Video: Andrew Harding’s report from Mogadishu

Ken Menkhaus (courtesy of Davidson College)

The Islamist Al Shabaab group has been blocking aid, apparently because it’s seen as coming from “infidels.” There are also reports that Al Shabaab has been preventing starving people from fleeing the country. Lisa Mullins speaks with Ken Menkhaus, a Somalia expert at Davidson College

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: There are also reports that Al Shabab has been preventing starving people from fleeing the country.  Ken Menkhaus is a political scientist at Davidson College and he is a Somalia expert.  Why would Al Shabab do that — essentially imprison people and let them starve instead of letting them go where the food is?

Ken Menkhaus: The famine and the massive flow of people trying to escape the famine is an indictment of Shabab, a reflection of the failure of the organization to provide even the most basic protection and services for the large area that it controls.  I think they’re also concerned about the prospect of losing a large number of people who are their tax base and the source of recruitment into the militia.

Mullins: Well, if they keep them there and don’t let any food in then people are going to be starving anyway, why are they holding on so tightly, especially they’re apparently letting some groups in to deliver aid, but not others, and not the majority…why does it cooperate with some aid groups and not others?

Menkaus: It has accused a lot of aid organizations of being spys for the west.  Those that they have allowed to remain are there at a very low level, not dealing in large scale food aid, but dealing with you know, small levels of medical supplies.  They’re certainly looking to increase the flow of food aid from Islamic charities, but I think at this point we’re looking at an organization that has leadership problems so profound that we have to consider the possibility that this could be the 21st century’s Cambodia’s killing fields, the Pol Pot kind of situation where a group is going to preside over the mass deaths of the people it controls.

Mullins: You mean by not letting aid in and not letting the people out.

Menkaus: Precisely.

Mullins: How does it have such control over this swatch of land, and maybe you can describe the area that it is in control of.

Menkaus: Shabab loosely controls all of the territory from the Kenyan border to most of the Mogadishu and up toward the Ethiopian border and into central Somalia.  So it controls over a third of the territory of Somalia, and it’s the most important, most populated part of the country.  It does not have a large number of fighters.  This is a group of a few thousand at most.  It does not constitute a state within a state like Hezbollah or Hamas has done.  Its control consists of a handful of young kids with guns, mines, towns, and villages.

Mullins: You mentioned Hezbollah and Lebanon, and Hamas and the West Bank, even those organizations provide some kind of service to the people, which is one way of getting in good graces with the people as a result.  Al Shabab, is it doing anything to ingratiate itself or win the hearts and minds of people aside from setting up these containment camps?

Menkaus: It won the hearts and minds of a lot of Somalis back in ’07 and ’08 when it fought against the Ethiopian military occupation, but now the Ethiopians are long gone.  What Shabab has done is it has provided better law and order, it’s a rule of terror, but it has made no attempt to create that kind of state within a state that we see in places like southern Lebanon with Hezbollah.

Mullins: One more question, what does the United States do in this case?  I mean it realizes as otehrs do in the international community that much of the aid that they give might be absconded with by Al Shabab or turned down by the organization.  What options then do we have?

Menkaus: Currently the aid is restricted because of the Patriot Act, which forbids material benefits flowing to a terrorist group.  The government understands that the Patriot Act was never meant to deny famine aid, and they are looking to initiate some sort of a waiver that would provide legal protection for the non-profits that would then try to get the food aid in.  So if that happens and if the NGOs are able to work out networks of security to get in, the only remaining impasse is Shabab itself.  And there I think what we’re gonna see is some Shabab leaders breaking and agreeing to get the food into their areas while hard liners continue to resist.

Mullins: That’s Ken Menkhaus who’s a political scientist at Davidson College in North Carolina.  He spoke to us from Washington.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

In a way, even though the child is different from famine to famine, be it Ethiopia in 1984 or Somalia in 2011 and dozens more besides, the picture of the child is always the same.

“These people have no names, they have no identities,” says Barbie Zelizer, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication in Philadelphia.

