is used to fill an average 4 X 4 vehicle's fuel tank is said to be the equivalent of enough food for one person in a year!

In addition, rich countries of the world are providing subsidies for their own farmers in order to encourage agricultural production. But they encourage and insist upon taxes being imposed on farmers in developing countries and the withdrawal of all forms of subsidy by their governments. These dependent governments submit to this tyranny and the genocide, in exchange for development aid, while their farmers are unable to enjoy any advanatges. Even the export of food by these farmers to the developed world, whre such is the case, is at such a cheap rate.

But perhaps the biggest challenge to food security in the developing world especially in sub-Saharan Africa is the failure of leadership, the inability of African leaders to dream about the future and plan ahead. The cheap counter-argument to this is that explosion in human population is responsible for the food crisis. In other words, there are too many people trying to eat better food, and too little food to go round. Malthusianism sounds like a convenient excuse. The world's population, as well as the demand for food, is likely to double by 2030. But better planning is the preferrable route to food sovereignty and sustainable food production, not the option of population control that is being suggested by those whose arguiments go back to and end with Thomas Malthus.

It is not for nothing that the second line of the Christian "Our Lord's Prayer", and the very first plea in that prayer after the invocation in the first line is "Give us this day, our daily bread". On the Cross at Golgotha, the Lord Jesus Christ, as part of his last words had intoned: "I am thirsty". The Holy Bible in Genesis 41-48, with the story of Joseph in Egypt, beginning with Pharaoh's dream about famine which Joseph interpreted, spells out in real terms how food is linked to the destiny of nations and human beings. The nature and quality of nutrition, conditioned by lifestyle and environment, determine the health of the individual and of society. The man or the nation that can provide food, has long before Joseph, been a man or nation of great influence in human communities.

Pharaoh's example is perhaps useful. Egypt was able to survive the famine that is described in the Holy Bible, Genesis 41-48, for reasons of quality of governnace. Pharaoh had a dream about seven fat cows and seven lean cows and seven ears of corn. When that dream was interpreted by Joseph, the dreamer, who had ben sold into capitivty by his envious brothers, to mean seven years of great harvest followed by seven years of great famine, Pharaoh not only accepted wise counsel, he appointed Joseph the Governor of Egypt to manage the food sovereignty process. And when eventually the dream came to pass, enough was saved from the season of prosperity to protect the people against the famine that was bound to come. While other nations lacked food and suffered, Egypt had more than enough to feed its people and to sell to others. And in a private power equation, Joseph truly emerged as a superior person to his own siblings because he held the power of food distribution.

African leaders and policy wonks, in analysing the coming hunger tsunami hide under the excuse that it is nothing to worry about because it is a global crisis induced by global hyperinflation. They claim that there is a food crisis in the United States and in Europe as well. But we should stop deceiving ourselves. It is not the same thing. In Nigeria, the problem should be located at the doorstep of the failure of governance, and the absence of a political will to do anything constructive about food security. Pharaoh had a dream. Nigerian leaders don't know how to dream. They only talk. They react to situations. They do not plan ahead. Pharaoh listened to advice.

Nigerian leaders, even when confronted with the best advice in the world behave like they are deaf and dumb. They accept only such advice that will provide opportunities for self-enrichment. National Development Plans since 1960 have always talked about investments in agriculture as a special means of guaranteeing national security. Some of the programmes that have arisen from this include the establishment of plantations, agricultural research institutes and land cultivation incentives. But every initiative has led to a dead end due to the failure of leadership.

In every state of the Federation, there are agricultural land schemes, farm settlements and river basin authorities, but agric extension officials collude with individuals to collect free government land, that is meant for farming, and the land is soon diverted to other purposes. Much of the farming that is done is through private efforts, with virtually no government support. Today, an average farmer in Nigeria is still relying on old methods of cultivation and subsistence of farming. Nigeria like other African countries has land and labour power, but no technological know-how. Access to land is a problem, access to finance is a nightmare because the finance institutions ask for an arm and a limb. Even where the average farmer is able to produce, there are no storage facilities, and there are no road networks, no rail system to facilitate the transportation of food products to the consumer at easy cost. Thus created is a wide gap between producers of food and consumers.

President Yar'Adua wants to deal with the food crisis. We hope he is not going to tread the familiar path of ordering the Minister of Agriculture to tell all food merchants of food items to cut prices by force. The thing to do is to review, very quickly, all the failures of the past in the agricultural sector and seek to fill existing gaps.. Those strange local experts who point to global crisis and drought in the North are not telling the full story. And when they see that this argument has been rejected, they argue that the price of rice has gone up because Asian countries are protecting domestic supply. This is also an inadequate excuse. There may be international issues but the real source of our aflfiction is within, it is located in the failure of governance. Food insecurity is a metaphor for much that is wrong with our society. And it is not enough for the Yar'Adua government to claim that it will find the will to make a difference; there must be concerted efforts at the local and state levels as well.

In facing a food crisis in Nigeria, what we face truly is a dimension of the curse of oil. The obsession with oil wealth led to an abandonment of the agricultural sector which originally used to serve as the backbone of the Nigerian economy. The evidence is advertised by the abandoned agricultural research institutes, the cock-roach laden agricultural policy documents, the flight of the rural population into the urban centres, the desolation of the plantations that used to beautify our highways, and the increasing level of social violence. Hunger can only make Nigerians angrier. There is however an international obligation to underline the connection between food and world peace. More food needs to be produced, globally. Subsidies to European and American farmers should be cut to open up those markets to farmers in developing countries. The bio-fuel craze should be moderated by the challenge of human security. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreements are long overdue for review.

Robot  Villager

# 1 The Coming Hunger Tsunami And The Politics Of Food By Reuben Abati ...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 22.09.2008 10:10