Posts

North Korean Farmers Struggling

north korean farmers
The pressure is on for North Korea to surpass previous years of famine and intolerably high death tolls, possibly nearing hundreds of thousands lives lost. The threat of famine imminent throughout the nation, Kim Jong Un proclaimed a prosperous farming season, claiming North Koreans will, “never have to tighten its belt again,” with the hopes of inspiring farmers to excel.

The question still lies in every mind, how can an isolated, autocratic state find success when they refuse aid from every inquiry that comes their way? Compared to last year, North Korea is expected to produce three million tons less grains, paving the way for a lower crop season overall.

North Korea, no matter how hidden and secretive they attempt to be, still releases information to the world, even though it may be altered. Kim believes that his country can provide for itself and be a successful self-sustainable farming example. In reality, farmers struggle to get past the memories of the death and hunger that rampaged through the country in the 1990s.

In that time, farming was made up of innovative farming technology that quickly lead to the fuel and equipment shortages that created long-term damage. The policies put in place at the time did not account for over usage, allowing farmers to abuse the system and ultimately plow themselves into the ground, hungry and poor.

There are some instances in North Korea that point to signs of smart farming and success, given the example of Rim Ok Hua, whose farm received special recognition from the late leader, Kim Jong Il. This acknowledgement has gifted Rim’s farm with access to the top tier materials to maintain a vast and growing farm. Rim is one of few farmers that do not worry about their own lives when the farming season comes, compared to poorer provinces where farmers dread the harvests.

Forced to do so by hand and alone in the fields or behind starving livestock such as oxen, smaller farmers struggle to not only maintain themselves, but to serve the country as well. One of the common issues a modern farmer faces is that the, “soil fertility in many areas was trashed by decades of overuse of chemical fertilizers, up to the late 1980s,” causing current crops to suffer.

Among these physical issues lie the issues that cannot be seen, only felt by the people. North Korea’s strict regime includes, “state-controlled distribution, top-down planning and a quota system that doesn’t fully encourage innovation and individual effort. All these factors make North Korea’s agricultural sector a very fragile ecosystem,” forcing farmers to quietly suffer economically as well. With so many devices to control the farms, workers see little revenue and whatever they make immediately goes back to the state. This ultimately creates a cycle of poverty within the workforce, with the farm having barely enough to get by for the rest of the year.

Not all hope is lost though. Since the 90’s disaster that left so many suffering, there have been noticeable improvements that will hopefully allow for a more stable farming future. The total crop production is expected to rise five percent from 2013 to 2014, equating to about six million tons according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Programme.

North Korean farmers enter this farming season with a small sense of hope that the crops will yield the product necessary to survive, otherwise they may all be looking at a dim revisiting to the famine that threatened them years ago.

– Elena Lopez

Sources: Big Story, The Diplomat, Global Meat News
Photo: Telegraph

Famine in South Sudan Looms

famine in south sudan
On July 9, South Sudan celebrated its third anniversary as a country. However, that celebration was marred by predictions that the country may soon be facing famine-like conditions if its food crisis continues to worsen in the coming months.

As of now, 1.2 million South Sudanese receive emergency humanitarian assistance, but another 2 million who need aid are unable to receive it, as roads have become inaccessible due to armed conflict. That conflict began in December 2013 when government and rebel forces began to clash. To date, more than 1 million people have been forced to leave their homes as a result of the fighting. It is estimated that over 300,000 of those refugees have fled to neighboring Ethiopia and Uganda, considerably decreasing the host countries’ resources and planting the seeds for future tensions.

Further exacerbating the food crisis is the fact that a large number of displaced farmers have been unable to harvest crops due to the fighting. Their absence, coupled with dwindling funding for humanitarian groups in South Sudan, has created a dire need for intervention.