“And we don’t know actually if the people we’re looking at are dying if they’re already dead by the time we look at their pictures.”

Zelizer says the image of the child is a symbolic proxy for the larger story of famine, in this case the famine in Somalia. It’s an image of what Zelizer calls ‘possible death’.

The power of the image isn’t really in what has happened, but in what will continue to happen as we look on.

And, says Zelizer, the fact that we’re seeing these images now–the same images that have haunted the West for decades–means things have already gotten desperate in Somalia.

“What this tells us is that these are delayed, they’re retrospective. They’re giving us visual information about stories that we’ve already read about.”

There have been news stories about the drought and security crisis in Somalia for some time.

And international aid agencies have been warning for months that drought, conflict and high food prices would likely generate a humanitarian crisis there. They use versions of the same image, too.

“Often images like these come to the forefront of public attention not only by journalists but also by non-journalists: through human rights organizers, through fundraisers, through celebrities, through relief workers who recognize that there is a need to push the visual dimension of these stories if there is going to be any kind of policy change” says Zelizer.

Indeed, images from news and aid organizations do have an impact on the willingness of governments to respond.

Philip Seib directs the Center on Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

He points out that it was TV reports from Ethiopia in 1984 that really got the relief effort going.

“Governments don’t react sometimes until they feel they have to, and that requires some political pressure from below, which means news coverage needs to alert the public to provide that pressure.”

And, however late it comes in the story, arguably no image produces more pressure–or more donations–than the one depicting a single emaciated African child. That’s why we keep seeing instances of it in famine after famine.

“They are used precisely because they remain powerful. Whatever the problems with them, they remain powerful for the purpose of fundraising.”

So said photographer and researcher David Campbell at a seminar on the imagery of famine in 2005.

In recent weeks Campbell has been arguing in discussions online that the powerful symbolism of the starved African child is a double-edged sword.

Looking at that picture alone, he says, Africa becomes a single entity, a single person even. It also becomes a child: the continent is infantilized.

Finally, Africa is reduced to the desperate and passive status of a victim. And while the image packs an enormous emotional punch, it blinds us to the structural issues that created the famine in the first place.

We don’t see pictures of al-Shabab fighters blocking water or diverting food away from people. We don’t see the difference between this famine and other famines.

We only see the final result.

And we need words – or more images -to fill in the gaps. Still, says Philip Seib at USC, that can only happen if the story has gained people’s attention in the first place, and that’s only getting harder.

“The biggest task is just getting through all the noise and letting people know what’s going on” he says.

The image of the emaciated child does that, time after time.

We want to know your thoughts: Does the use of imagery depicting emaciated children in Africa help or hinder the communication of the serious issue of famine? Post your thoughts below:

"The Garden of Eden" by Lucas Cranach der Ältere

For the Ariekei, who live on a distant planet in China Miéville’s latest novel Embassytown, speech is thought: “Without language for things that didn’t exist, they could hardly think them.”

In Miéville’s Ariekei language, there is no room for metaphor, no space between the thing – or the idea – and the word. As a result, the Ariekei have no concept of lying. Language is truth, rather than merely standing in for it. Quite the opposite of any human language.

The Ariekei’s form of communication is meant to echo the pre-language of the Garden of Eden, before Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Miéville plays on the idea that language itself– human language — represents the Fall. As Miéville says, maybe the adoption of language is “rather a good fall.” It’s a nice irony that the Ariekei have two mouths (as well as hooves and wings).

China Miéville

Miéville is – and I’m just learning this — one of the leading lights of the so-called New Weird generation of fantasy writers. Some say it’s only a matter of time until he busts out of his genre and wins some general fiction prizes.

Also in the pod this week: A short discussion of the word blagging, popularized by the News International scandal; why governments and aid agencies avoid using the word famine (more here). And, if you sing in French, don’t expect airtime in the Brussels metro (more here).

