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Comment by jmyeet | Hacker News Reader

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The world produces excess of food but the distribution costs are very high for example. Would you go into debt sending food to another country or are you relying on the government to bear the burden of that through taxes? There’s a secondary factor which is that we’ve learned through efforts in the 80s that charity breeds dependence and the food aid drives often had a paradoxical effect of preventing those countries from building up their own local farm base which is more harmful long term for everyone involved. I don’t think it’s quite clear and dry as you paint it and that every famine is the result of one group intentionally trying to starve another.

Well, that's the thing, right? If we were thinking about humanity as a global populace, the second (bear the burden of that through taxes) would be the obvious answer, for precisely the same reason Americans in Florida pay taxes into a FEMA system to address wildfires in California, even if they never visit California. Besides ideological reasons, there's also the practical that that same FEMA is going to help Florida the next time it's hurricane season.

The concern about suppressing local agriculture is relevant (although I do wonder if one can make the same argument regarding FEMA and "suppressing local blue-tarp manufacturing"). But if food rots while people starve, the taxes probably aren't high enough. We've recognized (in the US, at least) the role of government in distribution and management of distribution policy since at least the Great Depression.

>we’ve learned through efforts in the 80s that charity breeds dependence

Is this the sort of thinking that led to the famine walls being built?

Why do people think this?

I doubt it. I’m specifically referencing the numerous studies done on foreign aid to Africa that decimated their ability to sustain local agriculture.

Can you link to one of these studies please?

This is from a 2 second Google search. I'm sure you can go to scholar.google.com and find your own - it's not my job to do your research.

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/12/verheye.h...

On the plus side, hunger is decreasing quickly.

For the couple of remaining places with hunger, the causes are political as you say. But the rest of the world is in most cases not "letting it" happen. We're sending food and aid, sometimes at risk to the aid workers delivering the food.

> We're sending food and aid

We (US) were, now we are cutting back. People will starve because of this.

Depends who "we" are in this context of course, but there's a middle eastern country whom the USA shower with military aid, that is committing a genocide and using starvation as a weapon, and the US is absolutely letting, even encouraging that to happen.

USAID has been gutted, and yes, it was political.

Which is why most non-failed countries try to self-sustain a large amount of their food requirements and agriculture is subsidized and protected. But it also means food export isn't a big business.

Let's talk about the way in which the West uses the IMF and World Bank to create economic crises and famine. Specifically, let's talk about Somalia. The playbook is basically this:

1. A country borrows money for some project. There's often corruption involved here (as the leaders siphon off work to make themselves rich);

2. The IMF imposes conditions on those loans. These includes financializing the food supply. Typically, what might've been a self-sufficient agricultural sector tends to get banned from producing food for themselves. Instead they have to produce export crops and buy food from, surprise surprise, Western nations. This tends to lead to a drop in food prices that means farmers can no longer support themselves. They then often become destitute and move to cities to find work;

3. If the loan is for an infrastructure project, it's usually Western companies doing it so the US is funding the IMF to give money to Western companies, basically;

4. As inevitably happens, the currency ends up tanking. The foreign food that decimated local production is now much more expensive in local terms. The government's ability to service the debt also gets savaged;

5. The IMF steps in with "structural programs" (including those like the financialization of agriculture) to take money out of the government to service IMF debt, which has similar devastating effects "austerity" measures do in Western countries;

6. The country is now trapped in debt, so much so that some call this "debt colonialism".

This has happened to Haiti and other countries.

The point is that Western interference most often comes with destroying agricultural self-sufficiency, creating famine.

Which countries are these?

Pretty much all western ones.

I'm not aware of any Western countries that don't have a significant dependency on imported food (and many with a large food export)

They all subside agriculture and do seek ability to produce necessary food. That does not excludes trade or import - you can live without bananas and oranges if you can't produce them. You needs to produce calories in some form.

I've always seen it as a logistical problem. With the Irish famine the British had a sophisticated world spanning logistical system that deliberately de-prioritized the Irish, even during an active famine that was a consequence of their own design. It's hard not to point fingers here when the culprit is obvious.

With modern famines it becomes more nuanced though imo. The logistical systems are not already in place like with Ireland, they are often built and sustained reactively, like a bridge during a storm. Some never "turn off" properly and undercut local farmers creating a stronger potential for future famines in the region. The solution isn't just allowing everyone to starve of course, but doing a better job at the follow-up work.

I'm not saying this is some impossible problem, just that it's a delicate one despite best intentions. Food grown in abundance in one region of the world might be rotting by the time it arrives where it's needed. While we have systems through the UN and non profits for this I still think we could do a lot better.

They used that logistics system to export most of the food that Ireland produced as they were growing more food than they needed, not even counting potatoes. But the English would pay more, so another great free market experiment.

> every famine is political

Well probably not those directly caused by natural disasters at least.

All famines are caused by natural disasters. What makes them political is that people die when their ability to overcome natural disasters is restricted or removed.

E.g. for the Irish Famine, the natural disaster was the outbreak of the phytophthora infestans disease affecting potato crops - the outbreak spread from North America across Europe, affecting Belgium, Netherlands, France & the UK. The cause of death in Ireland was the English exporting all food produced in Ireland that wasn't potatoes. An interestingly relevant historical record here is the Australian Convict Collection showing the number of Irish convicts sent to Australia & Tasmania for stealing food during the famine years.

>All famines are caused by natural disasters.

The great leap forward would like a word with you.

> All famines are caused by natural disasters.

I don't think I'd consider war to be a form of natural disaster, or even related to one in the majority of cases.

Many of those convicts were children.

So far, if it's lasted long enough to be considered a famine, it's political. Yes, there's temporary and severe interruptions due to natural disasters, but if the political will is there, resources would be able to arrive anywhere in the world in the matter of days.

Modern famines, sure. But I think that's a relatively recent development. It also isn't guaranteed. A sufficiently large volcanic eruption could severely impact agriculture the world over.

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