On July 5, the International Red Cross conducted its first air drops of supplies since 1998 in Afghanistan. The air drops occurred in Leer where 40 tons of seeds and emergency food supplies were provided — enough to supply 1,100 families. However, this assistance can only be viewed as a temporary fix to a long gestating problem. It is estimated that there are 3.7 million people in South Sudan at risk for acute food insecurity as the threat of famine in South Sudan lingers.

The delicate nature of the country’s economy has hindered South Sudan’s ability to help itself. An oil exportation dispute with Sudan in 2012 led to South Sudan ceasing its oil production for an extended period, essentially toppling its opportunity to reach the expectations of economic improvement the international community sought. Now, with the civil war raging on, oil production has again been interrupted in parts of the country as its currency continues to be devalued and inflation remains on the rise.

South Sudan is in dire need of aid. The Red Cross’s support has been helpful, but only temporary. The instability of the country has repeatedly thwarted its efforts to develop. As the country’s food supplies continue to dwindle, only time will tell how this crisis will be resolved.

– Taylor Dow

Sources: United Nations Development Programme, BBC News, The Guardian, NBC News
Photo: FAO

, , , , , ,

Hunger in Pakistan: Famine or Inadequate Policy?

hunger_in_pakistan

Hunger in Pakistan has killed many people and affected the lives of many more, especially children. After a drought hit the Tharparkar district of Pakistan’s southern Sindh Province earlier this year, at least 132 young children died, many as a result of malnutrition.

The problem of hunger in Pakistan is not limited to Sindh Province, however. While Sindh certainly has the highest rates of malnutrition and least access to food, Pakistan’s National Nutrition Survey reported that 58 percent of all Pakistani households were food-insecure.

Malnutrition is also widespread; the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey found that 24 percent of Pakistani children under 5 exhibited “severely stunted growth.”

Why is hunger such a prevalent issue in Pakistan? Some of it has to do with past inflation of wheat prices in the late 2000s, as it was more difficult for people to afford domestic grain. Infrastructural difficulty, such as providing electricity to flour mills, also poses a problem.

Still, the largest factor causing food insecurity in Pakistan is the nation’s own government and its policies that hinder food production and distribution.

Take, for example, the deaths from the drought: the government did not work to distribute food until after the crisis. As the Pakistan Dalit Solidarity Network reports, “the government didn’t act until [it received] reports of children dying” last December, even though animals had been dying since October and rainfall was decreasing. Moreover, government-run hospitals and clinics in the region have been constantly understaffed, making it difficult to get medical care to those who needed it.

Other government policies affect all of Pakistan, not just Sindh. Under the Corporate Farming Ordinance, the Pakistani government leases large tracts of land to foreign investors looking to stockpile crops for their own countries. This takes valuable land away from local farmers while keeping the food away from Pakistani citizens that need it.

The government of Pakistan seems to prioritize profits over its people. During the inflation of wheat prices in 2008, the government increased its wheat exports, depriving many hungry people of food. Even today, much of the wheat that large corporate mills produce leaves the country.

In reality, Pakistan should be capable of providing its citizens with enough food to survive, and there should not be as much food insecurity as there is now. Arif Jabbar Khan, Oxfam’s Pakistan director, affirmed that “missing public policy action and persistent economic inequalities are the main causes of malnutrition,” not droughts or famine.

How can hunger and malnutrition be reduced in Pakistan? Foreign aid providers may be able to earmark funds for the redistribution of grain to poorer areas, and this aid could be cut if the government does not comply.

Nevertheless, political pressure to change food distribution policy must come from within Pakistan itself. The citizens of Pakistan must demand change and hold elected officials responsible for their actions in the polls if the system is to be fixed.

 — Ted Rappleye

Sources: The Guardian, South Asia Masala, Triple Bottom-Line
Photo: Tribune

, , ,

Impending Famine in South Sudan

Famine_In_Sudan
The famine in South Sudan has reached a scale similar to that in Syria. Close to one third of the population of South Sudan is already at severe risk of starvation and, unless something is done soon, the struggle will only get worse. Some are calling it a race against time.