Photos: Stuart Caie/Flickr, Wikipedia

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(Courtesy of FAMINE EARLY WARNING SYSTEMS NETWORK & FOOD SECURITY AND NUTRTION ANALYSIS UNIT)

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. The United Nations today, formally declared a famine in parts of Southern Somalia. The U.N. says millions of people in the conflict torn East African nation are at risk of starving to death. It also warns that famine could engulf the rest of Southern Somalia within weeks. East Africa is enduring the worst drought in decades, and the disruption caused by war is making things even more severe. Justin Kilcullen is the director of the Irish aid agency known as Trócaire. He has been to various areas of Somalia in recent weeks, he’s now in Nairobi. What have you seen, Justin, that has proved to you just how bad this drought and this famine is?

Justin Kilcullen: Well I’ve seen hundreds of people on the move, exhausted, after long walks of 20 days or more across arid land, looking to find help. Coming to reception centers, where unfortunately, there is little for them. They tell stories of tragedy along the way – of having to leave dead children on the side of the road, elderly people dying. I spoke to a young woman today, just 15, who was raped. And there are many other stories like that. And they arrive to these areas of bush land with little there – some plastic sheeting to provide some cover for them. They sleep on the ground. They are mixing with animals. Today we were in the camp, having to pick our way through the excrement of animals, watching people just sitting listlessly, and waiting for the aid to arrive. Meanwhile, in Nairobi today there was a press conference and the point was made over and over again, that only 40% of the requests from the United Nations and other aid agencies for the money that they require to deal with this crisis, only 40% is forthcoming. And unless more funds come immediately, this is going to escalate.

Mullins: Justin, why has the response been slow? Because famine doesn’t just happen overnight.

Kilcullen: Well, first of all, last October when the crops failed for the second year in a row, the development agencies began to raise this issue but it found little resonance with governments. We have had, I suppose, the crises in Haiti and Pakistan last year, two enormous disasters that focused the world’s attention on other areas other than East Africa. And then you have an underlying political problem here in question of Somalia, which is seen as a failed state, is seen as a risk to the security of Western countries. And that, you know, the Somali people have somehow been neglected because living amongst them are those who are seen to be dangerous to our security. So once again, putting it frankly, we’ve out our own welfare before that of others. And what we’re saying here in Nairobi tonight is it’s time to put people first. It’s time to stop branding Somalia as a terrorist state. There are 10 million people living in Somalia, there are not 10 million terrorists living there. A tiny number in comparison to the broad population, and yet somehow they all seem to have to suffer because of this perceived threat to our security in the West.

Mullins: You’re talking, Justin, about some of the complicating factors. One enormous complicating factor is the Islamic militant group known as Al-Shabaab, which has violently opposed any kind of foreign aid and has killed foreigners, has killed in fact humanitarian aid workers, as you well know. Have they disrupted, this group Al-Shabaab, has it disrupted your organization’s deliveries?

Kilcullen: Well you know, what you say is true, but Al-Shabaab is changing. They have said that they will open up the regions under their control to allow in reputable agencies to bring assistance. So they have seen, I suppose, the plight of their people. And any political group knows that if they’re not meeting the needs of their people then they have no legitimacy whatsoever. So the circumstances there are changing. And Mary Robinson, the former President of Ireland and the former U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights, who led our delegation, made the point here in Nairobi tonight that in a strange way, this famine may be an opportunity to have political developments in Somalia, because it changes the game. Everybody now has to take account of this crisis and I believe that if there’s correct political engagement, in a very considered and focused way, with the different political factions in Somalia, there is an opportunity to move the political situation forward. And that would be to the benefit the of everybody, not least the people of Somalia who are so desperately in need of aid.

Mullins: That was Justin Kilcullen, who’s Director of the Irish aid group known as Trócaire, speaking to us from Nairobi, Kenya.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

“We have to have evidence that 20% or more of the population has extremely limited access to food, and very little ability to cope with those food deficits,” said Chris Hillburner, an advisor to the US Famine Early Warning Systems Network or FEWSNET.

The second piece of evidence is a high level of malnutrition. To be a famine, at least 30% of children aged FIVE and below have to be severely malnourished.

