You'd think that after the 80s, Ethiopian leaders would have paid more attention to food security. Of course,
that's easier said than done.
What can the West do to help? Perhaps more importantly, what
should the West do to help?
Wow, someone managed to write an opinion piece about how the "free market" failed to prevent famine in Ethiopia, and have it published in the
Wall Street Journal?
To improve production for a population of about 67 million, including five million chronically in need of food aid, Ethiopia expanded its rural extension service to teach farmers new tilling techniques and to distribute high-quality seeds and fertilizer. Yields soared: Grain harvests in the latter half of the 1990s averaged 11 million tons annually, about four million tons more than in the 1980s. In the bumper years of 2000 and 2001, harvests hit more than 13 million tons. The early-warning network was working well, too. Weather failures were predicted throughout the 1990s, and appeals for food aid rallied international support in a timely fashion. But the early-warning system had also picked up an ominous trend: falling grain prices. Grain supplies accumulating in the bigger markets were "driving prices below farmers' expectations and may discourage farmers for the next production season," said a monthly report of the Ethiopia Network on Food Security, a coalition of groups that do forecasting in the country. It was February 2001.
The problem was that the government, at the same time it was pushing to boost production, was also dismantling its system of state aid to farmers and intervention in the agriculture sector. In its place came a private-sector system that was inexperienced and woefully underfunded. It couldn't absorb or distribute the bountiful harvests that came. Storage facilities were inadequate. Traders still relied on donkeys for transport. Export markets were nonexistent. There was no money to support prices or help farmers get through losses.
Food security requires government support, it's as simple as that. European governments (and that of the USA) do not provide subsidies to agriculture because of votes or lobbies from the small part of the population that still makes a living from it (well, they do, but it's not the main reason). If votes and money were the main reason behind those subsidies politicians could "invest" the money cultivating better, larger and wealthier constituencies.
Agriculture is supported because it's
important. People
need it to live. We take food for granted, but the fact is that all those nations where people have that luxury have had governments which continuously supported and managed agricultural production with incentives, quotas, etc. That support effectively prevents big changes in production and price, benefiting consumers and reducing waste.
And agriculture is important for reasons that go well beyond simple food production. To start with, supporting small scale agriculture (and subsidies to it) is sometimes the only way to keep a resident population in marginal lands. Abandoning them altogether, perhaps creating natural preserves, might be an alternative, but one that I've often seen go up in flames (literally) or create all kinds of costly problems - in densely populated regions such as most of Western Europe these can be areas changed by centuries of human occupation, they might not revert to some natural form we'd appreciate. Anyway, I'm getting off-topic.
As for solution to food security problems in poor countries, rich countries government's and organizations could start by not telling them what to do, especially when that advice is the opposite of what they (those rich countries) have done and still do. In fact the technical solutions should be obvious to the local governments in the first place.
