Last updated: May 1997, U.K.
The extent to which malnourishment and death from starvation still pervades human society is made clear by statistics, such as the following:
Every 3 seconds, a child dies of hunger.
The United Nations estimates that one eighth of people are actually starving.(1)
By the most conservative estimates, 400 million people lack the calories, protein, vitamins and minerals needed to sustain their bodies and minds in a healthy state. Millions are constantly hungry; others suffer from deficiency diseases and from infections they would be able to resist on a better diet. Children are the worst affected. According to one study, 14 million children under five die every year from the combined effects of malnutrition and infection. In some districts half the children born can be expected to die before their fifth birthday.(2)
50% of South Asian children are malnourished. This is not due to scarcity of food. The worst affected countries are Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.(3)
The Observer puts this into context:
If 100 jumbo jets crashed tomorrow, killing all on board, the world would be united in mourning, but every day, around 35,000 people die of hunger-related diseases, almost without mention.
Such statistics are widely available. Many see them as evidence that the planet is overpopulated. The sheer, undiminishing size of these statistics leaves them as something that is 'accepted' as part of life in the modern world. The problem is simply too huge for us to do anything about, it seems, and reflection on the subject often ends here.
Yet there are other, undeniably significant statistics to suggest that malnutrition and starvation are far from inevitable, given the resources and productive capacity we have available. These are the statistics which are slightly less widely disseminated:
It is a fact that enough food to feed the world is currently produced. 300 kg of grain per head is currently produced worldwide each year. 200 kg of grain contains the calories needed by an adult per year. (Grain is widely used as a measure of food production as it supplies more than half humanity`s calories.)
The 5.8 billion people in the world today have, on average, 15 percent more food per person than the global population, of 4 billion people, had 20 years ago.(4)
It is the poverty of millions of people who cannot afford to buy food that causes starvation. This has been recognised by a wide range of commentators:
food is not fairly shared; it goes to those who can afford it or have the means to grow it.(5)
Famine exists largely because the hungry cannot afford to buy food, not because there is insufficient food produced.(6)
In none of the twentieth century famines has there been an absolute shortage of food; the problem has been unequal access due to poverty, a problem that resort to food aid has not solved. In Bengal in 1943-1944 about three million people died after rice prices quadrupled in two years. Worst affected were the rural areas, where wages had not kept pace with wartime inflation, and some towns where workers were unemployed because of the dislocation caused by the war. People without money were unable to buy food and the British imperial authorities took little action (apart from moving food to Calcutta because they feared mass civil unrest). One of the worst famines of modern times therefore took place when the amount of food per head in Bengal was actually 7% higher than in 1941 and food stocks were at record levels. In Ethiopia, in 1972-1974, about 200,000 people died in the provinces of Wollo and Tigre even though the country's food production only fell by just over 5% - during this period food was still being exported from the affected provinces and from the country as a whole. In Bangladesh in 1974 when rice prices doubled in three months after severe flooding, those who were out of work because of the disruption caused by the floods could not afford to buy food. As a result one and a half million people died of starvation. But there was no absolute shortage of food - production of rice in Bangladesh, both in total and per head terms, was the highest ever in 1974 - once again it was a problem of who had the resources to buy food at higher prices.(7)
In South Africa around 50,000 black children starve to death each year - 136 every day. Yet South Africa is a net exporter of agricultural products.(8)
Much food is currently stored or destroyed when 'too much' food is produced. This means too much for the market as it is only the demands of those with purchasing power that counts. Restricting the food supply in this way keeps prices high enough for producers to maximise their profits:
in one season, French peasant co-ops were paid to destroy fruit and vegetables the weight of 17 Arcs de Triomph(9)
Around 240 million tonnes of grain are stored worldwide in order to keep the price high. That would provide every human being with 3600 calories a day(10)
So what are the prospects for the future? If grain production continues to increase at the current rate of 12 million tonnes per year then by 2020 the world harvest will be 2.1 billion tones. Population is expected to be 8.5 billion in 2020. That gives a figure of 247 kilogrammes per person. In 2050, if production grows at the same rate and population grows to only 10 billion, we will still have 244 kilogrammes per person.(11) However, the rate of growth in world food production is starting to fall. Before 1984, total production climbed 3 per cent per year; now this averages 1 per cent per year.(12) This leaves open the question as to whether enough food will always be produced to feed everyone.
Some commentators have viewed such statistics as pointing to an inevitable world food shortage occurring during the next century. They cite examples such as China where it is expected that grain imports will need to rise from the current 12 million tonnes per year at present to 100 million tonnes by the year 2000.(13)
To assess their predictions, it is important to understand the current motives underlying food production. Profit is currently the primary motivation behind all production (Why Profit Gets Priority) and this means that actual production levels are by no means equivalent to potential production levels. Here are some reasons why:
Much land currently under use has poorly maintained irrigation and is therefore not used to its full potential.
As J.Simon points out in The Ultimate Resource 2 ,"better storage facilities... would cut the perhaps 15-25 percent loss to pests and rot every year;" (14)
There is huge potential to expand research into developing more productive, environmentally sound agriculture. Between 1981-85, developed nations spent less than $5 billion on agricultural research.(15)
One example of a sector with huge scope for increasing production is the harvesting of food and raw materials from the oceans. As outlined by S.Gulbrandson at the ENS 1995 conference on sustainable food production:
The oceans cover twice as much of the earth as the terrestrial areas, and receive more than twice as much solar energy.(16)
The ocean contains nutrients like salts and other forms of minerals, and enzymes for catalytic synthesis of biological material. By adding such nutrients in the right proportion and by controlling the ratios, the ocean may be used to produce basic material for food production on a scale that surpasses all hitherto known systems for that purpose.(17)
Another area with huge scope for development is hydrophonic farming. Simon illustrates the potential of this exciting new technology as follows:
"In De Kalb, Illinois, Noel Davis's PhytoFarm produces food - mainly lettuce and other garden vegetables - in a factory measuring 200 feet by 250 feet - 50,000 square feet, one acre, - at a ton of food per day - enough to completely feed 500 or 1000 people.(18)
"PhytoFarm techniques could feed a hundred times the world's present population - say 500 billion people - with factory buildings a hundred stories high, on 1 percent of oresent farmland."(19)
The earth could, in theory, feed very many more people than now inhabit the globe.(20)
This fettering of production - with such disastrous consequences - is another key argument for the abolition of money and the market and the establishment instead of a system based on production solely for use. Socialism would allow us to develop and implement methods of food production with two simple questions in mind:
Which methods will best meet our needs? The question of 'how can we maximise profits?' currently gets priority. Food will only be produced if there is a market for it - i.e. people with the money to buy it. The needs of those without money do not count. The assumption that food will only be produced for markets pervades the debate about whether the world can be fed. Of course, given our current profit-orientated social system, there are going to be continual problems. But this does not mean that the potential is not there for us to solve them, once production is directly for need.
Which methods are sustainable? Environmentalists rightly show how many of our current productive methods are not 'sustainable' in that they damage the environment for future generations. For example, they now advocate a range of farm practices designed to reduce the need for high inputs of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Integrated plant nutrition with a combination of organic and mineral sources of soil nutrients with tillage and crop rotation can increase crop production; and integrated pest management (IPM) reduces the need for chemical pesticides by making use of biological controls to minimise disease and damage by pests.(21) Such methods could only be used to their full when we remove the market forces that drive producers to the short-term, cheap methods. This short-termism has prevented progress on a whole range of environmental issues.
Author: DG