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1586485115-Thurow:Layout 1 4/14/09 1:14 PM Page i ENOUGH 1586485115-Thurow:Layout 1 4/21/09 12:37 PM Page ii Hunger in Africa Based on the 2008 Global Hunger Index for Africa. Compiled by the International Food Policy Research Institute, Concern Worldwide, and Welt Hunger Hilfe, the index combines these indicators: the percentage of people who are under- nourished (estimated); the percentage of children under the age of five who are underweight; and the mortality rate of children under the age of five. The index ranks the countries on a 100-point scale, with 0 being the best score (no hunger). 1586485115-Thurow:Layout 1 4/14/09 1:15 PM Page iii ENOUGH Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty ROGER THUROW and SCOTT KILMAN With the support of New York 1586485115-Thurow:Layout 1 4/14/09 1:15 PM Page iv Copyright © 2009 by Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman Published in the United States by PublicAffairs™, a member of the Perseus Books Group. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address PublicAffairs, 250 West 57th Street, Suite 1321, New York, NY 10107. PublicAffairs books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected]. Designed by Brent Wilcox Text set in 11.5 point Adobe Garamond Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thurow, Roger. Enough : why the world’s poorest starve in an age of plenty / Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58648-511-5 (alk. paper) 1. Poverty—Africa. 2. Poverty—Africa—Prevention. 3. Poverty. 4. Poverty— Prevention. 5. Starvation. 6. Starvation—Prevention. 7. International cooperation. I. Kilman, Scott. II. Title. HC800.Z9P6285 2009 363.8—dc22 2009009638 First Edition 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 1586485115-Thurow:Layout 1 4/14/09 1:15 PM Page v From Roger: For Anne, Brian, and Aishling, who nourish the vision and the spirit From Scott: For Trish, Helen, and Rosemary, who show how individuals can make a difference in the world “This page left intentionally blank.” 1586485115-Thurow:Layout 1 4/14/09 1:15 PM Page vii CONTENTS PREFACE With Pious Regret ix Boricha, the Ethiopian Highlands, 2003 PART I THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION 1 Seeds of Change 3 Mexico, 1944 2 Flow and Ebb 17 Oslo, Norway, 1970 3 Into Africa 35 Northern Ethiopia, 1984 4 Good for the Goose, Bad for the Gander 53 Fana, Mali, 2002 5 Glut and Punishment 71 Adami Tulu, Ethiopia, 2003 6 Who’s Aiding Whom? 85 Nazareth, Ethiopia, 2003 7 Water, Water Everywhere 99 Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, 2003 8 A Diet of Worms 113 Sudan, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe, 2003 1586485115-Thurow:Layout 1 4/14/09 1:15 PM Page viii viii CONTENTS PART II ENOUGH IS ENOUGH 9 Resorting to Outrage 129 10 “We Can Do Something About This” 137 Dublin and Seattle 11 Take with Food 157 Mosoriot, Kenya 12 Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back 165 Around the World 13 The Missing Links 189 Kenya and Ghana 14 The Opening Bell 207 Chicago to Addis Ababa to Qacha’s Nek 15 Getting Down to Business 225 Davos to Darfur 16 Small Acts, Big Impacts 243 Kenya, Ohio, and Malawi 17 “We Must Not Fail Them” 259 Washington, D.C. EPILOGUE Hagirso 277 Acknowledgments 285 Notes 287 Index 293 1586485115-Thurow:Layout 1 4/14/09 1:15 PM Page ix PREFACE With Pious Regret Boricha, the Ethiopian Highlands, 2003 In the searing heat of late spring, before anyone realized that what was hap- pening here was just the beginning of something much bigger, a tiny girl stumbled through a field of rocks toward a group of international aid work- ers. She was barefoot and limping. Flies dotted her face, craving the moisture of her eyes, lips, and nostrils. A shabby gray dress smudged with dirt hung limply from her shoulders. Though she was no more than eight years old, she carried her baby sister on her back, a turquoise blanket binding them to- gether. Without speaking, for that would have required too much energy, the girl weakly stretched out her arms, one hand supporting the other. Her dark, frightened eyes were desperate. Please, they beseeched, something to eat, anything at all. In a famine, the starving speak with their eyes. Beyond the girl, on the edge of the rocky field, was a warren of olive- green tents. Inside them, 166 children were dying of starvation. Emmanuel Otoro, the director of Ethiopia’s Disaster Prevention