The Morality of the Stomach -
By BINOY KAMPMARK /
"I don=92t want to alarm anybody, but maybe it=92s time for Americans to
start stockpiling food. No this is not a drill."
--Brett Arends
There is a time for food, and a time for ethical appraisals. This was
the case even before Bertolt Brecht gave life to that expression in
Die Driegroschen Oper. The time for a reasoned, coherent
understanding for the growing food crisis is not just overdue, but
seemingly past. Robert Zoellick of the World Bank, an organization
often dedicated to flouting, rather than achieving its claimed goal of
poverty reduction, stated the problem in Davos in January this year.
=91Hunger and malnutrition are the forgotten Millennium Development
Goal.=92
Global food prices have gone through the roof, terrifying the 3
billion or so people who live off less than $2 a day. This should
terrify everybody else. In November, the UN Food and Agricultural
Organization re****ted that food prices had suffered a 18 percent
inflation in China, 13 percent in Indonesia and Pakistan, and 10
percent or more in Latin America, Russia and India. The devil in the
detail is even more distressing: a doubling in the price of wheat, a
twenty percent increase in the price of rice, an increase by half in
maize prices.
Finger pointing is not always instructive. In this case, it may be.
The US and various European countries are moving food crops into the
bio-fuel business, itself an environmentally unsound business. This,
in addition to encouraging developing countries to not merely
=91liberalize=92 their agricultural sectors, but specialize in ex****ting
specific cash crops (cotton, cocoa), has done wonders to precipitate
the shortages. Consumption in developing economies, added to the
vicissitudes of climate change, water availability, and rising
fertilizer costs, are others.
Political stability is being undermined. Food shortages are proving
endemic. Food riots are becoming common. Riots have been sparked in
Cameroon, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Uzbekistan and Yemen. There have been
riots over spiraling grain prices in Mauritania and Senegal. In Mexico
City, mass protests were sparked by a price hike in tortillas. In
Haiti, biscuits are being made from a mud compound. The Somali
capital Mogadishu bore witness to the deaths of five people.
Governments, indifferent and incautious to the demands of a hungry
public, have already fallen victim to the food crisis. Prime Minister
Jacques Edouard Alexis was dismissed by a senate vote in Haiti after
skirmishes between UN forces and protesters. The UN commander Major
General Carlos Alberto Dos Santos Cruz urged calm amidst the carnage.
=91It is im****tant for the people to have a peaceful life in Haiti,=92 he
claimed in April 2008. The message then: be peaceful on an empty
stomach.
The Bush administration, so often in arrears on the relief front, has
earmarked some 770 million dollars or so in funds dealing with the
problem. There is one glaring hitch: the money would only start
flowing in 2009. =91There is definitely a lag time when it comes to
assistance,=92 states the senior manager of the Foreign Aid Reform
Project at the Brookings Institute, Noam Unger.
More troubling is the critique offered of the crisis by officials
within the administration. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
at the Peace Corps conference held at the end of April, targeted
various culprits. The audience barely stirred at some of the
explanations: distribution, oil prices, and the =91alternate fuels
effort=92. They duly woke up when Rice moved on to targeting the ex****t
strategies of various countries =96 India and China foremost amongst
them. =91We obviously have to look at places where production seems to
be declining and declining to the point that people are actually
putting ex****t caps on the amount of food.=92
The problem, for Rice, is rising food consumption. Improved diets
within China and India are bothering free market fundamentalists who
insist that ex****t caps stifle trade. According to this rationale,
Indians are far better off buying the rice from the global market than
eating their own in times of crisis. How silly of them to ensure a
domestic supply first before ****pping off the rest for the global
market. Rice is crying foul at such protectionist deviancy, will
=91have a look at it=92 and take the matter to the World Trade
Organization.
Members of the American public are not so sure. A narrative of
catastrophe is gradually building =96 stockpile or perish. The Wall
Street Journal (April 25) was one of the first to issue the clarion
call: =91Start Hoarding Food Americans!=92 The paper had various
suggestions. Stock up on some products =96 dried pasta, rice, cereals,
canned products. Buy them all in bulk to save. Sit the children down
give them a good talking to =96 no, not about the birds and the bees,
but about =91how our generation and the two behind it, screwed their
world into a death spiral through greed and predatory capitalism.=92
Solutions suggested by such economists as Jeffrey Sachs, somewhat
patchy yet desperately needed, are forthcoming: allow easier access
for sub-Saharan African farmers to fertilizers; reduce the amount of
crops going into bio-fuel development; shore-up climate change
policies.
Sachs, in his work Common Wealth, also advocates the abolition of
states in the face of a crowded planet. But it was state regimes
besotted by neoliberal economics that brought us here. They can take
us back and remedy the damage. Aboli****ng them would simply absolve
their regimes.
In the meantime, the US and some countries in the West may have to
brace themselves for a starving army guided by the morality of the
stomach. The food riots are coming.
-----------------------------------------------------
Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College,
University of Cambridge. He can be reached at: bkampmark@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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