Unless we choose to try,we are certain to fail

My greatest lesson at the platform  has been on the promise of change, the power of dreams and optimism. We didn't always agree on things and on how to go about doing things but some how,some how we managed to remain true to our vision, punching hunger and freeing the hungry Billion.

We have been here for three months and this week we have our mega event, which will be a Press Release titled: Ensure food Security: Stop Bio-fuel Investment without a policy, which you are all invited, will try see how we can have it online to involve those who have been following us from without Tanzania.

So did we achieve anything? I think we did...we earnestly believed we could do something about hunger and we went out to do something about it, might have been too little to create change but it is enough that we tried.

Hunger is a global problem though causes are myriad, one thing comes out clearly we have a faulty food system. Food is an essential commodity which the Agri Business world has chosen to commercialize and treat as a luxurious commodity which only a few can afford, for petes sake their is so much food in the world and its mind boggling to imagine human beings die of hunger when they live amongst fellow human beings, and at a time when the world can produce more than it can consume.

In his book," The grapes of Wrath": John Steinbeck writes I don't aim to starve to death before i kill the man who is starving me to death. We are not asking you to shot the government we are asking you to join us in telling the government that we won't allow them to starve us by allowing biofuel investments without policies that ensures we and our children are food secure. unless we all try this we are certain to fail and worse starve.

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!     





   

The Root causes of hunger

Raj Patel begins his book "Stuffed and Starved" by highlighting a big contradiction that we are producing more food than ever,and that the number of hungry people which stand at about 800 million is outnumbered by the number of obese people. Now that i s one huge contradiction which points to a cosmos that has gone wrong and a breakdown of the  food system.

This breakdown in the system calls for us to ask questions and delve deeper to find the root cause of the problem. We may probably may not be going to bed hungry but we are unable to buy quality food or are paying to much for the for it.

For the next couple of weeks and in the course of our camapign we shall be looking at the multi dimensional causes of hunger and its various manifestations and we invite you to join us.  The key areas of focus will be the effect of structral adjustment program by the Bretton wood institution on agriculture and Biofuels in realations to food security!

PS* The week that was , was a fruitful for the Global changers at the platform in Tanzania and we had a chance to hear from the team at the Global platform in Nepal, and interact with Students from from a University in Dar es saalam ...there is always a sense of comfort in number and not forgetting the power in it.