The Role of policies in tackling hunger

The big fat contradiction of having close to a billion people being hungry and an equal number being overweight is an irrefutable indicator that the causes of hunger are rarely natural causes but policies related. Policies touching on agricultural production play a very big role in escalating or addressing the problem of hunger.

I will give a classical example of the Structural Adjustment Program(SAPS)s imposed on developing countries in the 1980s spilling into 1990s,by the world bank and IMF, among the stipulation of this programs was to have governments in this country cut down on state expenditure and privatizations of parastatols  .agriculture suffered  most from this proviso-before then the government used to subsidize the cost of fertilizers, seeds and played a big role in helping the farmers market the products through the use of marketing boards- this created a genuine boast and Africa did not only feed its population but  exported food to the rest of the world. 

Flowing from the SAPS, farmers were now producing at a higher cost and to add salts to the injury they had no one to help with the marketing instead they had to compete with private investors and influx of cheap imported foods, this meant agriculture was no longer profitable especially for the same scale farmers. The private investors did not quite fill the gap created when the government stopped subsidizing and investing in agriculture. the result of this were catastrophic-lower food production and over reliance on imported which is susceptible to global market variation. This problem caused by the SAPs has subsisted to the 21st Century and is one of the classical causes of hunger stories in Africa and most developing countries. It destroyed Africa´`s agriculture. Africa is not only unable to feed itself but now a net food importer.

Policies can also positively tackle hunger in a positive way. The 2006 Maputo Plan of Action required that African government allocate 10% of their national budget to Agriculture. Most are yet to live upto this but there are success stories of which Tanzania is one of them. It is not yet a 10% increase but there has been an increase to about 7% and this could may able explain the ``kilimo kwanza Intiative``.

Another example of how policies contribute to hunger is the recent attempt of the US and the EU to increase their use of Bio fuels, This attempt has increased demand for bio fuels and explains why investors are buying land en masses to plant crops used for biofuels production but who would blame them there are incentives in place that makes farming of those profitable.   Entry of biofuels in the market would entail a competition of with food crops which threaten the food security which is already in jeopardy .    By advocating for policies and laws governing the production of bio fuels we are simply asking that measures be put in place to ensure every arable agriculture is safeguarded for food crop farming and that biofuel farming does not  take up all the valuable resources for farming of food. if this is left for the market forces then the prices of food crops would be very high and more people would not be in a position to afford sufficient food!