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