Buying Votes and Starving Somalis

I remember this bioethics issue from one of my earlier educational romps: is it better to cure disease that is rampant among the central African poor so that more can survive to decimate forests to farms and still have millions then starve to death later on? My simple answer, if I recall, is to do the best you can for the here and now, and perhaps the future will produce new levels of agricultural productivity to solve the problem. Indeed, we do have more productive farms, but global climate change and growing populations with unwise farming techniques and over-grazing are claiming increasing acreage, as arable land or forests become useless desert.

“Desertification is the rapid conversion of cultivable land into arid useless land. The topsoil, which is rich in nutrients and fertilizers, is easily blown away in the process. This leads to erosion, exposing the inner soil layers. These layers are not rich in nutrients and extremely hard. They will not sustain any type of life causing massive loss of flora in the region. Animals will not have plants to graze upon and will die. A loss to fauna and flora will cause colossal displacement of millions of people worldwide…

“Nearly 3.6 billion hectares of agricultural land across 100 countries have been affected by desertification causing a huge food crisis. One billion out of the total six billion have moved over in search of better livelihood due to loss of crops and inhospitable conditions. Africa, Asia and Latin America are largely affected. China is already reeling under immense land shortage due to desertification. An exposing population has made the situation worse. Annually, nearly 20,000 square miles of land on planet Earth is being converted into deserts. More than 70 percent of lands in North America have been affected. In Africa, approximately 2.4 million acres of land have become deserts.” GlobalWarmingAndU.com

As nations like China, India and Brazil explode their middle classes, the desire and ability to upgrade the general diet to include greater quantities and more desirable animal protein has placed pressures on the value of foodstuffs. Commodity prices, well beyond oil, have soared of late, and for those at the bottom of the socioeconomic spectrum, the cost of food has led many to starvation.

Staples are used directly to feed billions but also as animal feed, where the efficiency of production is sacrificed to the production of meat and related products. Rice, quickly followed by wheat, is the main staple on earth. “A program sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is warning of a possible spike in international rice prices, a development that the program's analysts say could have grave implications for countries where access to food is already limited. The analysts are reluctant to make specific predictions about how high the price could rise, but they say they worry that the increase could be significant.

In Somalia, where the cost of food is already high, the effects of even a modest increase could considerably worsen the severe famine that has been ravaging the country for months. Analysts listed Somalia, Djibouti, Haiti and countries in West Africa and, to a lesser extent, Central America as places that stand to be seriously affected by such an increase. To varying degrees, all of these countries depend on imports of rice to make up for limited local harvests of grain.” Huffington Post, September 20^th. Simply put, as the price of basic food rises, an increasing number of people in the poorest of countries simply starve to death.

But politics and policies designed to buy votes to reelect incumbent politicians may indirectly result in millions of additional deaths by starvation: “In July, the international price of rice began to rise as well, intensifying … concerns [from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, or FEWS NET, a USAID-funded program]. They traced the origins of the increase to Thailand, where the government recently announced a plan to buy rice from the country's farmers at above-market prices -- a scheme that at least one government member described as a strategy aimed at winning votes. The government enacted the policy earlier this month and says it will begin the buying stage in October.

“Thailand occupies a key position in the complex web of dependencies that make up the global food economy. It supplies 30 percent of the world's rice exports, more than any other country. The dependence on Thai rice is particularly heavy in West Africa, where most countries consume more rice than they produce.” Huffington Post. So how do you explain to a marginally compensated local Thai farmer that he or she must live even closer to the edge in order to preserve anonymous lives more than a continent away? The bioethics question du jure: what exactly is the moral obligation of a well-fed person to help feed a baby born to a careless farmer thousands of miles away on a different continent? If that well-fed person drives a car and uses electricity generated by the burning of fossil fuel? Or is it everyone for her/himself? Your opinion?

I’m Peter Dekom, and when did starvation ever deserve to be ignored by those who can make a difference?