The third piece of evidence is a high death rate, said Hillburner.

“The death rate that applies to the entire population has to be above 2 per ten thousand, per day.”

That is four times the average death rate in a food secure population.

By May and June of this year, the levels of food access and malnutrition had crossed the famine threshold, says Hillburner. He says FEWSNET had warned the international community that the situation in parts of Somalia might be headed towards a famine.

But they couldn’t declare a famine, until they had the third piece of the puzzle—the overall death rate.

That information was collected by the United Nations starting early this month. The United Nations Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit for Somalia (FSNAU) has been analyzing those numbers for the past week.

“And as they started to come in, it was very clear what we were seeing,” said Grainne Moloney, chief technical advisor at FSNAU.

The death rates in two parts of Southern Somalia—Lower Shabelle and Bakool—had not only reached the famine threshold, but exceeded it.

“In Bakool, the death rate is 2.2,” said Moloney. “In Lower Shabelle, there were two surveys. One of the death rates was four. The other death rate was 6.”

That’s six deaths per ten thousand people per day. Add that up, and you get tens of thousands of people who have already died between April and June of this year.

Situation Likely to Worsen

The latest data on malnutrition reveal levels far above the famine threshold of 30%. In some parts of Southern Somalia, the malnutrition levels are as high as 40 and 50%.

“These are really shocking!” said Moloney. “These have not been seen in this part of the world in I don’t know, in 20 years.”

The last time Somalia experienced a famine was in 1992. And it is likely that this year’s famine will still grow worse.

The latest analysis by FEWSNET and FSNAU predict that within the next couple of months all of Southern Somalia will experience a famine.

“It’s absolutely certain that people will start dying at a very high rate,” said Moloney.

But if the international community can scale up aid efforts in the region, thousands of lives can still be saved, she added.

Estimated food security conditions, 3rd Quarter 2011 (July-September 2011) (Graphic courtesy: Fews Net)

If you look up the word “famine” in your dictionary, you will find it defined as ‘extreme hunger,’ or ‘starvation.’ That seems to describe what people are experiencing in East Africa, and it is a word some recent news reports have used.

But if you ask some scientists working on food security issues, you will find them steering clear of the word.

“There’s been an enormous shift away from using ‘famine’ as a label,” said NASA’s Molly Brown, who works as part of the US government’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network, or FEWSNET.

FEWSNET forecasts food shortages in different parts of the world.

Brown said that in decades past, governments and aid organizations often used the word famine to describe food emergencies, but they are less likely to do so today. In fact, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network has never declared a famine since its launch in the mid-1980s.

There are several reasons why experts avoid the word famine.

For one, it can sometimes make national governments defensive. Politicians look bad if a famine has been declared in their country, and they may deny the problem and refuse help to save face.

Also, declaring a famine can have unintended effects on local food markets.

“People who have available food for sale might say, ‘Oh, maybe I’ll wait another month or two because the prices are all going to go up,’” Brown said. That can mean even less food is available to those who need it.

Brown said using the famine label can be a good thing because it spurs the international community to act, but using the label too readily can backfire.

“If in 2012 they have another drought, or the drought continues, what are they going to do?” she asked. “If you use that trump card, you can’t take it back, and you can’t reuse it.”

So if “famine” is too weighty, emotive, and political a word to use – at least for now – how does one describe situations like the current one in East Africa?

For scientists and food aid experts, the answer is something called the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, which is a standardized scale that enables experts to rate food security from one to five, using a host of factors.

Nicholas Haan, cofounder and executive director of the IPC, explained that those factors include “rainfall, conflict, crop production, livestock conditions, nutrition,” and other measures.

A rating of one means an abundance of food. Five is the worst-case scenario – a famine.

Right now, in East Africa, the situation is phase four, or a food security emergency.

“In this particular case, it hasn’t yet reached famine levels,” said Camilla Knox-Pebbles of the aid group Oxfam, “although there are some indications that in some places we are very close to that given the high malnutrition levels.”

