Wednesday, May 7, 2008

The Politics of Hunger and Food Aid
— Part One

The current food situation in the world presents a window for power brokers to impose obnoxious policies on an unsuspecting world.

By: Nnimmo Bassey, Environment Action International

Hunger is a phenomenon that happens everywhere and is caused by principally the same factor: lack of access. There are hungry people in Africa, just as there are hungry people a few blocks away from the UN Plaza. Hunger is a democratised phenomenon.

Spiralling food prices currently offer international food agencies an opportunity to grasp at the straws of human misery to enlarge their territories and entrench their hold on the agricultural and food systems of the world, much in the same ways that have in fact led us into the present quagmire.

Fuel for thought

This is the right time for the world to rethink the current fossil-fuels driven mode of civilization. The fixation on this model is what drove President Wade of Senegal into championing the cartelization of agrofuels producers into what he termed the green OPEC in 2006; the Pan-African Non-Petroleum Producers Association (PANPP). This body aspires to “become leaders in the field of biofuels and alternative energy strategies, following in Brazil's footsteps.” In fact this PANPP initiative on agrofuels is anything but green, as it will perpetuate the dependence on oil consumption using an unsustainable mode of production that will bring no benefits to African people.

Agrofuels’ Oily Origins

The concept of making fuels from vegetative sources dates back to 1885 when Dr. Rudolf Diesel built the first diesel engine. In the early 1920s, the Standard Oil Company was already selling 25% by volume of ethanol in gasoline in the US State of Maryland. They made their ethanol from maize and had to end the project on account of the high cost of the food crop and of transportation. In the next decade, thanks to the intervention of Henry Ford and other entrepreneurs, over 2000 service stations sold this ethanol mixed with gasoline. This effort faltered and many of the plants were closed down in the 1940s, mainly because of the low price of petroleum products. This is a very important point to note because the moment oil prices continued to rise, the more these corporations dove into the production of the fuels that snatch food from citizen’s dining tables.

Another instructive lesson is that oil companies generally ally with biosciences. BP has been working with DuPont since 2003 to explore new approaches to biofuels development. To realise their Agrofuels they plan to spend US$500 million over the next 10 years on what they term their search for “new applications for bioscience in the energy industry, including better ways to produce the biocomponents that can be blended into traditional fossil-based transport fuels.” In 2006 BP and DuPont began working on second generation biofuels, such as biobutanol, to create a “brighter future for renewable fuels.”

Marginalised People on Marginal Lands

In the parallel session on Africa (Monday 5 May 2008) one of the speakers made the profound comment to the effect that “drylands are not wastelands”. It is easy for those whom we may describe as outsiders to certain communities to look at the community’s land and declare it marginal simply because one does not understand the logic of the environment and the way the local people interact with it. On account of the possibly jaundiced view, large swaths of land in Africa have been labelled as marginal and are potentially up for grabs.

But who decides what land is marginal or unused and what is not? It has also been said in one of the sessions that the crops that ought to be grown on so-called marginal lands have often sunk their roots on prime arable land.

It is instructive to learn that these glamorous crops are not necessarily the apple of farmers eyes. Farmers are careful about how unpredictable interplay of market factors can leave them high and dry should they plunge into monoculture cropping for agrofuels. In Ghana, for example, farmers have expressed fears over a change of focus from food cropping to agrofuels production.

They argue that the cultivation of energy crops such as jatropha, whose oil is inedible, would deprive them the use of arable land for the cultivation of food crops. They fear also that prices would always be determined by the industry. This fear is not alarmist. Farmers must not be made to become dependent on monopolies.

Enter GMOs and Food Aid

With the focus on Africa as a continent with vast lands that can be used for agrofuels, and with oil companies entering into partnership with GE corporations in their quest for agrofuels, one does not need to be a star gazer to link the very direct posturing to a direct threat for the introduction of GMOs into the African environment through the backdoor. This is a direct threat to the continent and with industry increasingly using elite strains of staple crops including cassava and potatoes, this path will compound the agricultural challenges facing the continent, contaminate the environment and raise up new strains of conflicts on the continent.

Neither GMOs nor agrofuels hold a solution to today’s challenges. Any suggestion to the contrary should be seen for what they are: an attempt to control and reap gains from the misery of the poor.

The pursuit of policies or strategies that inevitably build hunger in Africa will raise the banner of food aid over the continent. As delegates spoke during the opening session of CSD 16, there was a sharp focus on the current food crisis. While most delegates spoke of the need for sustainable agriculture and land reforms, the USA delegate focussed on food aid and said that the country is planning to make a substantial increase in food aid. They quoted the USA president as having said that the country would provide “an additional $770 million to support food aid and development programmes. Together this amounts to nearly $1 billion in new funds to support global food security. And with other food security assistance programs already in place, we’re now projected to spend nearly $5 billion in 2008 and 2009 to fight global hunger.” The USA has always been a big spender on food aid and is the biggest contributor to the World Food Programme (WFP). The peculiar thing is that the US often insists on giving food in kind instead of through cash support of stressed countries. This has often proved problematic in Africa.

Nnimmo’s take on The Politics of Hunger in Africa continues in tomorrow’s issue!