Kenya Facing Starvation

[Sionnach Glic]

The country just can't seem to get a break.

Kenya faces starvation due to drought: UN
Last Updated: Tuesday, August 25, 2009 | 10:35 PM ET
CBC News

A prolonged drought has put millions of people on the brink of starvation in Kenya and the surrounding region, the United Nations cautioned Tuesday.

Children are beginning to die as a result of crop failures and rising commodity prices, while even electricity in Nairobi has had to be rationed.

"At the moment, about 19 million people are food insecure and need food assistance in the region. That number is going up as we are not expecting any rains until October," said Burke Oberle, the Kenya country director for the UN's World Food Program.

"If those rains don't materialize, we are expecting things to become catastrophic."

Oberle warned that the dire situation could become as bad as the drought of 1984, which produced the Ethiopian famine that left hundreds of thousands dead.

The UN is appealing for $230 million to feed some four million people in Kenya who will need emergency food aid for the next six months. But amid the global economic crisis, so far, it is nowhere near to reaching that goal.

The entire region - including Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and Djibouti - has seen a near-total failure of the "long," or spring, rains, which are crucial for agriculture and farming. Kenya's grain harvest is expected to be 28 per cent lower. Food prices have jumped by as much as 130 per cent.

"By the season's end, experts predict half the goat and cattle population in the country's pastoral areas will be lost due to the direct and indirect effects of the drought," the World Food Program said Tuesday on its website.

The prevalence of acute malnutrition among Kenyan children is hovering around 20 per cent, hitting 30 per cent in some areas.

The drought is causing electrical blackouts in the Kenyan capital, because there's not enough water for hydroelectric plants.

With rivers thinning to a trickle and mountaintop glaciers shrinking, authorities this month began rationing power in Nairobi, darkening homes and businesses at least three days a week.

Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga this month also warned of a catastrophe if the October rains don't come, expressing fear that inter-faction violence could ensue.

[Mikey]

"The fear of inter-faction violence?" That's almost a foregone certainty.

[Tyyr]

How about we stop turning corn into gas and instead ship it to people who'll eat it.

[sunnyside]

Actually that's exceedingly interesting in that I've never seen numbers for just how close they are to disaster. By which I mean they go from having kids to starving en mass with a yield loss of 28%. That's just a shocking amount of running a country on the edge.

While I don't agree with China much of the time, I give them credit for their use of a one child policy to get out of that situation. Granted much in that policy sucked, but I think many of us are old enough to remember our parents telling us to eat stuff because kids are starving in China, and now they aren't. Personally I'd have rather been limited to one child than watch the ones I have starve if that was the situation.

@Tyyr It isn't that there's a shortage of food worldwide at the moment, I don't have the numbers but I'm reasonably confident there is enough grain in various silos and whatnot to feed them. And we could increase production if neccessary. However the sad fact is that while governments and indaviduals help enough money simply isn't ponied up to feed them all. I suppose I don't know that for a fact this time around. If you want you could probably "adopt" a couple dozen of them.

[Tyyr]

@Tyyr It isn't that there's a shortage of food worldwide at the moment, I don't have the numbers but I'm reasonably confident there is enough grain in various silos and whatnot to feed them. And we could increase production if neccessary. However the sad fact is that while governments and indaviduals help enough money simply isn't ponied up to feed them all. I suppose I don't know that for a fact this time around. If you want you could probably "adopt" a couple dozen of them.

It's more an issue of price. Ethanol production has driven the cost of corn up significantly. Kill ethanol (which is at best only as bad as regular gas, but is in all likelyhood a greater polluter than just burning gas or diesel) and demand for corn drops, supplies increase, and prices go down making it cheaper for governments and aid organizations to buy.

[Mikey]

I only have an East-Coast perspective on ethanol - which is that cars are available which can run on 85% ethanol, but there's nowhere to buy E85. Is it presominant enough in the midwest to actual affect the market that much?

