In 2005, the United Nations Millennium Taskforce on Hunger came up with an action plan to halve world hunger by 2015. The number of hungry people was 963 million in 2008 and 795 million in 2017. So it doesn’t really make any progress. Partly because the rich countries do not keep to the agreement, they have not allocated sufficient money to combat hunger, and partly because of the patronizing approach of Western organizations towards African smallholder farmers. The problems these poor people struggle with are enormous and they are by no means alone responsible for them! We have a social and moral obligation to help them.
Hungry
795 million people in the world are food insecure, according to the World Food Program website . And they write that this means that one in nine people does not have enough to eat to lead a healthy and active life. Hunger and malnutrition are the number one health risk in the world – more than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined ! When are we going to put our shoulders to the wheel?
Plan
The Dutch contribution was in the field of school nutrition. The idea was to feed 500,000 children at school every day with food grown by local farmers. On paper, a fantastic plan in all its simplicity. This way you would not only combat hunger and poverty in one go, but also get the children to go to school. ‘Fantastic’ indeed, because it was poorly thought out. The plan failed. On the one hand due to political interference and corruption, on the other hand due to the inability of farmers to produce in a planned manner for a precisely defined market for profit. Does that mean we can’t do anything for them? Education is essential.
Hunger and malnutrition are the number one health risk in the world – more than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined!
African farmer
Two-thirds of the African population lives in rural areas and depends on agriculture. The 1,200 smallholder farmers in Ghana hardly grow enough to provide for themselves. Why are they unable to escape poverty? Why is there no development from farmer for his own consumption to small-scale agricultural entrepreneur? A selection of the 26 obstacles identified by Wageningen University:
- The soil is exhausted, the population is growing (due to better medical care) and the climate is changing.
- Due to lack of production, they cannot invest in good seed and fertilizer.
- Planning is impossible due to missing information about weather conditions and sales market.
- Due to a lack of roads and means of transport, they cannot get their crops to the market.
- The farmers cannot calculate and have no idea of costs and benefits.
- They are not organized and do not constitute a counterweight to government and intermediaries.
- Bad experiences have made them distrustful, including among themselves.
- What they own can always be taken away.
- Living with hunger for generations makes them risk-averse and resigned.
Two-thirds of the African population lives in rural areas and depends on agriculture. The 1,200 smallholder farmers in Ghana hardly grow enough to provide for themselves.
Food crisis
It is clear that the obstacles are so great and numerous that the peasants (the diminutive is used here, not because they are small in stature or meant to be derogatory, but because their production is really nothing) cannot possibly overcome them on their own. The shameful neglect of agriculture in the developing world has helped cause the current global food crisis. It has become a global problem. Even if the European Union has allocated 1 billion euros for a green revolution, that means 80 cents per person for 8 million people…
Top down
It seems like yet another noble plan… haven’t people learned anything? Moreover: Money does not solve all problems. Many well-intentioned initiatives take a top-down approach, with a lot of emphasis on capital injections and technical interventions to increase productivity. The farmers themselves are completely ignored, how they think, and the problems they face. This approach is also doomed to failure.
Union
How should it be done? Work on the barriers and help the farmers remove them. For example, improve infrastructure and safety. Give them the opportunity to become a power factor (trade union). And, with a lot of patience, leave the initiative to them. That is help that is useful to smallholder farmers, with which you pull them out of the doldrums and improve their lives, and those of their fellow rural residents, in the long term. The positive effects eventually trickle down to the first world, because everything is interconnected. So it is also in our own interest.
Global problem
A global problem requires a global approach. If we do nothing about this problem that affects us all, one year we will need action against hunger in Ghana, the next year the proceeds from giro 555 will go to South Sudan and the next time to another African country or to Haiti. And even if we push the causes far away from us, to poor management, corruption and climate change, that is really too easy.