African famine and hunger is not a "natural" but unnatural disaster

This is entirely preventable

Earlier this week the UN, in an emergency session, called for $1.6bn in aid to stop a famine in Somalia, according to Business Week.  We have to think about that.  This is less than what some individuals earn in a year, a lot less.  "Can African farmers learn to thrive?" this journal of big business asks.

The UN has a program called "Purchase for Progress"  (P4P) which is designed to "teach" African farmers how to farm, or more accurately, farm profitably and buy seeds and fertilizer from the multinationals.  African people, like all people, have farmed for thousands of years so it unlikely they don't know how to do it.  The crux is, to do it within the framework of the market.  The UN program has "designated" trainers, local farmers who teach other farmers to "time corn and coffee sales to get better prices.".  That's the issue, market farming.


The PFP program is the "signature" piece of the head of the UN's World Food Program Josette Sheeran.  Sheeran is a former US State dept. employee in the George W Bush administration.  I sat next to a Christian missionary in an airport once who said she was  heading to Tanzania to teach, "heaven help the Africans," I remarked, "I think they've had their fair share of Christianity don't you? " .

The P4P program is on the road to success they say because these African farmers are going to get a deal from the WFP that US farmers have had from their government for 160 years, since the first crop futures market opened in Chicago.  A crop futures exchange is a casino for gamblers and speculators in food production. The WFP will buy their produce at a "clearly set price." with  UN staffers "guiding the transactions" so the farmers are really safe and secure. "The contract helps farmers become better credit risks when they take out loans to buy yield boosting seeds and fertilizers" says BW.  Not only that, "Specialists" will teach the farmers how to make their "goods appealing" to other local buyers.

The UN says that the five year experiment has given "500,000 farmers in 20 countries lessons in boosting yields" and according to BW, at the mid-point of the experiment the plan has "put $30 million in the pockets of poor farmers." I can't say for sure but if it's the same 500,000 that received lessons in farming that's a whopping $60 apiece.

Some are worried that if the attempts to teach African farmers to "thrive" are successful, it will cause some serious problems in the US  food aid industry.  There are some 33,000 US jobs dependent on the food aid business.  Traditionally the US taxpayer buys surplus crops from huge grain traders like Archer Daniels Midland then hires private companies to ship the stuff to famine relief. Most of these jobs are in shipping and by employing private companies argues USA Maritime, a coalition of the shipping bosses and maritime Unions, it keeps the US merchant marine available for defense needs. There is a great fear among them that Grenada might decide to invade the US in retaliation for Reagan's invasion and toppling of their government in 1983, an act that was declared a violation of international law by the UN.  Oh well!

This system is the most "proven and effective approach to getting food to the world's hungry." says  the chairman of USA Maritime. It's scandalous that such a comment can be made in a respected journal without response.  The world's hungry are being relieved by death. But for the African farmers to become self sufficient, food aid businesses like Archer Daniels Midland and Liberty Maritime, a shipper, could lose $1bn a year in income; that's the issue, "Commodity and shipping interests are more concerned with using taxpayer dollars to pad their profits than seeing US assistance used efficiently" says an Oxfam America official. He's right about that but doesn't draw the correct conclusion from his observation.

I have lived on this earth for 62 years. For most of my conscious life I have lived with images of, bulging eyed bloated East African adults and children on television and in the news.   Famine and starvation in the former colonial world has always been present and for the same amount of time celebrities and volunteers and well meaning people have devoted their lives to charities that want to feed the hungry.  It never stops.  Trying to solve the problem this way is like a farmer living a few bends downriver from a factory that is dumping garbage in to it and getting out each morning with nets and buckets to trap the waste on his bend. The problem is upstream and only the ownership and control of the activities at the source (or removal of the source) can solve the problem.

These famines are not natural disasters; they are social disasters.  They are a by-product of colonialism and an economic system in which the means of producing food, is a business, is a profit creating enterprise. Agricultural production is market driven and the means of producing food is in private hands; this is the problem.  Why is there a futures market?  Why are people allowed to bet on the price of food, whether it goes up or down?

Giant private agricultural enterprises like ADM produce food throughout the world based on the profit potential of that crop.  Soy is produced in parts of the colonial world to feed cattle to provide red meat for the wealthier countries of the west as people in that area go without. During the great Irish famine, British landowners and merchants exported cash crops as people starved.  People starve amid plenty; that's capitalism. This stuff is not new.

It is a tragic failure of the Union leadership  that in the example above they join with the employers to preserve their little niche in the marketplace.  The employers always argue that this or that issue, particularly solutions to capitalist crises that actually work, will destroy jobs.  But they don't care about jobs, they care about profit. But they can't say that, we won't be so supportive.  But when a more lucrative environment for profit making can be found elsewhere, the contract between the workers and the bosses is thrown out.  Jobs don't matter then.

The great contribution that the capitalist revolutions and their economic system made to humanity was that it increased the productive forces to the extent that poverty and hunger can easily be eradicated.  We have the resources and the wealth and know how to end it very easily. 

Ending poverty and famine in the capitalist sense though is not ending it at all, it is just another business venture.