Since the violence erupted this past December, around 255,000 people have fled to neighboring countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, and more than 800,000 people have been displaced inside the country. Some people have even fled north to South Sudan’s recently separated Sudan counterpart. The United Nations coordinator for humanitarian aid in South Sudan, Toby Lanzer, has appealed for the essentials such as food and water, as well as farming tools and seeds. If the South Sudanese are unable to plant their crops by the time rain comes in May, they will face the most disastrous famine in Africa since the 1980s.

According to Lanzer, aid donations have been catastrophically faltering. A United Nations appeal for $1.3 billion was not fully funded and only a quarter of the requested money went though, in an assertion that only $232 million was necessary for the bare minimum of humanitarian aid to the country. But the bare minimum is not enough, as tragic 7 million people in South Sudan are at risk of hunger. People are in such dire need of food and water that one family started boiling poisonous roots for an entire week in order to have something to eat. Many travel for days with no water whatsoever.

Violence in the country has only made matters worse. When weapons were reported to have been found in a UN convoy in March, the government and army in South Sudan understandably felt obligated to increase surveillance and security measures on UN vehicles delivering aid. The issue strained relations between the international agency and South Sudan, subsequently making aid delivery increasingly difficult.

The horrifying conditions in which people are currently living, however, can be changed. Famine implies that people are dying and, while many argue that South Sudan has not yet reached that point, the risk is very real. With enough funding reaching the people of South Sudan in a timely enough fashion, an even worse future can be avoided.

– Jaclyn Stutz

Sources: USA Today, Al Jazeera, The New York Times
Photo: UPI

, ,

Reported Famine in Southeastern Pakistan

Famine-in-Southeastern-Pakistan
Experts and residents residing in the southeastern Pakistan desert told Al Jazeera a “drought-induced famine” is affecting the lives of impoverished individuals in the region.

Ever since the famine story broke out, the Pakistani government has focused its attention in the region. According to Al Jazeera, the National Disaster Management Authority claims, “Tharparkar has seen the delivery of 3,582.3 tonnes of wheat (worth approximately $2.5m), 201 tonnes of rice, and 1,483.7 tonnes of emergency food packs and other food aid”.

But despite the government’s involvement in helping the famine-stricken region, the Pakistan Meteorological Department believes that there is no drought in Tharparkar in the first place. The department instead classifies it as a “socioeconomic disaster” despite the region being drier than usual this year.

On the other hand, the NGOs in Pakistan believe that the famine that killed over 100 children in Pakistan could have been avoided had the government decided to act sooner. According to the Guardian, Pakistani activists blame the government for failing to provide the region with healthcare and better infrastructure.

A local newspaper also told a similar story about the famine in southeastern Pakistan.

“The provincial government usually declares a state of drought in Thar by September or October when there is low rainfall during and after the monsoon season,” said the Express Tribune, a Pakistani newspaper.

Due to the low amount of rainfall last year in September, the government apparently pushed forward the declaration “and the provision of relief was thus delayed.”

Sources also told the newspaper that the local administration and health officials informed the chief minister that the conditions in the region were “normal during drought”.

According to local organizations that work with some of the poorest people in Pakistan, members of Dalit population are the ones mainly affected by the drought.

“Known in Pakistan as the scheduled class, Dalits suffer heavy discrimination under the caste system common across south Asia.”

The founder of Baanhn Beli, an NGO operating in Tharparkar since 1985, believes that representatives who were elected to represent the region should be held responsible for failing to properly report to the chief minister. He also believes that if the state invested in Tharparkar, most of the deaths caused by the famine would have not occurred.

It is clear that the officials are refusing to take full responsibility for the crisis in southeastern Pakistan. The international community, along with local humanitarian groups, is criticizing the state for failing to stop a preventable famine. They believe that the government should keep its promise and compensate the families of the victims for improperly handling the situation.

