Re: The Economics Of Starvation

Mine:

Thank you for posting the piece on "the economics of starvation."
It reinforced what I already believe in.  Drought and crop failure does not 
have to mean an automatic famine.  For example, Eritrea today is equally 
hit 
by the drought as in Ethiopia, but you do not hear about famine in Eritrea. 
 
Why?  please read the piece  below for some answers.  If we are to believe 
Spectors's rather shallow analysis, Eritrea and Ethiopia are both ruled by 
gangsters and capitalists and hence we have to make blanket condemnations 
of 
both groups of leaders.  BTW, that is a remarkably similar line being 
pushed 
by some Amhara elites pretending to be progressives and trying to confuse 
distant observers.     But the empirical world is much more complex  than 
that and such irresponsible dichotomy can only be claimed by someone 
detached from the actual scene and is not fair to those who are working to 
avert famine under extremely difficult circumstances.   I submit that 
Eritrea is not ruled by angels and I know of no nation that is ruled by 
angels.  But while Ethiopian leaders could careless about feeding the 
victims of famine especially because the victims now are Oromo and Somali, 
the Eritreans are feeding their own people (read below).

Alexy



Eritrea feeds its people despite drought conditions

ASMARA, April 15 (AFP) -
As UN special envoy Catherine Bertini tours the drought-stricken Horn of
Africa region, diplomats here are criticizing donors for rescuing Ethiopia
while neighboring Eritrea feeds its people despite drought conditions.

"Why is there no famine in Eritrea? The government wouldn't tolerate it.
There is a commitment to looking after one's own, to a point where even in
drought conditions, people will be fed," World Bank representative for
Eritrea, Emmanuel Ablo, told AFP on Friday.

Eritrea gets half the rainfall of Ethiopia and has suffered severe drought
conditions throughout the coast and eastern lowlands, but there is no famine
and international agencies report no hunger-related deaths.

"Eritrea has 370,000 people effected by drought. They have asked for
assistance, but it is clear that with or without that assistance, the
government will look after these people," Ablo said in an interview ahead of
Bertini's arrival here.

He noted that Eritrean officials had begun to contact those communities
likely to require assistance much earlier than their counterparts in
neighbouring countries.

"Instead of applying the Eritrean model elsewhere, international donors are
rewarding countries that don't take care of their own," aid worker Jeff
Shannon said.

He added that it was part of what he called the "international community's
paternalistic attitude towards Africa."

According to Ethiopia, the famine was caused by drought, not by war with
Eritrea, despite both sides diverting enormous funds and resources to the
war.

"Drought alone is not enough to make people starve," argued an Asmara-based
diplomat, who said that people will be fed if it is a government priority.

Eritrea had run "an aggressive, almost military procedure" to feed its
people, said banker and economic consultant John Weakliam.

"They have plowed the land, mobilized the civilian population, and the
agriculture ministry has taken it upon itself to do everything it can," he
added.

As storm clouds gathered over the Eritrean countryside last month, hundreds
of tractors from the agriculture ministry went out to farmlands, ploughing
every centimetre of high-yield land.

During July and August, Eritrea's youth will flock to the countryside for
the National Campaign for Development, where they will weed and terrace the
hillsides, construct roads and plant trees for reforestation.

After the long rains end in October, the entire country will be mobilized to
bring in the harvest, with schools closing for the month for students to
join in, along with all non-essential army personnel.

While 12 percent of the population has been recruited into the army,
soldiers at the front also cultivate the land, turning the 1,000-kilometre
(600-mile) southern border into what Weakliam calls a "farming-military
community."

"We are mobilizing all our resources, improving cultivation by two to three
times and moving very fast to go from primitive farming to modern
practices," explained Bereke Ogbamichael, head of the Eritrean agriculture
ministry's crop production and protection division.

Despite huge areas effected by drought and an enormous military build-up due
to the war with neighbouring Ethiopia, the 1998 harvest brought in more than
90 percent of Eritrea's total food needs.

The 1999 harvest was still a respectable 70 percent of the 500,000 tonnes
needed to feed the small nation of 3.5 million people.

Eritrea estimates that Ethiopia's deporting of more than 70,000 Eritreans
could have also contributed to logistical problems with the famine, as 90
percent of all trucking in Ethiopia was in Eritrean hands before their
departure.







