Global Hunger and Children

Technocrat

Global Hunger and Children

zogger

Thu Nov 27 20:27:00 -0800 2008

Health+and+Medicine.

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A simple basic fact is that children need adequate and steady nutrition from in the womb until they are adults if they are to avoid a lot of health related issues. Malnutrition in small children is related to mental retardation and physical impairment and susceptibility to disease, among others. The current international model is emergency-reactive, where there is an acute famine, some food aid might (or might not) be provided by the outside world. This is admirable in a way, it is something, but it has never addressed long term solutions, nor is the aid itself always the best possible that could be provided. Researchers aren't even yet sure what is the best and most cost effective sort of child "formula" of food aid, as in what constitutes something that is really adequate between something that is just lowest price possible "biological matter that might alleviate an acute sense of hunger". A recent conference highlighted these problems because of lack of consensus, there is no widespread agreement on hardly any issue related to widespread hunger, other than current efforts aren't really working, there is a huge funding gap even with these minimum efforts, and short,medium and long term solutions are needed immediately. In short, decades of global "help" consists of slapping bandaids on major bleeders, and something else is needed, and soon.

The meeting did not discuss or examine long-term solutions to food insecurity. Such solutions would include an array of policies to stimulate local agricultural and economic development (particularly the economic and social empowerment of women, the primary caregivers in most households) so that communities become food-secure in a sustainable and independent way. Instead, the meeting explored how the international community can urgently deliver more food aid, of better quality, to prevent and treat malnutrition in the highest-burden areas. Such an emergency measure is clearly needed to bring down death rates as quickly as possible-but it is not a sufficient long-term approach to the global malnutrition crisis. ed.z.: they sort of hit on the solution there, but it causes immediate negative reaction in the richer nations because of economics. The past few decades globalist/speculator/export driven/IMF/wallstreet approach to food and hunger combined with charity aid doesn't work all that well to alleviate the severest cases in the hardest hit areas. It has helped surely, anything at all provided helps, but it is still lacking. What little "profit" there is in these areas is quickly vacuumed away from the people who need it the most, leaving them rather..lacking. Their kids die. They suffer. I will not claim that is the only reason, of course there are a variety of other factors that come to play, overly large families in areas that have low agricultural potential, lack of anything in the way of "money" so they can improve the situation, etc. all of that and more, it is rather involved, but a big problem has been this "cash crop" model before adequate food for the people is available. It is an upside down priority model that is unsustainable if hunger is to be addressed first. If the people are starving, a million acres of export cotton isn't going to feed them right now, or tomorrow or the next day, when the profits remain mostly overseas and in the mansions and armies of the local big wheels.

It might be (debatable) "good enough" in richer areas to follow that model, it is by far the most prevalent and most popular now (that might be changing soon..), but not in the poorest. On the other hand, and it has been more than proven, the Malawi nationalist/protectionist** model for simple, basic and adequate levels of food works quite well. And once the people are fed well enough, they have the energy and time to go on to become productive members of the global trading scene..but not before that point. The empirical data is right there, they tried it both ways back and forth, and "feed your people first and make it the top priority" "protectionism" trumped all the other ways of addressing food security. Feeding millionaires profits first doesn't work. Feeding the local juntas Mercedes and tank budget first doesn't work (see north korea and zimbabwe for examples there). Feeding the payback for some huge zillion dollar "loan" from the IMF first doesn't work, if they are too poor to buy food, they are going to soon be even less able to pay back the loan with interest and still..buy food. Speculator driven huge price swings in commodities don't work, look at the corn tortilla crisis that hit Mexico early this year while mountains of corn sat unsold in the US. It was too expensive, no one wanted it at that price, over a billion bushels of corn from last season was still sitting there, despite all the "demand", the prices were just too high, because they were locked down in contracts. That didn't help the folks who went without though, not in any timely fashion. You can't warehouse hunger or store it on a hard drive on some server some place.

Emergency aid is just that, for emergencies, but something else is needed so these emergencies don't show up all the time. Of course like they mention in the citations in the article, it all gets mixed with politics and education and so on, plus global weather and climate vagaries, but I think there's still a lot more that could be done by providing longer term agricultural production aid than just dumping sacks of gruel out in the village square someplace once in awhile, and where most of that gets siphoned off for the local warlords troops.