– Juan Campos

Sources: Al Jazeera, The Tribune, The Guardian
Photo: India Times

The Difference Between a Famine and a Drought?

drought_famine_poverty
Famine and drought are often considered one and the same. It is easy to think that where there is drought, there is certainly famine or that where there is famine, there must be drought. The truth of the matter is that the difference between a famine and a drought is huge. Famines and droughts are caused by various conditions and factors that sometimes have nothing to do with the other.

Drought may be defined in three ways. That is to say, there are three kinds of drought. Meteorological drought is a reduction in rainfall below a certain level that is scientifically considered to be a drought. This kind of drought may occur in the course of a season, month, or even day. If it rains less than a specific amount, over the specified amount of time, you have meteorological drought.

Hydrological drought may be caused by meteorological drought, but it need not necessarily be so. This kind of drought occurs when a body of water, such as a stream or lake, falls below a certain amount. For example, in a dry year, meteorological drought may lead to hydrological drought in a stream, when the stream runs much lower than it usually does. Likewise, hydrological drought may exist when the source of a stream is blocked or severed.

Agricultural drought occurs when there is a significant reduction in crop yield, such that it may fall to a certain level considered to be a drought. This kind of drought may be caused by meteorological and/or hydrological drought, but may just as easily stem from insufficient access to fertilizer or some other necessary ingredient to produce yield.

Famine, on the other hand, is caused by a decline in availability of and/or access to food often caused by one of the three kinds of drought. Where there is insufficient water to produce a staple crop, for example, or where there is insufficient fertilizer to produce the standard yield for a crop, drought may lead to and certainly cause famine. Yet, it is not necessarily the drought that causes such a famine.

For famine to occur, there must be insufficient availability of or access to food. Though there may be some kind of drought one year, adequate food management of the available crops may effectively prevent famine. This point highlights the importance of access to food. On that note, inadequate management of a drought may lead to famine because families with less purchasing power, say, are unable to gain access to the available foodstuffs.

Though famine often does follow drought, it is not necessarily a cause and effect relationship. Rather the difference between famine and drought lies in the complexity of this relationship and the conditions and factors that surround local circumstances, as well as government and community responses to drought. The difference between famine and drought is therefore dependent on what causes the drought and how communities handle their food supplies.

– Herman Watson

Sources: Preserve Articles, The Borgen Project, World Vision, Edward Carr
Photo: Business Insider

,

The Microfinance Revolution

micro_opt
Microcredit, microfinance, micro-insurance… There is a microfinance revolution occurring around the world, and it is changing the perceptions of what can be done for those living in poverty.

Empowerment is an important focus of aid and development work. A family that, instead of being given rice and feed for a season, is educated and provided with tools to grow rice and feed themselves, can become self-sustaining. However, providing this kind of empowerment assistance can be difficult. How can organizations provide loans or credit to people who do not have bank accounts? How can they insure farmers when the value of their crops does not reach the minimum premiums? How can they make health insurance available to families living in poverty?

There is a market available for all of these services, but it is taking a revolutionary approach to provide it. Insurance has typically been the domain of the middle and upper classes. Insurance providers have always targeted those with significant investments to protect, as that is where the money lies. But for small-scale farmers, with fewer assets, the dependence on the success of their investments is greater than that of the wealthy. It is these people at the bottom of the economic scale who need insurance the most, as they are the ones without a safety net.

Recognizing this, the international foundation Syngenta has begun offering an insurance program for small farmers. The project originated in Kenya, and offers insurance for farms as small as half an acre, charging them a rate of $5.25 a season. The project is run remotely, with local supply stores acting as purchasing points for insurance and weather stations used to calculate damages due to climate effects, resulting in minimal overhead costs. Operating in Kenya and Rwanda, the scheme has already sold more than 64,000 insurance policies, largely to farmers who have never before had the option of buying insurance.