And that means the situation in parts of East Africa could officially be designated a famine soon if, experts say, the international community does not help now.

• In pictures: Life in poverty-stricken North Korea
• North Korea’s Kim visits China

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  Kim Jong Il’s clandestine trip to China may have ended today.  There are reports that the North Korean leader boarded a train in Beijing for parts unknown.  North Korea is believed to be facing another severe food shortage and the speculation is that Kim went to China seeking aid.  While North Korea is facing scarcity, South Korean famers can’t sell all the rice they’re growing.  Now some suggest there’s a solution that could help solve both Koreas problems.  Jason Strother has more from Andong, 150 miles south of Seoul.

JASON STROTHER:  Trays of soil move along a conveyor belt where machines mix in water and rice seeds.  At the other end of the track farmers stack the trays on metal carts and bring them into the nursery.  Kim Dong Jin explains that after about 3 weeks of growing, he’ll transplant the seedlings to the paddies.  Good weather over the past couple years has yielded bigger harvests for farmers like Kim.  But Kim says he can’t make a living anymore by just selling rice.  In addition to rice, Kim says, I’ve started growing different crops like watermelons and beans to make more money.  Kim says the problem is a rice surplus that’s caused prices to plummet.  According to Nonghyup, one of South Korea’s largest food cooperatives, there’s currently a stockpiles of more than 600,000 tons of rice, prompting a 15% price drop in the past year.  Sung Jim Keum is director of the Korean Agricultural Management Association.  He says one reason rice farmers can’t sell as much as before is South Korean consumers aren’t eating rice like they used to.  He says as Koreans have gotten wealthier, they’ve adopted more of a western lifestyle based on what they see in movies or television.  They are eating more western foods like hamburger and flour based foods like bread.  But some farmers say a change in lifestyle isn’t the only reason there’s a rice surplus.  For much of the past decade, the South Korean government gave North Korea more than a million tons of rice to help feed its people, but that ended when Conservative President Lee Myung Bak took office in 2008.  Now some farmers here say resuming those rice exports would reduce the rice glut and help them stay afloat.  Members of agricultural unions have joined with opposition politicians to protest President Lee’s decision to cut off food aid to the north.  Kim Jin Bum heads an organization that represents thousands of farmers.  He disputes the government’s position that humanitarian assistance to North Korea has brought nothing in return.  We weren’t just giving the north rice without any conditions Kim says.  We had an agreement that starting in 2020 they would start paying us back, not in rice, but perhaps in other natural resources.  But there’s no way to be sure that Pyongyang would live up to its end of the bargain.  So, Kim also endorses donating rice to other developing nations with chronic food shortages to get rid of the surplus here, though, he concedes it might not be a popular idea.  He says people would not be happy if we send rice to another country.  South and North Koreans are the same people and giving our rice to other people would be considered as going against our national pride.  Farmer Kim Dong Jin in Andong says pride is not an issue for him.  He supports sending rice to North Korea, even with the growing tensions between the north and south following the sinking in March of a South Korean Navy ship.  He says as long as the price of rice keeps going down and down, I don’t care what country we send it to.  I just want to be able to sell my rice.  For The World, I’m Jason Strother in Andong, South Korea.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC coverage

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MARCO WERMAN:     I’m Marco Werman.   This is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  Exactly 25 years ago, famine gripped Ethiopia.   Few could forget the images of emaciated children, their bellies bloated, and their parents starving and desperate.   In the decades that followed, the nation on the horn of Africa seemed to put that crisis behind it.  But now, a quarter of a century later, Ethiopia may be slipping back into a food emergency.   Today, the Ethiopian government announced it needs emergency food aid for 6.2 million people.  The crisis stems from a prolonged drought that’s afflicting the region.  BBC correspondent Mike Wooldridge witnessed Ethiopia’s famine in the mid- ’80s.  Now he’s back.  And Mike, you are aware it all started 25 years ago right now.