>
>Al-Ahram Weekly, 6 - 12 April 2000
>Issue No. 476
>
>The economics of starvation
>
>      By Sameh Naguib
>
>      Fifteen years ago, a devastating famine left over one million
>people dead in the Horn of
>      Africa. As ministers meet at the first Africa-Europe Summit here in
>Cairo, the region is
>      faced yet again with the threat of famine. As in previous cases of
>famine, the direct causes
>      are drought, war and the pressures of refugee movement across the
>region; however there
>      are more fundamental causes for famines, hunger and malnutrition.
>
>      An estimated 24,000 people die every day from hunger or
>hunger-related causes;
>      three-quarters of them are children under the age of five. The
>majority of hunger deaths are
>      caused by chronic malnutrition. Families simply cannot get near
>enough to the minimum
>      required daily calorie intake. Besides death, chronic malnutrition
>causes impaired vision,
>      listlessness, stunted growth and greatly increased susceptibility
>to disease. Severely
>      malnourished people are unable to function at the most basic level.
>
>      It is estimated that some 800 million people in the world suffer
>from hunger and
>      malnutrition, and the situation is not improving. In the early
>'90s, only 37 developing
>      countries achieved a reduction in the number of undernourished
>people. In the rest of the
>      developing world, the number of hungry people actually increased by
>almost 60 million.
>
>      More than half the countries for which statistics are available do
>not have enough food to
>      provide their entire population with the minimum daily requirement
>of calories. Across Africa the average household
>      now consumes 25 per cent less than in the early 1970s. Between 1995
>and 1997, only 21 out of 147 Third World
>      countries recorded per capita growth of over three per cent a year,
>the level estimated necessary to reduce poverty.
>
>      The contrast between wealth and hunger in this "new world order"
>can only be described as obscene. The wealth of
>      the world's 15 richest people now exceeds the combined gross
>domestic product (GDP) of the whole of
>      sub-Saharan Africa. The wealth of the 84 richest individuals
>exceeds the GDP of China, which has 1.2 billion
>      inhabitants. There are 1.2 billion people living on less than a
>dollar a day and nearly 3 billion people (half the world's
>      population) live on less than $2, according to a UNDP Development
>Report in 1999.
>
>      The logic of the world food market is particularly conducive to
>starvation. Advanced countries in Europe and North
>      America, as well as Japan, produce over three-quarters of the
>world's exports of foodstuffs. These countries
>      maintain schemes to protect their agricultural production. In
>general, people in these countries pay vastly inflated
>      prices so that high and stable prices can be guaranteed to the farm
>and food processing sectors. One of the first
>      results of this system is a decline in imports, which translates as
>a loss to Third World countries that export
>      foodstuffs.
>
>      To keep the prices up, governments create massive stocks of
>foodstuffs, which are then taken off the market. World
>      grain stocks exceed 200 million tonnes, while the shortfall of
>grain in the Horn of Africa will not exceed 10 million
>      tonnes. The cost of storing food in Europe alone runs in tens of
>billions of dollars, but the massive cost of storing vast
>      quantities of food leads governments to the "logical" conclusion
>that they must either process it into something else or
>      simply dump it.
>
>      The fragile integration into the world market means that any
>serious fall in the demand for Third World exports leads
>      inevitably to hunger. Without export earnings, it is virtually
>impossible for governments to subsidise food for the
>      poor. Moreover, the peasant farmers can ill afford to buy the
>fertilisers, pesticides, oil and machinery to keep up
>      their own subsistence farming practices, let alone producing cash
>crops.
>
>      Famines are not caused by nature, they are part of the global
>business cycle; the boom and slump of world capital.
>      And like slumps, famines always serve to strengthen the rich and
>weaken the poor. When an African country is
>      stricken by famine, it is not the state that starves but the poor
>majority. The rich actually get richer as the prices of
>      land and labour tumble and as the powerful monopolise the flow of
>food aid.
>
>      The power of food-exporting countries like the US and Europe is
>also greatly enhanced during famines. Washington
>      has always used food relief -- in the words of a former US
>secretary of agriculture -- as "a tool in the kit of US
>      diplomacy." Food supplies can be used to reverse the policy of a
>foreign government, to subordinate, subvert,
>      punish and control.
>
>      Famine sums up the essence of a world order based on profits and
>state power. Political and business leaders in
>      both industrialised and developing nations avoid doing anything
>that might jeopardise profits and their networks of
>      vested interest. Anything that might encourage the absurd notion
>that food surpluses ought to be eaten -- rather than
>      sold at the market price or else destroyed -- is hushed up. There
>is no shortage of food, yet scarcity is forced on
>      those who have no money to buy it.
>
>      Today 10 per cent of children in developing countries die before
>the age of five. The world has an unprecedented
>      capacity to produce -- to feed and cloth everyone -- but it is
>dominated by a system that produces waste and
>      hunger instead.
>
>      In the words of the celebrated late Spanish playwright Frederico
>Garcia Lorca, "The day that hunger is eradicated
>      from the earth will be the greatest spiritual explosion the world
>has ever known. Humanity cannot imagine the joy
>      that will burst into the world."
>
>      Such a day will only come when production and distribution are
>determined by need rather than profit.
>
>
>--
>
>Mine Aysen Doyran
>PhD Student
>Department of Political Science
>SUNY at Albany
>Nelson A. Rockefeller College
>135 Western Ave.; Milne 102
>Albany, NY 12222
>

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