Similar programs are being developed around the world, with some focusing on micro-credit while others provide insurance at a fraction of the cost of traditional insurers. Furthermore, as the field develops, larger insurance companies are also embracing the model. In 2005, micro-insurance was offered by only 15% of the largest insurance companies. Today, two thirds of those companies are offering with micro-insurance. Some estimates place the potential market of micro-insurance to be between 2 and 3 billion potential policies.

Small-scale farmers with insurance are better able to provide for their families, even in the event of crop failure. This minimizes the potential for famine and also decreases the need for foreign assistance to provide for people in the event of crop failure.

– David M Wilson 

Sources: The New York Times, Syngenta
Photo: Dowser

Famine for Political Ends

Famine for Political EndsColm Tóibín and Diarmaid Ferriter are Irish writers and historians. The first part of their 2004 book The Irish Famine written by Tóibín, is an essay outlining the historiography of the Great Famine, which plagued Ireland for seven years between 1845 and 1852. According to Tóibín, the famine is a historical event that has been manipulated by Irish and American historians for political ends from the late 19th century to the present. Tóibín speaks for both himself and Ferriter when he states: “Our own prejudices, mine and Diarmaid Ferriter’s, should be very clear: we both recognize that no narrative now seems capable of combining the sheer scale of the tragedy in all its emotion and catastrophe, the complex society which surrounded it and the high politics which governed it.”

Tóibín begins his history of historical writing on the famine by stating “two things happened in its (the famine’s) aftermath. One, people blamed the English and the Ascendancy. Two, there began a great silence about the class division in Catholic Ireland.” What Tóibín describes is a hurting Ireland that could not afford to face the reality of the massive pain she had suffered. In the wake of famine, Ireland required a “nationalist fervor” to rise from the ashes. In 1854, the historian John Mitchel called the famine a “genocide”, insinuating that the British deliberately exterminated those who died in the tragedy. This extreme sentiment became milder in the 20th century but still survived in a veiled form. In the 1990s, Governor George Pataki of New York expressed the view that Great Britain purposely refrained from assisting the Irish during the famine. Views such as this serve politicians well because they incite feelings of nationalism in prospective voters.

The authors’ understanding of famine and its capacity as a political tool is outstanding. Over the last half-century or so, one can see a similar phenomenon taking place in Ethiopia, where political oppositions capitalize on government inefficiency in the face of famine. In 1973, the communist junta under rebel leader Mengistu Haile Mariam accused the reigning monarch of failing to deal with the problem, resulting in the overthrow of the government. After a war with Eritrea in the later 1990s, Ethiopia is once again reeling from economic impoverishment augmented by famine.

When there is famine, a political platform is raised that is conducive to a dangerous breed of nationalism. As the Irish famine illustrates, extreme situations of hunger cause people to question their government. This can be seen in the historiography of the Irish famine, which indicates a hatred toward the British monarchy that was so potent it survived into the late 20th century. These are only a few examples of how the tragedy of famine can be used as a political tool.

– Josh Forgét

Sources: The Irish Famine, BBC
Photo: Flickr

History of Poverty: The Ukrainian Famine

Ukraine, “The Bread Basket of Europe,” a 233,000 square mile expanse of fertile steppe stretching from Poland and Romania in the West to Russia in the East.  Much like in Turkey, her southern neighbor across the Black Sea, Ukrainian culture combines elements of the Asiatic and the European into a Eurasian entity that is undoubtedly one of the most distinct in the world.  Even during the tyrannical rule of the Soviet Union, Ukraine retained the unique agricultural identity that defined it, consistently expressing an anti-regime, nationalistic fervor while making up for over a quarter of the USSR’s grain production.

