Posted on 10-9-2002
Famine
as Political Tool
By Devinder Sharma* (See photo)
In the last 60 years or so, following the great human tragedy
of the Bengal
famine, food aid was conveniently used as a political weapon.
But what is
arguably one of the most blatantly anti-humanitarian acts, seen
as morally
repugnant, is the decision of the United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) to offer US $50 million in food aid to famine-stricken
Zimbabwe provided that it is used to purchase genetically modified
maize.
Food aid therefore is no longer an instrument of foreign policy.
It has now
become a major commercial activity, even if it means exploiting
the famine
victims and starving millions.
That is the official line at the USAID about the corn it has
offered to
Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique and Malawi, where an estimated
13
million people face severe hunger and possibly live under the
spectre of an
impending famine after two years of drought and floods. For
the genetically
modified food industry, reeling under a growing rejection of
its untested
and harmful food products, there is money in hunger, starvation
and death.
Spearheaded by USAID, the industry has made it abundantly clear
that it has
only genetically modified maize to offer and was not willing
to segregate.
The WFP, which over the past few decades has for all practical
purposes
become an extension of USAID, was quick to put its rubber stamp.
It had
earlier helped the United States to reduce its grain surpluses
by taking
the genetically modified food for a mid-day meal programme for
school
children in Africa.
The biotechnology industry is using all its financial power
to break down
the African resistance. Once the food is accepted as humanitarian
aid, it
will be politically difficult for the African governments to
oppose the
corporate take-over of Africa's agricultural economy. For the
industry,
Africa provides a huge market.
Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa too has said that his people
would rather
die than eat toxic food. While Malawi says it has no choice
but to accept
GM maize, newspaper reports cite Mozambique, from where Malawi's
food aid
has to pass through, asking the WFP to cover it with plastic
sheeting to
avoid spillage while in transit. Malawi incidentally is faced
with famine
after it was forced to sell maize to earn dollars for debt servicing.
Explains Ann Pettifor of the New Economics Foundation: Just
three months
before the food crisis hit, Malawi was encouraged by the World
Bank "to
keep foreign exchange instead of storing grain" Why? Because
foreign
exchange is needed to repay debts. Creditors will not accept
debt
repayments in Malawian Kwachas. Or indeed in bags of maize.
Only
"greenbacks" or other hard currencies will do. One of Malawi's
key
commercial creditors needed to have their debt repaid, according
to
Malawi's president, who in a BBC interview said the government
"had been
forced (to sell maize) in order to repay commercial loans taken
out to buy
surplus maize in previous years". President Muluzi said the
IMF and the
World Bank "insisted that, since Malawi had a surplus and the
(government's) National Food Reserve Agency had this huge loan,
they had
to sell the maize to repay the commercial banks." So Malawi
duly sold
28,000 tonnes of maize to Kenya. Under pressure from her creditors,
led by
the World Bank and the IMF, Malawi exchanged maize -- her people's
staple
diet -- for dollars. And now, it is getting another loan to
purchase
genetically modified from the United States. Sure the USAID
has been
working overtime to create a market for its genetically modified
food
industry !
The debate on biotech food however goes still further. After
all, it is the
commercial interest of America's sunrise industry. The biotechnology
industry has always been quick to use agricultural economists
and Nobel
laureates as effective 'loudspeakers' to promote the unhealthy
food on
gullible populations. One of its most distinguished spokesperson,
Dr Per
Pinstrup-Andersen, former director general of the Washington-based
International Food Policy Research Institute, said that Zimbabwe
was using
the food to play politics. Referring to President Mugabe's recent
land-reform policies, he added: "I think it is irresponsible
. Unless they
know they can get enough food from elsewhere that is not genetically
modified."
And how much quantity of grain is required to tide over the
food crisis in
central and southern Africa? A million tonne, is all that the
WFP
estimates. Surprising that the WFP as well as Pinstrup-Andersen
are not
aware of any other source of getting non-GM foodgrains for millions
of
hungry Africans. Ironically, the country which is laden with
overflowing
grain silos and an unmanageable grain reserves is the one to
have come to
the rescue of a famine-stricken Ireland in the nineteenth century.
The
first shipload of grain that came for the starving Irish was
from India.
And more recently, India had provided food on 'humanitarian'
basis to the
war-torn Iraqis'. And soon after Bin Laden and his associates
were forced
out, India had stepped in to fight immediate hunger in Afghanistan
early
this year. Earlier too, India had come to the rescue of Ethiopia
at the
height of the Ethiopian famine in the mid-1980s.
With 65 million tonnes foodgrains stockpiled in the open, and
that too of
non genetically modified grain, WFP will do well to purchase
instead from
India. With the grain from the reserves priced at Rs 4 to Rs
5 a kg (less
than 10 American cents a kilo), the WFP will not find cheaper
food
available anywhere. But this will not happen, in other words
will not be
allowed to happen. After all, the impending famine in Africa
opens up a new
market to sustain the multi-billion dollar US biotechnology
industry. What
happens in the bargain to the resulting crisis in human health
and misery,
and environment contamination from GMOs is none of the concern
of the
American grain merchants. In fact, it never was.
At the height of the 1974 famine in the newly born Bangladesh,
the US had
withheld 2.2 million tonnes of food aid to 'ensure that it abandoned
plans
to try Pakistani war criminals'. And a year later, when Bangladesh
was
faced with severe monsoons and imminent floods, the then US
Ambassador to
Bangladesh made it abundantly clear that the US probably could
not commit
food aid because of Bangladesh's policy of exporting jute to
Cuba. And by
the time Bangladesh succumbed to the American pressure, and
stopped jute
exports to Cuba, the food aid in transit was 'too late for famine
victims'.
Food was then a political weapon. Food aid has now in addition
become a
commercial enterprise.
* Devinder Sharma dsharma@ndf.vsnl.net.in
Devinder Sharma is a New
Delhi-based food and trade policy analyst. Among his recent
works include
two books GATT to WTO: Seeds of Despair and In the Famine Trap
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