Why Are They Hungry?

Hint: it might not be the “poverty trap”…

Jeffrey Sachs has a new article about…the same thing he always talks about:

The G-8’s $20bn initiative on smallholder agriculture, launched at the group’s recent summit in L’Aquila, Italy, is a potentially historic breakthrough in the fight against hunger and extreme poverty. With serious management of the new funds, food production in Africa will soar.

Indeed, the new initiative, combined with others in health, education, and infrastructure, could be the greatest step so far toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed effort to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by half by 2015…

…One cornerstone of the project was “smallholder farmers”,  meaning peasant farm families in Africa, Latin America, and Asia – working farms of around one hectare (2.5 acres) or less. These are some of the poorest households in the world, and, ironically, some of the hungriest as well, despite being food producers.

They are hungry because they lack the ability to buy high-yield seeds, fertiliser, irrigation equipment, and other tools needed to increase productivity.

As a result, their output is meagre and insufficient for their subsistence. Their poverty causes low farm productivity, and low farm productivity reinforces their poverty. It’s a vicious circle, technically known as a poverty trap.

Is that really the reason why these farmers are  “some of the poorest households in the world, and, ironically, some of the hungriest”?  Sachs likes to talk about “history’s lessons,” but hasn’t history also taught us that hunger doesn’t happen in isolation?  Surely, these farmers aren’t just hungry because they lack industrial farming technology.  What’s the bigger picture look like?  (here’s one look, and another)

And has anybody else noticed that everything aid-related seems to be an “historic breakthrough” for Sachs, even while poverty is still rampant, abroad and at home?  Maybe Sachs is missing something…

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