Maravi

(HERALD) Food crisis won’t get better soon

Food crisis won’t get better soon
By Olley Maruma in Harare

Grave concerns about food security have been a hot topic all over the world since the outbreak of food protests, demonstrations and violent riots on virtually every continent on the globe over escalating food prices. Yet Western leaders seem more obsessed with keeping African countries under their political hegemony than they are concerned with funding measures and crafting policies that will solve the chronic problem of food shortages on the continent.

The case of Zimbabwe is a very good example. Zimbabwe has the potential to become the breadbasket of the whole SADC region and perhaps even half of the continent, yet its land reform programme has become the victim of a vicious vilification campaign by Western countries that are more concerned by ideological hegemony over it than they are interested in the country's economic growth and food production. Instead of funding and assisting the agrarian programme in order to make it a success, Western countries have done everything they possibly could to make it a failure, with the ultimate aim, it seems of actually reversing it by toppling the government that spearheaded it.

The irony is that they have been assisted in their pernicious campaign by a large but muted chorus of comprador Africans, some whom, supposedly educated, have resorted to a revisionism in which the Zimbabwean African is told that he would have been better off under the harsh and repressive conditions of Ian Smith's racist Rhodesian regime! It boggles the mind how Africans who, under colonial rule, were denied education in order to keep them as the drawers of water and the hewers of wood, could be better off under a system in which they could not own businesses except in their own African townships; a system under which African women could never own property because they were considered perpetual minors; a system where the sale of African agricultural produce was restricted and controlled in order to protect inefficient white commercial farmers? Yet Zimbabweans, whose urban population largely seems to have such a low political consciousness, keep crowing that they will never be a colony again! They should not be so sure.

It may surpise some of the young people extolling the virtues of Rhodesia today, the same young Africans most of whom received a free education under the country's post-colonial education policies, that in fact many members of the Rhodesian African Rifles died fighting for the maintenance of Ian Smith's racist colonial regime. But then as the old proverb says: "You don't miss your water until your well runs dry."

In reality, it should not come as a surprise to anyone that since the days of slavery, to the days of colonialism, and now to the era of neo-colonialism, many Africans are easily bought to be in the service of racist colonial rule in the daily subjugation of their fellow Africans. Indeed, some of the worst torturers of other Africans under oppressive colonial rule were black Africans, some of whom, spared by President Robert Mugabe's policy of reconciliation, are still with us today.

The attitude of Western countries to the current world food crisis was aptly summed up by the Spanish Socialist MEP, Joseph Borrell who, at the recent Brussels Food Conference, said that "the food crisis has taken us all by surprise because no one could predict it. It has not helped that the EU has cut development aid and that we are a long way off from meeting the MDGs."

It is an indication of how, although we are supposed to live in the same global village, separated by only a few hours flight time, Africans and Europeans might as well be living on different planets. The world food crisis "taking us all by surprise!"

Quite clearly, politicians like Borrell do not read publications like the Southern Times. Of course this may be because, theoretically, the world has always produced enough food to feed everyone on our planet. What prevents food from getting to those who need it are the draconian and inhuman international laws and terms of trade, skewered trade agreements and government, NGO and corporate corruption brought about by the human factor. But if Western politicians, even socialists like Joseph Borrell, do not read African publications like the Southern Times, one at least expects them to read an important book like Professor Jeffrey Sachs's The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities of Our Time. I am a lowly African columnist, but I have read the book.

In the book Professor Sachs, who is deemed by Time Magazine to be "the world's best known economist" wrote: "Extreme poverty can be ended, not in the time of our grandchildren, but our time."

Professor Sachs placed most of the blame for the current world food crisis on the policies of the rich countries whose thrust has been to undermine small scale agriculture in small developing countries in favour of large commercial farmers and the big corporations, partly in order to keep them perpetually dependent on Western aid.

Professor Sachs' analysis is full of all the practical experience he has accumulated over 20 years of experience in the field, working in dozens of countries across the globe to foster economic development and well being, from states such as Colombia in Latin America, to a former Soviet satellite like the Czech Republic.

Interestingly, Professor Sachs, who is a special adviser to the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon on MDGs, blamed the world's precarious food situation on "climatic shocks" such as floods and droughts, usually in developing countries. He noted that although increasing funding for emergency food aid was a necessary short term solution, the EU needed to embark on long term solutions, noting: "One way of doing this is to encourage small farmers in places to raise their output. Currently, it is about one tonne per hectare but, ideally, this should be increased to 3.5 tonnes per hectare."

Professor Sachs also urged Western governments to invest more in improved drought resistant crops. He might have done better to advise the AU, through its Economic Commission for Africa, to do that. But will the ECA?

Professor Sachs observed: "We are currently stuck on focusing on the issue of emergency food aid but there has to be a multiple response to this problem because emergency food aid, on its own, will not solve the problem. We also have to address things like the question of structural supply." In other words, land use in general, either through land reform, or through investing in scientific and better methods of farming. Which brings one back to the same question: so what is the Western gripe against Zimbabwe's land reform programme?

If the West is so implacably opposed to land use that is going to lead to the production of more food through empowering an increased number of small scale farmers to till the land not only for subsistence but for supply to non farmers like urban workers and dwellers, what will happen to South Africa which is already beginning to experience the problems of a market-based agricultural system which is not concerned about food security? As it is, South Africa is slowly becoming a net food importer and not an exporter.

The fact that many South African food corporations have been fined for the price fixing of bread and other essential commodities should be a wake up call to those who keep telling us that capitalism and the free market will eventually take care of everything. If they have been doing so, why is there a food crisis in the world which is not going to get better any time soon?

Labels: FOOD, INFLATION

posted by MrK @ 3:36 PM