West Africa’s Food Crisis

It’s not so much that there’s a shortage of food but, instead, it’s a shortage of money to afford it in the face of rapidly rising food prices.

The UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs reports a crisis looming in West Africa.

“Almost all farming in West Africa is rain-fed, meaning farmers experience an intense burst of activity during the June to November rainy season, when they must grow and sell enough food to see them through until the next year.

By June, many of the poorest families in the region have run out of money and food. The period is known as the “hunger gap” or “lean season” and is usually accompanied by quickly accelerating malnutrition rates as families skip meals and in extreme cases rely on wild foods like weeds, leaves and berries and rubbish for sustenance.

For some families, the lean season starts as early as January or February. Even slight shifts in market prices can have a dramatic impact on peoples’ ability to get through the lean season, as all their reserves and credit are already used up.

The hardest hit people are in Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad which are among the poorest countries in the world and together form West Africa’s semi-arid Sahel region. The World Food Programme estimates that there are 1.5 million children under five suffering from under-nutrition in those countries.”

“Traders are still buying in as much as possible to hold onto it until the price has doubled or more,” said Salif Sow, regional representative of the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) food monitoring group. FEWS NET has recorded rising prices at important markets in northern Nigeria, Ghana, Togo and Benin.

Sow suggested the increase in maize prices could prove to be the most serious factor for the poorest families.

“Maize is what people usually buy during the lean season because that is what is cheapest. This year maize will still be on the market but it is going to be really expensive,” he said.

 

UN Slams Harper

Stephen Harper may hope Canadians are dumb enough to believe he’s sincere in working for global warming solutions but he’s not fooling the folks at the United Nations.

Stevie’s been outed. From CanWest:

“Canada has a long history of global leadership on global atmospheric environmental issues, from acid rain to ozone depletion and climate change,” said the UN’s Human Development Report. “Maintaining this tradition will require tough decisions.”

The UN report said Canada could achieve greater reductions in carbon dioxide emissions than the goals set by the government, “but not with current policies.”

 

Afghanistan Backs Iran – What Else Did You Expect?

The National Disgrace is in a tizzy about Afghanistan refusing to support a Canadian resolution before the UN General Assembly censuring Iran for its human rights record.

The Afghani ambassador voted for an Iranian bid to have the resolution thrown out and against the Canadian motion when it finally came up for a vote. Here’s the paper’s take on Afghanistan’s perfidy:

One interpretation of Afghanistan’s view is that the government of President Hamid Karzai cares more about its relations with Iran than with Canada, despite Canada’s massive commitment to Afghan reconstruction and the cost in Canadian lives.

I wonder if it could have anything to do with the fact that Iran borders Afghanistan? Maybe the Afghanis have figured out that Canada is there today but very well may not be in a year or two. Maybe the Afghans know when it’s not best to be pointing fingers at someone else.

 

Afghanistan – Bigger and Better, Again!

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has just released its 2007 report on the state of Afghanistan’s opium industry and – surprise, surprise – it’s growing!

According to the UNODC, “..opium is now equivalent to more than half (53%) of the country’s licit GDP.”

The report notes that the opium price in Afghanistan is about one-tenth of the wholesale or trade price in Europe and a mere one percent of the street price in Europe. It’s always those damned middlemen, isn’t it?

Of the $4-billion in opium money that actually reaches Afghanistan, barely a quarter of that actually goes to the peasant farmers. “District officials take a percentage through a tax on crops (known as “ushr”). Insurgents and warlords control the business of producing and distributing the drugs. The rest is made by drug traffickers.”

Let’s face it – opium is the growth industry in Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries on the planet. We’ve hummed and hawed and debated what to do about it. We’ve tried this and that and still haven’t got the faintest idea of how to tackle the problem.

Maybe if we set aside a billion dollars to compensate the peasant farmers and then began slinging everyone else who gorges at the opium trough into prisons, we’d be able to slowly get it under control. Wait, that won’t work. Why not? Because we’d have to start by incarcerating the Afghan government and then the warlords and their militias. Then we’d be fighting everyone in that miserable country.

We’re propping up a government that, as it stands today six years after the Taliban were run out, is not worth saving, one that is financially, culturally and tribally integrated with the warlords and the insurgents. We think we’re fighting the Taliban but, in reality, we’re just nibbling away at the edges of a much-larger organization, none of it any damned good.