Why People Still Starve

1
Why People Still Starve

• Barry Bearak
• New York Times

Pulitzer Prize 2002
http//www.knox.edu/x3613.xml
2
Malawi

• Hungry season
• December March
• Maize still in field
• Families get by with one meal a day
• Handful of greens
• Children joyous to eat termites

Edible Termites
http//nationalzoo.si.edu/publications/zoogoer/200
5/4/edibleinsects.cfm
3
Adilesi Faisoni

• Grandmother of 7
• Husband Robert died of hunger
• Worked up until the hungry season
• Then reduced to begging
• Hungry season diet
• Pumpkin leaves and wild vegetables
• Daughter Mdati died of hunger
• Left 4 children
• Three died
• Lives with other daughter hut
• And 7 grandchildren

Malawi grandmother
http//www.terradaily.com/reports/In_Malawi__AIDS_
Pushes_Food_Shortages_To_Crisis_Point.html
4
Famine Crisis in Malawi

• No tyrannical dictator
• No civil war or marauding army
• No disasterous weather
• Grain was in stores
• Poor could not afford
• Aid agencies
• Argued about whether famine was happening

http//www.feedthehungry.org/africaproject2.cfm
5
Banda

• Dictator 1954-1994
• Amassed a fortune on licenses to grow tobacco for
  export
• Tolerated apartheid
• Anti-communist
• Supported by U.S.

Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda
http//encarta.msn.com/media_461528628_761572111_-
1_1/Hastings_Kamuzu_Banda.html
6
Structural Adjustment

• IMF and World Bank policies
• 1990s loans
• Poor thought to be best served by free market
• Reduced subsidies
• Monopolies sold off
• Currency dropped value
• Fertilizer costs went up 5x
• Farmers couldnt afford

Malawi fertilizer
http//www.usaid.gov/stories/malawi/fp_malawi_fert
ilizer.html
7
Malawi dependent on donors

• Malawi sees wealthy nations as hypocritical
• Give subsidies to their own farmers
• Lowers world price of grain
• But IMF loan policies deny subsidies to Malawi
  farmers
• Aid Agencies see government in Malawi as
• Wasteful
• Dishonest

http//stir.org.au/stir/Content.aspx?topicID106
8
World Bank

• 1998 gave fertilizer/seed starter pack aid
• Some families ate bean seeds
• Produced bumper crop of corn
• Bought by Malawi with loans
• 1999 gave less aid
• Suggested Malawi sell off corn
• Interest payments too high
• Reserve corn sold by Malawi
• profits disappeared
• Yields lower
• Result famine

Malawi famine
http//news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/2001273.st
m
9
Village Chief

• Considered Wealthy
• Cultivates 15 acres
• Grows corn, tobacco, cabbage, lettuce, turnips,
  sugar cane
• Fertilized fields
• Owned ox cart, bicycle, 6 donkeys, 4 goats
• Two wives
• Brother was Robert who died of hunger
• Chief did little to save him

Malawi village chief
http//deanoman.com/z206510.JPG