FEATURE - In a world of plenty, how do we fight hunger?
Date: 15-Aug-02
Country: UK
Author: Sharman Esarey
At least 13 million people in southern Africa risk starvation, with millions more hungry in Afghanistan, North Korea, the West Bank and Gaza Strip even as subsidised farmers in the northern hemisphere produce mountains of surplus food.
The United Nations wants to cut the number of the chronically under-nourished earning less than $1 a day to some 400 million from 815 million, but it is falling behind, with declines of just six million a year and not the 22 million needed.
Complicating the huge task for the world leaders at the U.N.'s Johannesburg "Earth Summit" is a bitter first-world debate on genetically modified (GM) crops which some say are a solution to world hunger, some regard as a threat, and others see as a distraction.
Genetically modified crops are spliced with genes from other animals or plants to make them more resistant to drought, pests or salinity - scourges that can ruin crops and livelihoods.
Some argue that genetically modified foods could help pick up the battle against hunger as the productivity gains from years of the green revolution tail off.
"It will not solve world poverty, but if it solves five percent of world poverty that will still be a wonderful thing and if it isn't allowed to do anything then it will be a sad thing," said Dr Johnjoe McFadden, professor of molecular genetics at the University of Surrey in southern England.
But sceptics say corporate biotechnology's vows that it could feed the world were both overblown and misplaced.
First, products for the developing world do not yet exist. Nor is the sheer amount of food an issue - we still live in a world of plenty.
"It's (GM) not a central issue in the debate...It doesn't seem to offer much to the one billion hungry people," said Dr Margaret Mellon, director of the food and environment programme at the non-profit environmental group Union of Concerned Scientists.
So far, there are just two main products - both designed to cut costs for first-world farmers.
"Framing hunger as primarily a technology problem invites technological solutions. That doesn't move the ball very far when dealing with a social and economic and political problem - and one of enormous complexity," Mellon said.
STARVATION IN A WORLD OF PLENTY
For some, more food, GM or otherwise, is not the answer - we have starvation amid abundance.
Jacques Diouf, the chief of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), has said that existing know-how, excluding gene technology, was sufficient to generate enough food to meet the needs of developing countries today.
"It does not mean it will be enough in the future... with the growth of the world population, we'll be moving from the present six billion and we're expected to reach eight billion by 2020. Hence the need to look at better crop varieties," he said.
According to the United Nation's World Food Programme southern Africa needs a minimum of 1.2 million tonnes of emergency food aid and an extra 2.8 million tonnes of commercial supplies over the next year.
The European Union alone has some five million tonnes of subsidised grains in its warehouses and is so desperate to get rid of its rye that it is considering burning it as fuel.
The subsidies which much of the developed world pays its farmers help build the unwanted food stockpiles, while tariffs bar entry to what otherwise would be lucrative developing world exports.
"(Developing world agriculture) could use all the things that European agriculture has - agricultural extension agents, agricultural universities, new roads to get from the farm to the market, new storage technologies, new markets, new uses for the products they grow, access to our markets and fair prices," said Mellon.
"None of that has the miraculous easy ring of just introducing a new crop."
The EU spends half its 95 billion euro (dollar) budget on agriculture, subsidising more than a third of farmers' incomes. Japan and Switzerland have far highe