and Pre- paredness Commission for the Boricha region, gently stroked the girl’s cheek. A second of comfort was all he could spare. Then he parted the flaps of one of the tents and entered a scene nearly incomprehensible to the modern mind. Starvation is death by deprivation, the absence of one of the essential el- ements for life. It’s not the result of an accident or a spasm of violence, 1586485115-Thurow:Layout 1 4/14/09 1:15 PM Page x x PREFACE the ravages of disease or the inevitable decay of old age. It occurs because people are forced to live in the hollow of plenty. For decades, the world has grown enough food to nourish everyone adequately. Satellites can spot budding crop failures; shortages can be avoided. In the modern world, like never before, famine is by and large preventable. When it occurs, it repre- sents civilization’s collective failure. Just inside the canvas walls of the tent, Emmanuel came upon two in- fants receiving nourishment through nose tubes. He swatted away the flies buzzing around their heads. “We’ve never seen a disaster like this before around here,” he whispered to a group of nurses and aid workers. It was an astonishing statement, given Ethiopia’s history. In 1984, more than 12 million people had teetered on the verge of starvation, and nearly 1 million of them died. The suffering was so intense, so vast, and so pitiable that the world swore such famine would never happen again. Yet not even twenty years later, “never again” was happening again, in Boricha and many of Ethiopia’s blighted regions. And this time, even more people— 14 million—were desperate for something to eat. Emmanuel made his way to a corner of the tent where five-year-old Hagirso sat like a rag doll on a flimsy mattress, propped up between the spindly legs of his father, Tesfaye Ketema. A few days before, Tesfaye had cradled his emaciated son for an hour and a half as they rode in a donkey- drawn wagon over rutted dirt roads to this makeshift famine clinic. Ha- girso was starving to death. He weighed just twenty-seven pounds when he arrived. His arms and legs were bone-thin, his head swollen from the effects of protein deficiency. He did not cry or plead for help. His eyes were deep, dark, empty holes. Farewell, they said. The year before, Tesfaye, along with many other Ethiopian peasant farm- ers, had reaped his best harvest ever. Then he trekked happily to the mar- ket town of Boricha carrying heavy sacks of grain. But the historic bumper harvest overwhelmed the country’s underdeveloped markets with a sur- plus, and prices collapsed. What Tesfaye received from the merchants of Boricha was barely enough to cover his planting and harvesting costs. At the end of the day, including labor and transportation expenses, he reck- oned he actually lost money. 1586485115-Thurow:Layout 1 4/14/09 1:15 PM Page xi PREFACE xi The next planting season, he cut back on costs by sowing cheaper, lower-quality corn seed on his three-quarters of an acre and abandoning the use of expensive fertilizer. He knew this would result in a smaller har- vest, but he calculated he would still reap enough to feed his family. Farm- ers all across Ethiopia reacted in the same manner. Some who worked the country’s largest farms took thousands of acres out of production. Others shut off their simple irrigation systems to reduce expenses. Then all of Ethiopia looked heavenward for rain. But in many places the rains never came. With drought choking the land, Ethiopia’s, and Tes- faye’s, harvest shrank even further than expected. Tesfaye’s family soon ate through their reserve from the previous year. As the pain of hunger gnawed relentlessly, Tesfaye began selling off his few possessions to buy food. First he sold his ox, which pulled his plow. Then he sold the family cow, which pro- vided milk. Then he sold the goats. With nothing left, Tesfaye watched Ha- girso waste away. Instead of lugging bags of surplus corn to the market town as he had the year before, he now carried his dying son. In the emergency feeding tent, he stared at the starving little boy slumped between his legs. “He is our youngest,” he mournfully told the nurses and aid workers. Surrounded by the dying children of other peasant farmers, Tesfaye was heavy with worry and guilt. What, he wondered, had he done to his son? As Emmanuel Otoro moved from starving child to starving child, from horrified parent to horrified parent, he heard the same lament over and over.