Confusion about dealing with hunger

by Jeff Nygaard, 8/15/08 in Nygaard Notes • The news has been filled in recent months with stories about “food riots” around the world.

(Before I go any further, I have to say that I wouldn’t call them that. The word “riot” refers to a mindless, out-of-control violence or disorder. From what I can gather, what we are seeing are angry demonstrations aimed at the political and economic forces that people understand are the causes of their hunger. But that’s another story.)

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To its credit, the daily media has also been filled of late with reports and opinions on what to do to address the problem of the increasing hunger that is behind the demonstrations. The response among elites has been fairly uniform, as evidenced by the following comments from various media over the past three months or so.

• The McClatchy news organization ran a story on May 14th about Congressional hearings on the food crisis. The headline was “Experts Call for a New Green Revolution to End World Food Crisis.” They summed up the thoughts of Committee Chairman Joseph Biden (reportedly on Barack Obama’s “short list” for vice president) like this: “Biden said the United States should support a second Green Revolution… The original Green Revolution introduced better seeds and agricultural techniques that increased yields.”

• A couple of weeks after that, on May 31st, one of my local newspapers, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, ran a piece headlined simply, “THE GREEN REVOLUTION,” saying “Today, with developing nations facing renewed hunger and even riots amid a potential global food crisis, experts agree that a new Green Revolution is needed to offset the challenges of population growth, biofuel demand, extreme weather and a growing clamor for costly-to-produce meat and milk.” (There’s that word “riots” again. And, as usual, the “experts agree.”)

• Two more weeks went by. Then, on June 11th, the Omaha World-Herald had its own editorial on the subject—Nebraska is a big farm state, after all. Headlined “A New Revolution; Developing World Needs Renewed Effort to Boost Farm Production,” the piece led off with this: “The developing world, suffering from an alarming food crisis, is in desperate need of a new Norman Borlaug. And a new Green Revolution.” (Norman Borlaug is known as the “father” of the Green Revolution. See NN #244 for more on Borlaug.)

And, finally, three weeks later, on July 3rd, the influential Washington Post featured an opinion piece by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, headlined “Global Action to Save Global Growth.” The Secretary General tells us that “What’s needed, in effect, is a ‘green revolution’ of the sort that once transformed Southeast Asia…”

As I said, the elite response is uniform and, as these examples show, the uniformity is based on the idea that hunger is the result of a shortage of food. The “Green Revolution,” after all, was about producing more food. And, say the experts, we need another one now in order to deal with global hunger.

But here’s the fact, which has been true for my entire life and remains true: There is enough food in the world to feed every human being there is. The problem is not the quantity of food, it’s a economic system that doesn’t get the food to the people who need it.

Consider this comment that I found in a “backgrounder” from the Food First: The Institute for Food and Development Policy a few months ago called “From Food Rebellions to Food Sovereignty: Urgent Call to Fix a Broken Food System:” “[T]here is more than enough food in the world to feed everyone—at least 1.5 times current demand. In fact, over the last 20 years, food production has risen steadily at over 2.0% a year, while the rate of population growth has dropped to 1.14% a year. Population is not outstripping food supply.” The figures they are citing are from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, whose job it is to alleviate world hunger.

I addressed the faultiness of this “there’s not enough food” reasoning ‘way back in 2003, in Nygaard Notes #210 (“Hunger, Power, and Politics: Looking for the Key Fact”). I quoted Frances Moore Lappé, Joseph Collins, and Peter Rosset from their book “World Hunger: 12 Myths.” Responding to the argument that “The Green Revolution is the Answer” they explain that

“The production advances of the Green Revolution are no myth. Thanks to the new seeds, million of tons more grain a year are being harvested. But focusing narrowly on increasing production cannot alleviate hunger because it fails to alter the tightly concentrated distribution of economic power that determines who can buy the additional food. That’s why in several of the biggest Green Revolution successes—India, Mexico, and the Philippines—grain production and in some cases, exports, have climbed, while hunger has persisted and the long-term productive capacity of the soil is degraded. Now we must fight the prospect of a ‘New Green Revolution’ based on biotechnology, which threatens to further accentuate inequality.”

Back in Nygaard Notes #86 I cited one of those authors, Peter Rosset, in an interview with Multinational Monitor, who explained a little more clearly how this works:

“During the boom years of the Green Revolution, from 1970 to 1990, world food production did go up dramatically. Unfortunately, hunger increased in most parts of the Third World as well. The Green Revolution creates what we call the paradox of plenty, or hunger amidst abundance. Production goes up, but that production is in the hands of larger farmers, who expand at the expense of smaller farmers. These smaller farmers eventually lose their land, move to the cities, don’t find jobs, and can’t afford to buy the additional food that’s produced. So the Green Revolution gives you more food and more hunger.”

Everyone in a position of authority in this country talks about hunger as if it were caused by a lack of food. But there is not a lack of food, and in fact the production of more food could make hunger worse for a lot of people. So the public discussion of the food crisis, like our discussion of terror, serves mostly to breed confusion.