** a little more "ed". I know there will be an immediate knee jerk reaction to me using that term, and here is my counter. Protectionism exists in all forms of the economy today, especially at the top levels, just it is only selectively applied in discussions, which to me is rather ..cowardly and disingenuous. Right now we are *heavy* into protectionism -one big example anyway, there are others I could mention- for the livelihoods of a very small percentage of the global population who are by far and away the very loudest in support of "free trade" and would denounce "protectionism" in the most strident of voice. They'll call it anything but protectionism, but that is exactly what it is in essence and practice, although it is not strictly limited to border-dotted lines on a map definition like they want it to be when railing against it for other purposes. If they are going to use the word and denounce the practice, they need to look into the mirror first is all I have to say. This article is talking about emergency aid for people in short term starve to freaking death situations, and then how to maybe sort of think about how to address the larger issues there, but the big headlines today are for "emergency aid" protectionism right now, x-thousands of times greater, for people who are in the position of choosing between the medallions or the prawns for their three or four figure lunches, depending on the wine served. They *claim* it is for the benefit of the many, but that is only because they have the "Samson option" available to them of deliberately causing a very large systemic crash if their demands are not met. We can quibble over exact word definitions all day long, but if it walks like a duck....

Global Hunger and Children

gstovall

Fri Nov 28 09:20:40 -0800 2008
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It's interesting to look at body size of the people here. This area of the US is historically quite impoverished, and many adults in the 50+ age range are quite small, barely 5 ft. As one looks at younger and younger people, quite a few taller people begin showing up, until at school age, there are a substantial number of people in the 6 foot + tall range. However, even among the children, the height is clearly influenced by economic conditions, with the poorest children also being the shortest.

My grandparents were not even 5ft tall. My paternal aunts and uncles are all short, but my father, the last of 8 children, achieved 6'1", probably due to improved nutrition which kicked in when he was an older child. My children all have stood head and shoulders above their classmates here, until the better fed caught up with them.

about Malawi

Thomas Lord

Fri Nov 28 10:09:32 -0800 2008
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Zogger, what's your take on the famine in Malawi in 2001/2002?

Malawi has had an on-again / off-again fertilizer subsidy and other "starter kit" aid for local farmers. An early 2001 maize crop was a bumper crop and so Malawi bought, via ADMARC, something like 100,000 unneeded metric tons of maize off of domestic markets to stick in the countries strategic reserves apparently just to support domestic prices. Meanwhile, the government missed the early signs that flooding and drought would lead to a shortfall at the next harvest and also over-estimated the countries agricultural diversity.

The IMF and World Bank suggested, quite correctly, that the resulting distortion of domestic prices was (a) wracking up federal debt; (b) distorting price signals in domestic markets in ways that would encourage an overplanting of maize. The suggested a simple fix: (1) sell down the strategic reserves to levels needed to respond to emergencies -- selling on the export markets so as not to further mess up domestic price signals; (2) devise a rule for setting the size of the strategic reserves (a rule based on emergency needs, not price support goals) and only further sell from the reserves (domestically) for the purpose of cycling them -- buying up equal amounts domestically at the same time; (3) build up cash reserves for emergency purchases from import markets.

Sure enough, flood and drought made for a lousy maize harvest.

Malawi did not take the IMF / World Bank suggestion but instead sold off nearly all of the reserves, quickly, much of it on domestic markets, and apparently much of it sold below market cost in corrupt deals to domestic stockpilers who were hording to profit off of the famine.

When the failed intelligence gathering of Malawi's government became apparent, when people were starving to death in remote regions, the government was unable to respond other than by turning to donors and spending on import markets. Which they did. It tooks months and people died in the itnerim.

So, against recommendations, Malawi did just what you suggest -- went protectionist re ag. Market forces (price signals) got all crazy and people over-planted maize at the expense of their government going further into hock. When the pyramid scheme collapsed, the country's ag base was left in a dangerously irrational state and to stave of even more starvation the government had to go further into hock.

-t

Malawi has worked so well

President4242

Mon Dec 01 08:57:15 -0800 2008
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That I actually prefer that model for all the lower level Maslow needs. Yes, playing economics in the great gambling game can increase production, but not sustainably, which is what we need for food, clothing, shelter, and medical care.

These items need to be *locally* *decentrally* *planned*, not left to some central free market chaos, or even worse, a Stalin-like eugenics plan which only feeds those people valuable politically.

I must point out though that I'm talking post 2003 Malawi, given TL's above post. There were some stumbling blocks as the government had to re-learn what works and what doesn't for their climate- obviously selling off a bumper crop instead of storing it for famine years is NOT the way they should have gone.