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Mankind has a way of shooting itself in the leg. That’s because any solution to each of man’s problems seems to create another problem. Civilisation plus industrialisation led to environmental degradation. Climate change has proved to be its latest fallout. Now man’s ingenuity at making cheaper fuel that releases less greenhouse gas from food has led to a problem: shortage and soaring prices of food. The consequences of this are dire. No less among them is the threat posed to the achievement of UN’s Millennium Development Goals or MDGs; for none of the agenda on the MDGs can go unscathed if people starve. From the plan to reduce maternal/child mortality rate, give education to all to reduction of poverty, HIV/AIDS and the rest of the goals, food crisis is a threat to mankind; it’s a potential humanitarian tsunami.
That people in developing sections of the world such as Africa almost always don’t have enough to eat is a well-known fact. Yet some developing nations in Asia and Latin America have managed to grow more rice, for instance, than they could consume. Then something happened in the last one year. Food that was available even in these countries began to attract higher prices. The matter is now a global phenomenon. UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation, FAO, sounded a warning in June 2006. Food shortage was imminent; it had said and mentioned 2008 in particular. The drought and flood that occurred at the time were FAO’s indicators. At the moment, the organisation says it didn’t imagine the magnitude of food shortage and high prices that the world’s currently witnessing. It couldn’t have. Nature had given no warning when it suddenly turned sullen in 2007, displaying the negative effects of climate change on it for all to see. The drought and flood that followed were serious. In Africa, the entire belt from Senegal to Somalia fell victim. The same applied to the east and southern rim of the continent as well as Mozambique which case had included horrible hurricanes. Crop failure followed. Less than expected harvest made it into barnyards. Then price of crude oil began to climb. It’s still climbing. Western nations especially want to cut their dependence on costly crude oil, reduce dependence on the Arab world, have cheaper fuel, exercise more control over their source of energy and, as in the case of Britain, have cleaner source of energy and thereby reduce global warming caused by fossil fuel. Biofuel is one of the obvious answers to all this. Nations, including a developing economy such as Brazil, have begun to take ethanol out of crops such as rice and wheat. America currently has 147 stations or refineries where it turns food to fuel. It is constructing more. The British are great supporters of climate change issues. Biofuel is a way out. Yet, now that the food crisis has surfaced, British PM, Gordon Brown, recently called a meeting and loudly proclaimed a need to review policies of turning food to fuel. He has reasons to. More than 100 million people worldwide are the worse hit by shortage of food and high prices in the short-term according to World Food Programme. IMF boss said recently that rising food prices would reverse gains already made in many spheres of life. He’s dead right. About 70 per cent of income of the poor is already going into purchase of staple foodstuffs. It is estimated that some 100 million people could be put into poverty soonest as a result of more serious food crisis. Some 26 million people spread across 50 countries currently move across borders due to reasons linked to crop failure and shortage of food, among others. The same have led to violent protests in some countries. Protests led to the death of some 100 people in Cameroon. There were protests in Senegal, Ethiopia, Liberia, Niger, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone and in South Africa. The multiplier negative effects this potential humanitarian tsunami may have give cause for worry; it could be worse than the one caused by natural elements in South East Asia not long ago. Many suggestions have been made on how to tackle this problem. After the meeting of the Bretton Woods institutions recently, recommendations were made. Lending to nations to expand their agriculture is one. Expanding programmes for food production is another. The bizarre scenario that sees about 800 million people with automobiles using fuel made from food that should feed two billion people that live on the periphery of poverty needs to be readdressed, it is said. And that’s because in less than one year, prices of wheat and rice have doubled. There are yet more recommendations, many of them detailed versions of what IMF suggested. There is the need to make genetically-modified crops available in more countries, for instance. The use of more technology in crop production is not left out. Provision of basic infrastructure so as to make agriculture practice easier for those involved in it is mentioned. Use of crops that can be easily diversified into several uses such as potato usable in bread production is not left out. More research that would assist farmers to meet challenges of the time including introduction of crops that can withstand severe weather occasioned by climate change is on the table; just as new models of agricultural practice involving private-public partnership is recommended. These suggestions are good except that regional or continental specifics are needed. More than any other, higher food price has hit Asia, the Caribbean and Africa. The last, for obvious reasons, is particularly vulnerable. Africa has some peculiar problems and therefore needs peculiar approach. For one, the continent has up to 70 percent of its people engaged in agriculture yet it produces less than half of some of the foods its peoples consume. In places such as Senegal and the West African region in general, some 45 to 50 percent of the rice consumed is imported. Even in the event that many of the obvious problems facing agriculture in Africa are taken care of, there still remain fundamental problems. Uncertain, severe weather is a threat. Use of GM crops presents its own challenges. Farmers are used to saving seeds from one year to the next. Making poor farmers to buy GM seeds year in year out will be an added load in an environment where fertiliser, for instance, is priced out of the roof. Policies of crop buyers also create problems. Egypt, for instance, exports potato to Europe. GM potatoes have their advantages and the government has them in store. But it could not send these potatoes to farmers. Reason is that its EU buyers have strict regulations slammed on any and every GM crop. Now, farmers in Egypt don’t have all the technology to meet the standard demanded by EU. Buyers of improved crops are obstacles to whatever GM crops African farmers may produce. That’s not to mention many of the restrictions that EU places on all agriculture produce coming out of Africa in the first place. And there’s also government subsidy enjoyed by farmers both in Europe and in the US all of which place the African farmer at a disadvantage. Yet Africa must produce more food or its people will starve. Recently, the UN pointed out that nations need to change the way they produce food. In Africa, governments don’t appear keen to do that. When the government in Nigeria learned of high prices, it opened up the strategic grain reserves but did little else. That pattern is more common across the continent. Ethiopia ordered more rice, wheat and sugar imported as did Sierra Leone and Senegal when protests over rising food prices broke out. However, when the same kind of protest took place in Liberia, the government did not only put more rice in the market, it set up a 30 million dollar mechanised rice farm with foreign assistance and promised a boost for agriculture. Equally, the Ghanaian government set up mechanised sugar cane farms in partnership with Brazil that needs it to produce biofuel. That takes pressure off Ghanaian farmers making them to concentrate on planting food crops that people could feed on. These are the kind of actions that governments across the continent should embark on. It is important to note that current conditions give nations very strong reasons to make cheaper fuel if they have excess wheat and rice. Africa should work to have its own excess food. Banning exportation of some food crops is also no suggestion. Foreign earnings improve conditions of African farmers and reduce poverty. In the face of this, all the factors that could boost agriculture that governments on this continent have neglected over the years will be the way out rather than waiting for the actions or inactions of foreign governments on more contentious issues like biofuel. Ajibade, an author, wrote from Abuja and can be reached through 07037832734,
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