Food for thought

Farmers dump fruit to keep prices high

Perhaps twice a year famine appears on our television screens from some drought stricken or war torn part of the world. Each time there is a message--this is the fault of local rulers and has nothing to do with the West. The affected countries are simply prone to natural disasters. The most we can do is to support the relief agencies or contribute to charities. The facts tell a different story.

The worst famine stricken countries are in Africa. Recently affected include Mozambique, Somalia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sudan and Kenya. Every year around 20 million people die from lack of food. Even in a so called 'normal' year 500 million people in Asia, Africa and Latin America live in absolute poverty. In Africa one fifth of the population does not get enough to eat to stay healthy. The United Nations estimates that one eighth of people are actually starving. In Bolivia 45 percent of the population get only 1,500 calories per day--the recommended minimum for an active life is around 2,500 calories!

The typical 'pot bellied' syndrome is caused by a lack of protein in the diet. This is called kwashiokor. In some countries it is also called 'one two' disease because it affects an older child who is weaned off the mother's milk to make way for a new infant.

Hunger is not confined to the poorest countries. Even in the United States, 30 million people are officially recognised as suffering from malnutrition. Cases of kwashiokor have even been discovered.

One fifth of children in the world are malnourished. In Brazil over half of all children suffer some form of malnutrition.

The price of three modern military aircraft would cover the cost of immunisation for all of the world's children against measles, dyptheria, whooping cough, tetanus and tuberculosis--the five diseases that are the major child killers in the world. UNICEF estimates that the cost of a permanent and universal immunisation system for the entire world would be $500 million--about the same as ten advanced fighter planes. Every ten days the Western powers spend $20 billion on arms.

Infection and malnutrition account for 280,000 infant and child deaths per week--more than the combined figures for famines, floods and droughts. If just $10 were spent on each child per year malnutrition would be halved.

It is not 'natural' disasters which cause famine. In the early 1980s, for example, 31 countries in Africa suffered from serious drought, yet of these only five experienced famine.

The problem is not lack of food. Around 240 million tonnes of grain are stored world wide in order to keep the price high. That would provide every human being with 3,600 calories a day--about 400 calories higher than the average UK diet.

Food is available in famine stricken areas. In South Africa around 50,000 black children starve to death each year--136 every day. Yet South Africa is a net exporter of agricultural products. It even exports corn, the staple food of black families.

It is estimated by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations that if presently existing technology was applied to all farming land around the world, the globe could support between ten and 12 times its present population.

Studies have shown that famine is not caused by collapse of the food supply. Rather it is the economy which collapses. Agricultural labourers and their families are thrown off the large farms on which they work, have nothing to fall back on and so starve. Rural people in the Third World have been systematically pushed off their land over the years. Today three quarters of all privately held land in the world is held by just 2.5 percent of land owners. The top 0.2 percent control over half.

Technology by itself is no solution. The 'green revolution' has meant that in Thailand, for example, rice production has risen by 30 percent. Exports, however, have risen nine times faster and so overall consumption of rice has fallen. Similarly in India the grain surplus has risen to 24 million tonnes but food consumption has not risen for 20 years and in recent years has been declining.

World hunger has nothing to do with population. One of the most heavily populated countries in the world is Holland with 363 inhabitants per square kilometre. Holland is a food exporter. In India, a country where chronic malnutrition is endemic, there are 247 people per square kilometre. One of the poorest and most hungry countries in the world is Bolivia where there are only seven inhabitants per square kilometre.

The total flow of wealth during the mid-1980s was around $220 billion--from the poorer countries into the coffers of Western banks. Each year the Third World pays around $50 billion more in debt and interest payments than it receives in aid and loans from the West.

The 'aid' from Western governments has little to do with feeding people. During the Reagan years in the 1980s, military support became the top category of US aid. The top five recipients of US aid are all repressive or military regimes which are regarded as close allies of America--Egypt, Israel, El Salvador, Pakistan and Turkey. This 'aid' goes towards weapons which will be used against the poor and hungry of those countries.

The intervention of Western banks in the Third World over the last 20 years has directly led to enormous human suffering. Economic restructuring imposed by the International Monetary Fund has led to massive cutbacks in public health care and social services. After a few years of IMF policies in Jamaica surveys revealed that 30 percent of 0-3 year olds in the Kingston area were malnourished and 43 percent of mothers were anaemic. Jamaica saw its first polio deaths for 30 years. This picture has been reproduced in country after country throughout the developing world.

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