Ukraine’s significance as the agricultural gold mine of Eastern Europe was the cornerstone of it’s economy for centuries, making it the most valuable territory to the former Soviet Union.  The strategic importance of Ukraine as a center of agricultural output is most notably evidenced by the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33, also known as the Holodomor (Голодомор). This great tragedy was deliberately created by Joseph Stalin to quell a strain of Ukrainian nationalism that had started to become active in the late 1920‘s.  The main thrust behind the designed famine, however, was Stalin’s desire to accelerate the industrialization of the Soviet empire by utilizing Ukraine’s enormous agrarian resources.

The famine was a result of the forced collectivization of Ukrainian farms by the government in which virtually all of the food produced on the collectives was seized by Soviet authorities and sold on the international market to raise the national income, leaving the Ukrainian locals with nothing to eat.  This collectivization was against the will of the Ukrainian “kulak” class of wealthy farmers who opposed Soviet rule and ran private farms for personal profit.  In devising this artificial famine, Stalin decimated the population of Ukraine and, through murder and banishment, eliminated the Kulak class, along with any rebellious sentiment represented by the Kulaks.

What Stalin did to the Ukrainians has been described by many historians as mass genocide.  Between 1932 and 1933, over seven million Ukrainians died of starvation.  Ukrainian famine survivor Miron Dolot, who was a child in Ukraine during the forced collectivization, recalls grisly scenes in which desperate villagers resorted to cannibalism and the consumption of rats to stay alive.   Stalin had reduced the Ukrainians to a condition of destitution that was beyond comprehension.  To the heartless dictator,  fast industrialization was the end goal, and any amount of life that stood in his way was expendable.

The Holodomor is a stain on the history of the former Soviet Union, and was only recently recognized by the Russian government.  To this day, the Ukrainian Famine is one of the only instances in history in which a dictator calculatedly reduced a contingent of his people to starvation and abject poverty.

– Josh Forgét

Sources: Execution by Hunger, Reflections on a Ravaged Century, CIA World Factbook
Photo: United Human Rights

5 Ways to End Famine

famine_africa_global_poverty_international_aid_borgen_project_opt
According to the UN, famine occurs when there is “a severe lack of food access for a large population” that causes more than 30 percent of the population to suffer from malnutrition and two people per 10,000 people to die each day. Though many organizations attempt to solve famine crises with emergency resources alone, these resources address the immediate causes of famine instead of the underlying factors that prolong and exacerbate it. Listed below are five ways to end famine that go beyond emergency relief to offer long-term solutions.

1. Promote democracy.

Harvard economist Amartya Sen remarked that “No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy.” While no country is immune to natural catastrophes that hinder agriculture, countries with stable democracies can better combat the conditions that lead to famine. People can promote democratization by stressing the importance of foreign aid and development assistance to legislators. Democracy may not fill stomachs, but it does help to manage the resources needed to do so.

2. Send funds instead of food.

Amartya Sen also pointed out that a “shortage of purchasing power” rather than a shortage of food itself causes famines. Though emergency food and water supplies can sustain populations during severe famines, such resources do not prevent future famines. By sending funds instead of food, donor countries can avoid procedural delays and ensure that starving people can afford the food they need to survive.

3. Connect farmers to markets.

Organizations such as the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) provide smallholder farmers with the opportunity to sell their crops to reliable buyers, providing them with steady capital. The WFP also teaches farmers sustainable practices that increase the value of their crops and boost national food security over time. Connecting farmers to markets directly reduces poverty and gives farmers the income necessary to purchase their own food.

4. Empower women.

While women produce roughly half of the world’s food supply, they are often the first to go hungry in a household. Educating women lowers rates of unplanned pregnancy significantly, decreasing the average number of children a woman must feed and reducing poverty.

5. Spread awareness.

The aforementioned strategies can solve the structural problems that lead to famine, but resources are needed to implement these strategies. Ordinary people can help to end famine simply by spreading awareness and contacting their friends, families, and legislators. Such awareness can put pressure on legislators to implement programs that combat famine.

– Katie Bandera

Sources: Forbes, World Food Program, End Famine
Photo: BWG