MIKE WOOLDRIDGE:  I am indeed.  I’m in the town of Mekele up in the highlands of northern Ethiopia which, along with Quorem, was really the epicenter of that famine and some of the most iconic images and sounds of that famine 25 years ago, came from here.

WERMAN:  Well, we’ll talk in a moment about what’s changed in Mekele and Ethiopia and the current famine that’s unfolding there, but first you mentioned sounds that you heard 25 years ago.  This is actually sound you gathered 25 years ago to the day.

WOOLDRIDGE:  It’s too late to save the lives of many of the people around me here in a corrugated iron shelter on the outskirts of Mekele.  A middle aged man who’s just died in front of me.  His grieving daughter at his side has now lost most of her family in this famine. A few minutes ago, we came across a small bundle in another corner of the shelter which contained the body of a boy of four or five.  He was one of six children whose mother died last week.  Two more children died here this morning.  Here at a Red Cross feeding center for the most severely malnourished children, Nurse Clare Birchinger says it’s heartbreaking to have to send so many needy children away.

CLARE BIRCHINGER:  For the 500 we take, there’s thousands we can’t take and that’s terrible, really terrible.

WERMAN:  Mike Wooldridge, that was such a dire time.  You’re back there in Mekele now.  How have things changed?  I mean, the civil war is over, but how much has life really changed there?

WOOLDRIDGE:  Well, physically, life has changed enormously.  Here in particular, this really was just two or three parallel main streets when I was here with just dusty side streets, but today ,this is a bustling town, a lot of new buildings here.  It’s seen a lot of development.  But that famine of 1984, `985 is of course deeply embedded in the memories, particularly of people here, and particularly of people in Quorem because they saw so much suffering, they saw so much death.  But alongside that, I’ve had people saying to me these past few days, “We don’t want these two places to be remembered only as places of suffering and death.  We also want them to be remembered as places where lives were saved,” because of course, eventually, an unprecedented aid operation got under way and at least bringing together air forces from western countries and from the Soviet bloc of the time to work together, because Ethiopia was very much caught up in a kind of proxy part of the Cold War.  An extraordinary aid operation that did succeed in saving many lives.  So all of that really feeds in to the psyche of people, and particularly in this highland part of Ethiopia today.

WERMAN:  And yet the Ethiopian government today says it needs emergency food aid for over 6 million people.  The World Food Program says $285 million for relief food is needed for the next six months.  What or who is to blame for the current crisis?

WOOLDRIDGE:  I think climate change, if you want to call it that, is most certainly one of the factors, but it’s not the only one.  In a way, the factors that were there right back in 1984 and in the previous famine in 1974, are still at play.  The farming landscape here has been very degraded, high populations. And that population has now doubled in Ethiopia. It’s at least 75 million people here now, doubled since 1984, trying to farm the land. So you’ve got that, you’ve got the climate change, you’ve got the environmental factors and some would say you’ve got political factors too, to do with the government’s land policies and so on, which don’t necessarily give farmers the incentives that they might have to grow, though the government denies that.

WERMAN:  I was in Addis Ababa in 2005, 20 years on from Live Aid, the big concert organized by Sir Bob Geldof as a response to the TV pictures that you and Michael Burke brought back. And the conclusion of a lot of the people I spoke with was that the government was simply holding out for more debt relief, and just not focused on these rural areas where a lot of these crises occur.  The humanitarian group, Oxfam, is today calling for a new approach for tackling the risk of disaster in Ethiopia.  Are they referring, do you think, to some of these considerations in the capital?

WOOLDRIDGE:  They may well be, but in a way, Oxfam are pointing to what the government would say that it is signed up to itself.  It would say that its strategy now is very much about reducing the chronic vulnerability of so many people in the rural areas.  Now others might say that that could have progressed much further with different kinds of government policies.  All that’s arguable, but certainly, just about everybody here does talk the language of reducing vulnerability.  Oxfam today is calling it “disaster risk management,” but Oxfam have also got a message for the donors and actually particularly for the United States, because much of the US aid here is still in the form of food aid brought from the United States.  And Oxfam is saying that while, particularly at the moment, food aid is necessary and save lives, the concentration should not be so much on that.  There should be a shift, so that much more in the way of resources, donor resources, private investment too no doubt, is put into helping communities, these rural communities, so hard pressed so often, withstand these what will be probably ever more frequent shocks because of climate change.

