Every Six Seconds A Child Dies of Starvation

Hungry for answers to the global food shortage
With another shortage on the horizon, the world seems ill prepared. And so a child dies every six seconds

By David Olive Business Columnist
Published On Sun Nov 15 2009



Every six seconds a child on this planet dies of hunger.

We've had industrial revolutions in the west and more recently in China and South Asia; budding revolutions in "superjumbo" aircraft and plug-in electric cars; and Seinfeld episodes that can be downloaded onto cellphones worldwide.

Yet we remain trapped in some previous century in that most basic of necessities; keeping the world population fed. Remarkably, the facts today point to yet another global food shortage just a few years after the food crisis of 2007-08, which ended only when the Great Recession curbed a debilitating upward spiral in prices of basic staples like rice, corn and wheat worldwide. As the world economy recovers, the prospect of another global food crisis looms large.

The determining factors in famine are mostly man-made. They include civil war and political instability in many, if not most undernourished regions. Protectionism in affluent nations that removes the incentive for developing-world farmers to enhance crop yields in the hope of earning export revenue. A sharp decline in affluent-world donations of agricultural assistance to underfed countries. A growing scourge of crop failure related to global warming. And a ferocious debate between advocates of natural farming methods and those arguing for a new agricultural revolution based on genetically modified (GM) crops.

"We have the economic and technical means to make hunger disappear," said Jacques Diouf, director-general of the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization last month, in releasing a report showing that the number of people suffering from hunger crossed the one-billion threshold for the first time, in 2008 – a 10 per cent increase in global hunger in just one year.

In a report released last week, UNICEF found that nearly 200 million children in poor nations have stunted growth resulting from malnutrition.

"Eradicating hunger is no pipe dream," said Diouf, citing progress in nations such as Brazil, Vietnam, Nigeria, Mexico and Saudi Arabia that have all invested heavily in small-scale farming. Indeed, 31 nations have met or are well down the path to meeting the goal set by world leaders in 2000 to reduce by half the planet's number of hungry people by 2015.

"What is missing is a stronger political will to eradicate hunger forever," said Diouf. He notes that 13 nations have seen their hunger levels increase, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Eritrea, Sierra Leone, Chad and Ethiopia.

As if to prove Diouf's point, U.S. President Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy are among the rich-nation heads of state who won't be attending the FAO's three-day World Summit on Food Security in Rome that begins tomorrow. About 60 heads of state will be there, as will Pope Benedict XVI.

World food output must ramp up by 70 per cent over the next four decades to feed the estimated 2.3 billion more people on the planet by 2050 – or a total global population of 9.1 billion. Achieving that goal will cost an estimated $44 billion (U.S.) a year in annual agricultural assistance, compared with the $7.9 billion spent now.

That money is needed for more and better irrigation systems, state-of-the-art machinery, training for farmers, new and upgraded road networks to get food to market, disease-resistant seeds and fertilizer. The soaring cost of fertilizer in recent years has put it out of reach of subsistence farmers. And the increased use of biofuels has driven up the cost of other food staples, as corn and grains are redeployed from food to energy production, putting these food basics beyond the reach of subsistence-income households.

Climate change is another cause for urgency. Higher temperatures reduce crop yields while spurring a proliferation of pests and plant diseases.

Last month, the International Food and Policy Research Institute calculated that lower crop yields due to global warming will reduce worldwide "calorie availability" 7 per cent by 2050. And that an especially vulnerable South Asia will suffer the biggest drop in crop yields, with rice output falling 14 per cent in the region due to global warming alone.

China has used hybrid rice to boost crop yields from two tonnes per hectare in the 1960s to more than 10 tonnes in 2004. And Chinese scientists are aiming for 13.5 tonnes by 2015.

But modified crops and leading-edge pesticides and fertilizers are a flashpoint for conflict among anti-hunger advocates.

"Chemicals destroy the sustainability of productivity in the long run," insists P.C. Kesvan, a fellow at the M.S. Swaminathan Research Institute in India.

But other Indian economists and scientists are clamouring for genetic engineering, saying GM is no different from traditional plant hybridization save that it's faster and more efficiant.

India so far allows GM seeds only in cotton production, not for edible crops.

"Genetically modified foods are just another set of tools in the tool box, but we need to be able to use those tools," Tomas Lumpkin, director of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre in Mexico told Reuters last week.

"If we could deploy those (GM crop) varieties so that the farmer in the developing world has the same powerful seed as the farmer in Iowa," Lumpkin said, "why should they be handicapped?"

Another food crisis appears to be inevitable absent a holistic solution.

There must be a "two-track" approach of rich nations providing both emergency food aid and long-term assistance, with agricultural self-sufficiency as the goal. (Some NGOs worry that the affluent world's renewed emphasis on the latter will come at the expense of the former.)

The safety of GM crops must be established once and for all, so that we can move on from a debate that hinders the urgent progress needed. Private-sector donors must become more involved.

The donation last month of $120 million to small-scale farmers in the developing world by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is an example for others to follow.

Finally, protectionist affluent nations must open their markets to crop imports from poor countries – a far more effective means of narrowing the income gap between nations than foreign aid. And the most powerful nations must use their influence, through the U.N. and other multilateral bodies, to end the civil, tribal and ethnic wars that disrupt food production in so many of the world's malnourished populations.

The fact that war zones and crop cultivation don't mix is obvious. Yet the starvation in Darfur continues, amid a Sudanese civil war of more than 20 years' duration. Again, a multilateral means of intervening in these crises must be found.

Diouf began a 24-hour personal fast Friday morning. He can be found on YouTube in a video in which he counts to six. When Diouf reaches the count of six, another Ethiopian, Liberian or Bangladeshi child will have died of starvation.


[link to www.thestar.com]