A food awakening

“I’m starving!” I complained to my housemate before sitting down to write this feature. I was hungry since I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, but starving? No, of course not. Like most Irish people, I rarely go without food for long. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for millions of people around the world.

In the years since Bob Geldof and Midge Ure asked us to ‘feed the world’, food shortages have increased globally and around 925 million people go hungry every day – that’s nearly one in seven. The most shocking thing about this statistic is that there is more than enough food to go round.
Oxfam is about to launch its Food Justice campaign to combat the structural, political and corporate policies that facilitate this scandal. Under the campaign umbrella, Oxfam is calling for an end to unregulated land grabs, a global deal on climate change and an overhaul of the food system, all of which are in part responsible for denying close to a billion people access to food. To reinforce the point, Oxfam has teamed up with the world-renowned portrait photographer Rankin to give a face and voice to some of the millions affected by food shortages.
Land grabs are a modern form of free-market colonialism. It’s estimated that around 50 million hectares of African farmland, that’s more than seven times the size of Ireland, have been sold to investors, governments and corporations from the developed world. These areas are intensively farmed and the food produced is exported, often while local people starve. If this sounds eerily similar to Ireland’s Great Famine, it’s because the dynamics that saw close to a million people die of starvation here are being replayed across Africa.
Bad governance, international debt, and corporate agribusiness are all partly to blame. Unfortunately, so are we. The rich, developed world gets, and wastes, more than its fair share of food. We can include Ireland in that category, despite the collapse of our economy. Price increases and the recession may mean that we look for bargains or shop at low-cost supermarkets, but we are still living in a paradise where food is seen as disposable: on average, around a third of all the food we buy ends up in the bin.
In addition, the EU regulation that 10% of transport fuels must come from bio-fuels by 2015 has accelerated the problem by turning land that formerly produced food into fuel farms.
Reliance on fossil fuels isn’t the answer. The 2008 spike in oil prices caused food prices to shoot up. Because big agribusiness favours intensive monoculture farming, millions of people reply on imported food. As soon as transport costs increase, so do food prices. In parts of the world, the economic collapse notwithstanding, food prices are exceeding 2008 levels. Poverty-stricken people already spend over 70% of their income on food. Any price increase has a devastating effect on their ability to pay for necessities like medical care and schooling.
The effects of climate change in Ireland may be worrying, but compared to what is happening across Africa, we have been lucky – at least so far. We can look forward to wetter winters, increased flash floods and warmer seas, all of which will impact on farming, fishing and infrastructure. In contrast, in Africa, once-arable land has been turned into desert.
A poignant case in point is Turkana in northern Kenya. An area about the size of Ireland, nothing has grown there for seven years. Climate change has affected the rain patterns significantly and the rainy season from March to May has all but disappeared, turning what was once a pasture into a dustbowl.
The humanitarian crisis has serious health and social implications, ruining communities and leaving thousands at risk of starvation. In Turkana, animals are currency. Without them people cannot trade, get married or afford schooling. Farmers are forced to travel long distances looking for grazing and water and the scarcity of both leads to conflict. The shop shelves are bare and whatever food is available is beyond the means of most.
The government of Kenya has a commitment to achieving agreed Millennium Development Goals, but words have yet to be backed up with action. Northern Kenya has no political representation at national level and receives less investment than the highly populated centre of the country.
UNICEF claims that 95% of Turkana’s population is living in extreme poverty; these citizens do not have enough to eat. Oxfam is distributing food aid to around 200,000 people in the area as well as delivering food to local shops and food vouchers in an effort to keep people alive and stimulate the local economy.
The portraits and stories recorded by Rankin in Turkana tell a tragic tale. Listen to Dominic Ekomeva, 43, a farmer.
“This drought has taken my manhood,” he says. “I don’t feel manly anymore because I don’t own anything that I am proud of. All I have left is a few goats and I think they will die soon. My family used to live by the lakeside. We were all eating well. The boys were in school. Everyone had cows, donkeys, goats and sheep. At that time I had more than two hundred goats.
“There was grass everywhere and there was water,” Ekomeva continues, “It was green as far as you could see. Everyone was busy taking care of something because there was a lot of work to do. I knew one thing for sure, in those days my children would never go hungry.”
Esther Longome, 39, Dominic’s wife adds: “Going many days without food means you don’t have a peaceful night’s sleep. Our small children cry all night. For us, we spend the night thinking deeply about where we can get food from. It feels awful. It’s so stressful. You spend all night trying to work out how to solve the problem and as soon as it’s morning you spend every second looking for someone who can help. Before the drought this place was good. We had plenty of goats and sheep so plenty of milk. There were wild fruits on every tree. We never had a problem with food. Even in the dry season there was enough.” 
Ikai Nayapar, Dominic’s 12-year-old daughter describes how generosity and handouts makes the difference between starving or not.
“I came here today to see if we could borrow some food from a friend or neighbour,” she explains. “Yesterday we didn’t eat anything. The day before yesterday I borrowed some maize and yellow split peas and a small amount of vegetable oil from our friends and we had one meal before going to bed. Everyone ate something even if the portions were tiny. The longest I have gone without food is five days. That was last week, before I managed to borrow that food.”
But the people of Turkana are not looking for handouts. What they need is infrastructure to combat the effects of climate change on farming. Investments in farming, irrigation and forestry can all reduce the impact of climate change and help ensure food security. Unfortunately Turkana is just one humanitarian crisis among many. In the face of a growing world population, climate change, and land and water shortages, many millions more people will soon be at risk of starvation. Action is crucial. Supporting Oxfam’s Food Justice campaign is a good start.

www.oxfamireland.org