Roger Thurow - Outrage and Inspire - "Harvest and Hunger"

HARVEST AND HUNGER

Bungoma, Kenya

Two scenes from the great African paradox of surplus and shortage – feast and famine – in the same country:

In rural western Kenya, farmer Crispinus Walubengo harvests a bumper crop of maize. He is expecting a half-acre yield greater than the thirteen 90-kilogram bags he reaped last year, which had been his biggest-ever harvest. 

In the port of Mombasa, on Kenya’s east coast, a crane offloads thousands of tons of maize imported from Malawi.  That maize would soon be heading to drought-ravaged northern and eastern parts of Kenya where hundreds of thousands of people are desperately hungry.

If any sense would come from this paradox, farmer Walubengo would be entertaining buyers from the Kenyan government or international relief agencies flocking to purchase his harvest to feed the hungry.  They would come bearing a pile of cash to buy at the country’s current historically high maize price.  It would be a rare win for Kenya’s smallholder farmers, and help Walubengo achieve his post-harvest goal of buying a top producing dairy cow.

So far, though, no one has knocked on the wooden door of his mud-brick house and no one likely will.  Instead, imports and food aid continue to stream into the country and the greater Horn of Africa region.  The U.S. has pumped more than $430 million of emergency assistance into the Horn since the beginning of the year.  Part of that has gone to the United Nations World Food Program, which has received more than $250 million from donors to feed 11.5 million people in the Horn.

In Kenya, the WFP is feeding 1.6 million people and the government of Kenya 800,000.  The number needing food assistance is expected to rise to more than 3 million by mid-August.

This emergency relief will undoubtedly save countless lives.  But another emergency afflicting Kenya, the Horn and all of Africa is the lack of agriculture development aid to help farmers produce more food so the countries wouldn’t be in need of food aid in the first place.  In contrast to the rush of emergency food aid, there is a decided lack of urgency in providing the emergency agriculture development aid.

The rich world countries have for the most part dragged their feet on meeting their pledges to dramatically increase aid to agriculture development.  And in the U.S., the Obama administration’s Feed the Future Initiative, which aims to address emergency food aid needs while also improving the long-term productivity of Africa’s smallholder farmers, is battling to hold back Congressional budget cutters who would obliterate such foreign assistance programs.

For those who doubt that agriculture development aid does any good, consider again the two opening scenes.  Just six or seven years ago, Malawi was a large food aid recipient as a severe hunger crisis crippled the country.  The government committed to developing agriculture by helping its farmers become more productive and donor nations joined in.  Within a year or two, Malawi was producing a maize surplus, and it became a food aid donor to other African countries. 

Two years ago, Farmer Walubengo harvested only 6 bags of maize on his half-acre.  Then he became a member of the One Acre Fund, which provides seeds and fertilizer on credit, and farming advice to go with it, to some 50,000 smallholder farmers in Kenya and Rwanda.  In one season, he more than doubled his maize yield.

Despite such successes, agriculture development has been so woefully neglected.  And so, in the Kenyan breadbasket regions of the Rift Valley and Western provinces, farmers faced a seed shortage when planting season arrived in March.  Farmers wanting to grow as much as possible were stymied by the underdevelopment of the country’s seed industry.  Incredibly, many of them left fields fallow – at a time when drought and hunger were spreading in other parts of Kenya.

In 2009, the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) was established by the G20 nations to pool resources in support of country-led programs to improve the productivity of smallholder farmers.  So far, the fund has allocated nearly $500 million dollars to 12 countries, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.  But it has exhausted its funding, and no new donations have replenished it.  At the last round of allocations, GAFSP was unable to fund 15 countries for lack of money.

One of those was Kenya.  Within months, emergency food aid was rushing into the country.

Comments

[Dansilverstein]

Really interesting Roger. Outrageous, but interesting.

[george clark]

Apparently, no one wants to teach people to fish. You state the problem is lack of funding for the Feed the Future Iniative. The problem seems to be that there is no money in that. There is big money in providing aid and taking a little of the top. Very sad.

[Ayub Chege]

Spot on- as long as WFP will belated rush in with food aid while a rich politician will also be awarded tenders to import grain, there will always be little incentive to enhance and boost agricultural research and development. Speaking as a post-doc researcher who 'wasted' 5 years coming up with recommendations that were not effected, and still frustrated with the current debate on GM maize, this thesis doesn't state it all. Lots is lying wasted that could turn round a rich ecosystem to feed not just its own but also for agribusiness exports. However, priorities are reversed from the very top.

Blame should not just be African all- I am sure there are very rich pickings for some mid-US Corn Belt farmers who produce excess grain and have a ready market with WFP. Fine! Better feed some hungry people somewhere than use all the grain for horse feed and bio-fuels. If the WFP would go ahead feeding the destitute in arid Northern Kenya without so much TV drama, the world would be a better place.

If the US alone is spending hundreds of million dollars in food aid, then better than creating prime jobs for its WFP employees, it might do more to support research. That is, if the poor African governments will not be shooting their feet like in the GM maize scenario. Doubted, starving Turkana would care least if the food aid grain is GM or organic or conventional or even the teosinte.

And as soon as agricultural research is boosted, processing of yield need go hand in hand. There is no sin like watching vegetables rot in the Central Highlands' fields and cows 'refusing' to feed on the surplus while an hour's flight away Turkana people are foraging for wild fruits like wild animals.

If market was assured and storage means improved, Kenya and many other African countries would be frontline in feeding themselves as well as exporting. Indeed, Kenya exports lots in cash crops and so would not be too weak to export grain likewise. It is just a matter of focus and priorities. Remember, this is the same country that saw stores full of maize burnt down three years ago!