A
new report warns that the battle
against world hunger is being lost
By
Jonathan
Power
December 5, 2003
LONDON - Food security is the sine qua non of human
existence. Without food nothing happens, no economic
endeavor, no science or engineering, no music or
literature, not even, in a year of famine,
procreation.
Since 1974, the year of the Henry Kissinger-sponsored
World Food Conference, called at a time of catastrophic
food shortages, there has been immense progress on the
journey towards providing food for all, even though the
world remains a long way from fulfilling the great
ambition of the conference's final declaration that
"within a decade no child will go to bed hungry, no
family will fear for its next day's bread, and no human
being's future and capacities will be stunted by
malnutrition."
Hundreds of millions of people who were suffering from
malnutrition in the 1970s are now eating two square meals
a day despite the rapid onward march of population
growth. Yet rightly last week the UN's Food and
Agricultural Organization signaled a major alert: for the
first time in many years, it said, the numbers of hungry
are beginning to rise again. In some countries- in Africa
in particular but also most worryingly in India, a
country which hitherto has made phenomenal progress in
feeding its people- the numbers of hungry are going up.
Even in China where the numbers keep falling the rate of
improvement has slowed.
The FAO latest estimate is that there are around 798
million malnourished people in the world. In the most
recent four years for which figures are available (1997
to 2001) the number of hungry has increased by 19
million, wiping out almost half of the decrease of 37
million achieved in the five years previous to that.
These incremental changes are not big in themselves
and putting on one side for a moment these absolute
numbers it is important to underline that in percentage
terms of the world's population as a whole the hungry are
a decreasing part- a crucial point that the FAO fails to
point up. Nevertheless, in the view of many experts this
report could be a warning sign of worse to come.
Professor Neelambar Hatti of the University of Lund in
Sweden, an Indian-born development economist, says, "In
India you have increased salinisation from botched large
scale irrigation projects, together with many years of
poor monsoons, and in Africa you have recurrent drought,
more serious than previous decades. Add to that the
effect of AIDS depleting farming families, and there is
the explanation."
Has the tide in the fight against world hunger turned?
Are we going backwards after nearly 30 years of forward
momentum? Nobody can be really sure. The FAO's figures
are already out of date. India recently has had a good
monsoon and its economy is strengthening on all fronts.
The Congo, whose precipitous decline has skewed the
sub-Saharan African figure, is slowly beginning a
recovery from the mayhem of years of continuous warfare,
now hopefully in abeyance.
But even if there is once again some improvement
underway the battle to overcome hunger is far from within
sight of being won. The promises of 1974 look ludicrously
optimistic in hindsight, even though they were based on
good science and no expert at the time questioned their
achievability.
Poverty remains widespread and poverty remains the
principle reason why under-nutrition persists. In the
majority of the poorer countries increasing food
production remains the quickest and most satisfactory way
of diminishing poverty since the majority of poor depend
primarily on agriculture for both employment and
income.
Rapid economic growth, a growing openness to
international trade, an end to agricultural subsidies in
the developed countries, a quickening of the application
of the fruits of biotechnology (whatever too many of the
"Greens" say), progress in combating AIDS and the
improvement anti-drought measures in southern Africa are
all important factors in upping food production. But I
would single out two important but underrated and under
mentioned items- land reform and the role of women.
Land reform is politically hard- look how it is
resisted in countries like India, the Philippines and
Brazil, all countries with masses of poor people and a
badly skewed ownership of land and resources. Yet the
great post war land reforms of Japan and Taiwan were two
of the main reasons for these countries' phenomenal
economic progress. (The first was decreed by the American
occupiers; the second by the rightist nationalist
government of the fleeing mainlanders led by Chiang
Kai-shek.)
In Africa in particular women are expected to grow the
food crops. Women now produce three quarter's of
sub-Saharan Africa's food. However, ninety percent of the
time new technology, training and credit are targeted on
men. Where are the female extension agents to advise the
women farmers on new techniques? Where are the women
micro bankers to offer them small but vital loans?
Empowering the women farmers of Africa with knowledge and
finance (and water) is probably the only measure that
could turn the hungry continent round.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2003 By
JONATHAN POWER
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