The Last Hunger Season

It is “far better to accommodate dreams than assuage nightmares”

This is a quote taken from Roger Thurow’s book, The Last Hunger Season, one of our favourite books from 2012. It is a record of the lives of four farmers in western Kenya over the course of one year, encompassing both hunger and harvest. The book documents the hardships these farmers face and provides an insight into their lives. While one person can never fully understand the life of another, we do all aspire to the same things: health, wealth, happiness and security.

For the four featured farmers life is about to change. Immediately prior to when the book is set, Rasoa, Leonida, Francis and Zipporah signed up to the One Acre Fund Programme. This programme, set up by Andrew Youn in 2006, provides smallholder farmers in Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi with certified seeds, fertiliser and training, inputs that are paid for by the farmers during the course of the year. Basic in its model, its aim is transformational change, enabling farmers to work their way out of poverty and escape the hunger seasons that come each year. As the quote states it is about supporting farmers in reaching their dreams be they to send their children to a good school, build a greenhouse or start a local business.

Food prices volatility: watch this space

A recent article by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) outlines the food price situation and the actions that need to be taken to reduce price volatility. In 2012, as prices began to creep higher and a third food price spike since 2007 looked likely, governments should have been poised to act to curb food price volatility once and for all. As the IATP authors believe, governments did not take this opportunity and failed to address the root causes of food price volatility.

This recent article is an update to the authors’ 2012 report, Resolving the Food Crisis, and calls for action to be taken around a series of themes:

• Donor funding for agricultural development
• Reducing biofuels expansion
• Curbing financial speculation on agricultural commodities
• Building food reserves
• Halting land grabs
• Addressing climate change

These issues are neither original nor specific to solving the problem of food price spikes. Instead they are frequently raised by NGOs and other stakeholders across the world and, as the authors point out, these problems are not going away. Not enough is being done to address them. There are huge opportunities for progress in 2013 but whether governments will seize them is another matter, as history attests. Action to address food price volatility from the G20 has revolved to date primarily around the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) and, while G20 leaders plan to meet in Russia this year, no meeting of agricultural ministers is planned. Decisions over the future vision of the World Trade Organisation Doha Development Round could be an opportunity to ensure trade rules ‘protect and promote food security,’ but given the previous disarray of the Doha Round this may be too much to hope for. New farm legislation in the US and reform of the Common Agricultural Policy in the EU show little sign of being transformative.