[Deepcrush]

Is it wrong of me to place this with the rest of my views on Africa and the Middle East and ask "Who gives a shit?"

[Tyyr]

I only have an East-Coast perspective on ethanol - which is that cars are available which can run on 85% ethanol, but there's nowhere to buy E85. Is it presominant enough in the midwest to actual affect the market that much?

In a stable market even a marginal increase in demand can cause a significant jump in price. That said while you can't find E85 many places in many areas they are starting to move to up to 10% ethanol in regular pump gas.

[Mikey]

in many areas they are starting to move to up to 10% ethanol in regular pump gas.

Regular unleaded has been 10% ethanol for decades. That wouldn't cause a recent jump in corn futures.

[sunnyside]

Tyyr, you'd struck me as more knowledgeable of economics than to look at the supply/demand thing so simply. In any situation involving a change in an economic factor (and often in politics and many things in general), you have to not just consider the action but the reaction.

Yes, small changes in demand and supply can considerably lower prices. But people don't like having their prices dropped. Prior to ethanol the government literally paid farmers to NOT farm land.

I forget how the laws worked but the upshot was if you left some percentage of your land fallow that you could have grown crops in you got paid some amount per acre.

As a result instead of having a glut of grain on the market supply stayed tight, grain prices stayed up, and the government got their money back due to higher income taxes, sales taxes, tarriffs, etc on the grain as it was sold.

Some of the laws under which payments to not farm were made got dropped in 1996. But if the situation warrants it (such as if we halt Ethanol production) I bet they'll start them up again quickly.

[Tyyr]

Are you so certain about that? Yes, I am aware the situation can be more complex but if you ignore the basics in favor of complexity you just get yourself lost. Farmers might not like it but neither will the general populace if we're told our tax money will be given to farmers to not farm land in order to keep the prices we pay for food elevated.

[Monroe]

I agree with Tyyr. Ethenol the way we in the United States makes it is incredibly costly and has little yield to the way Brazil does it with sugar cane.

[Tsukiyumi]

...the way Brazil does it with sugar cane.

Which is chopping down the rainforests, IIRC. Not too smart, that.

[sunnyside]

Are you so certain about that? Yes, I am aware the situation can be more complex but if you ignore the basics in favor of complexity you just get yourself lost. Farmers might not like it but neither will the general populace if we're told our tax money will be given to farmers to not farm land in order to keep the prices we pay for food elevated.

Am I sure that we DID pay farmers not to farm in order to keep prices up?

Yes.

Am I sure we'd do it again if the situation warranted it?

Not 100%.

Of course there are a wide array of moves to be made. And I'm not saying everyone has to be an economist. What I was saying is that you should at least consider how someone will react to whatever policy is implemented. For some reason when it comes to peoples political or economic beliefs they assume the equivalent of someone continuing to bend at the hip when they drop their soap in prison.

I don't know about sugarcane, I think it requires warmer weather than we have in the states growing the grains. I have heard that switchgrass could be much better than corn. However ethanol is a temporary thing in any case. Before too long somebody should come up with the winning battery or fuel cell technology that puts cars off the pump and onto the grid. So I doubt it'd be a good investment to redo the factories at this point.

[Aaron]

I only have an East-Coast perspective on ethanol - which is that cars are available which can run on 85% ethanol, but there's nowhere to buy E85. Is it predominant enough in the midwest to actual affect the market that much?

It's available here, usually has a green cover on the nozzle and a bar on the pump. It's not all that common but is becoming more available as folks upgrade their stations.

Is it wrong of me to place this with the rest of my views on Africa and the Middle East and ask "Who gives a s**t?"

Well, that's probably part of the problem right there, "Africa has and always will be a shithole, so why bother". Interesting that we gave the Soviets basically free wheat starting in the 70's when their farms failed but no one will give any to the Africans (no nukes=no grain I suppose).

All that said, if we want to use ethanol I'm sure there are plants we can grow that don't detract from the food supply. I've heard a few times that kudzu works and grows practically anywhere.