WERMAN:  The BBC’s Mike Wooldridge in the Ethiopian town of Mekele.  Thank you very much indeed.

WOOLDRIDGE:  And Marco, thank you very much too.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• 2005 Niger food crisis
• Niger country profile

Grains market at the border between Nigeria and Niger

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MARCO WERMAN: One reason food is plentiful in much of the world is the so-called Green Revolution of the second half of the 20th Century.  High yield crop varieties and other innovations helped to more than double world food production from 1960 to 1990. Experts say the advances saved perhaps a billion lives.  One of the key figure behind the Green Revolution died over the weekend at the age of 95.  Norman Borlaug was plant pathologist who helped develop the new varieties of wheat the helped spark the explosion in crop yield.  That work earned him a Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.  To help us understand the legacy of Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution, we turn to Lester Brown.  Brown is the head of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington and he’s followed development in global agriculture and food supply perhaps as closely as anyone over the last four years.  Mr. Brown, take us back, if you would, first to Norman Borlaug’s work of the middle of the last century and the challenge he had at that time of feeding the world?

LESTER BROWN: Well, food supplies were tightening in the early ’60s and even before that as we anticipate the huge growth in the human population during the last half of the 20th Century.  And what Norm Borlaug did was to take the dwarf wheat that had been developed in Japan to Mexico and began breeding them with local varieties, but he was in a hurry to do this so he had two different plant breeding sites.  In the summer time, he’d grow a crop in Northern Mexico and ten take those seeds down to Southern Mexico and grow them in the winter so he could get two crops a year and speed up the new variety development process.  And what that did and even he was not sort of aware of it, was it produced high yielding varieties of wheat that were widely adaptable in growing conditions.  So when it came time to look for varieties of wheat that would work well in Pakistan and India, he had the answer.

WERMAN: The Nobel Peace Price Committee said when they presented Borlaug with the Peace Price more than any other single person of this age he has helped provide bread for a hungry world.  Is that an overstatement?

BROWN: No because it was those high yielding wheat that made such an enormous contribution to food production in many countries throughout the developing world.

WERMAN: The Green Revolution, of course, leads to some pretty serious unintended and unforeseen consequences.  Tell us what we know now that we didn’t know then that cast the Green Revolution, and Borlaug’s work in the different light.

BROWN: Well, there’s been a tendency particularly in the environmental community to criticize the Green Revolution because it lead to more intensive agriculture, the use of heavy applications of fertilizer, for example, and this would seem as not a good thing in the eyes of many. But in the eyes of the people in India, who hadn’t very little new land that could be brought under the plow, it was the only way to go.  The alternative would have been to totally deforest the rest of India in an effort to try to produce more food, but it wouldn’t have worked because most of the remaining forest land was marginal land in any event.  And it’s easy to look at some of the problems associated with the Green Revolution, but in order to evaluate that you need to spin out the alternative scenario which would have been India without a Green Revolution, for example, and that would have been an epic tragedy.

WERMAN: Do you still feel that the world is better off with the developments of the Green Revolution than without?

BROWN: Well, I don’t think there’s any question that that was desirable.  My big disappointment in the case of India and many other developing countries was that they did not, as I had hoped, give the same attention to getting the breaks on population growth.  As a result, today we have an India not with half a billion people but more than a billion people, and some 46% of all children are chronically hungry and malnourished.  So the problem has not been solved.  We sustained a much, much larger population but we have not eradicated hunger.

WERMAN: Lester Brown, thank you very much.

BROWN: My pleasure, Marco.

WERMAN: Lester Brown is the author of the forthcoming book, Plan B4.0 Mobilizing to Save Civilization.

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