The Political Economy of Hunger and Famine
March 6, 1993
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Panelists:
Jason Clay
Director of Research and Marketing, Cultural Survival, Inc; Author, The Spoils of Famine
John Field
Professor of Nutrition, Tufts University; Author, The Tragedy and Challenge of Economic Famine
Dennis Pirages
Professor of Government and Politics, University of Maryland; Author, Global Technopolitics: The International Politics of Technology and Resources
Yunghi Kim
Photojournalist, The Boston Globe (Ms. Kim's slides of Somalia will be presented by Mr. Brian Kaplan, EPIIC '92)
Moderator:
David Belin
EPIIC Colloquium
"Famine is...the most extreme example of socioeconomic consequences that can result from the deprivation of civil and political rights."
-Human Rights Watch, September 1, 1992
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We live in a food-surplus world. And while the proportion of malnourished people is diminishing, their numbers are growing. Forty thousand people die daily from hunger and hunger-related causes and world per capita grain production peaked around 1985 and has been steadily declining ever since.
Yet famine is not a "natural scourge" and some analysts believe that no country is too poor not to be able to feed its population. The threat of rapidly deteriorating arable land increases the threat of hunger and famine. Natural disasters such as cyclones or floods may threaten one season's crops which could lead to scarcity and hunger. It also occurs when the desperately poor cannot obtain food because of a surge in prices or in sudden unemployment. It is exacerbated by environmental degradation, refugee flows, chronic poverty and malnutrition, and unchecked population surges. Some primary causes though, are the ravages of war and sanctions and corrupt, unaccountable regimes, as seen in Somalia and the Horn of Africa, China and the Soviet Union.
In 1979, when Tenneco West agribusiness organized a sophisticated 3,000 acre mechanized farm in the Sudan, civil war destroyed its potential. But such large-scale attempts at agricultural food production may not be the answer to sustainable growth. There is great controversy over grandiose projects and the deregulation and structural adjustment policies of the major multilateral aid agencies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Some critics believe that the aid priorities of developed nations and their advocacy of free-market systems and the development of export and monoculture crops is negative. What can be understood of the seeming contradiction that during Kenya's drought in 1984 it imported maize to feed its people while exporting stawberries and asparagus to Europe?
Some aid experts believe that development that includes an emphasis on self-reliant food production, aimed at local consumption and not external markets are necessary to end what is termed the "famine-breeding cycle." Such food development assistance would involve debt-relief, critical in the short term, and long-term credit to local farmers, making fertilizer, seeds and tools available. Rural women, who bear the brunt of famine in particular, must be assisted to fulfill their potential. Better prospects in rural areas could decrease mass migration to urban centers, raising currently low farming rates.
Even in the midst of dire famine, there are charges that a "charity mentality" typifies relief efforts that unwittingly perpetuate hunger distortions. Many believe that long-term aid rehabilitation and self-sustaining measures of education and assistance are much more effective in producing that food that will be available to preempt hunger, as long as they are congruent with cultural mores of the targeted society.
There is a critical, political dimension to preventing famine. The decisive factor as to whether a famine will be averted or magnified depends on the responsiveness of the local government and the international community. It is Progessor Amartya Sen's contention that in a democracy, if famine threatens, government intervention can eliminate hunger by supplementing people's incomes. But if governments are unaccountable and immune to criticism, they will not necessarily respond in time, particularly if they are dictatorships.
For Dr. Sen, only essential democratic processes, the political freedom to criticize, to publish and to vote will safeguard vulnerable populations by obliging governments to act. Professor Sen believes that India, with 850 million people, has the prerequisite democratic institutions that would never tolerate famine. Now that India is under serious attack by sectarian and secessionist forces and this year for the first time India has had to import food, this situation bears watching.
There have been fluctuations in the world food market. In the 1960s, there was a superabundance of food due to advanced technology in farming. U.S. farmers were even paid not to cultivate their lands. In the mid-1970s, in conjunction with the oil crises, there were record lows of food as well as an increased demand for foreign food imports. Then, if the scarcity situation had been allowed to continue, there would have been only enough food to feed the world's population for 40 days.
The U.S. controls almost 50 percent of the world's grain exports and therefore has a great interest in continuing to supply other states with food. As the world population increases at an annual average rate of 3.1 percent, potentially overwhelming the carrying capacity of the earth, food availability and production are of great concern.
The business of modern agriculture works within a market that experiences the same pressures as other markets. Weather has a significant impact on food supply, but factors such as the cost of fertilizer, pesticides and fossil fuels must be included in the analysis of high technology and industrial farming.
More developed, highly-industrialized countries are concerned with a stable world market for food, whereas lesser developed countries are primarily concerned with their own food production. Currently, the availability of food in the global market allows LDCs to support populations much larger than their own farmers can feed.
If developing countries want to end their dependency on foreign food, new agricultural practices and policies and new technology must be imported. Due to the energy-intensive processes of modern agriculture, an increase in the use of fossil fuel consumption will ensue.
Aid is not the solution to the crises of hunger and famine. Temporary relief may enable a country to establish stable, sustainable farming practices, such as in Mozambique, but long-term aid tends to cause more problems than it solves. Often times food is not received by those who are in need due to political strife. If it is received, a situation of dependency is often the outcome as local farmers cannot compete with the prices of food aid.
Growth in the world food market frees labor forces for industrial development, but the effect of this is uncertain. Currently there is debate over the provisions of GATT's Uruguay Round that some see as finally discouraging heavily subsidized farmers in developed countries from overproducing. This might limit the dumping of agricultural surplus at radically subsidized rates. This is a process that discourages developing countries from continuing the promotion of their internal agricultural sector, makes them vulnerable to price fluctuations, and creates no incentive for checking population growth. But it also might destroy the economic incentive to produce food in developed countries. There are important policy choices to be made with the uncertain impact of global warming and the prospect of global famine should simultaneous food crop failures occur in two or more food-exporting countries.