Posted 90 days ago

Preparing the Global Poor in Uncertain Times

by Penny Carothers and Tom Sine, Mustard Seed Associates

Anticipating New Challenges Facing the Global Poor
“The global food crisis has arrived at Safia Ali’s hut. She cannot afford rice or wheat or powdered milk anymore. At the same time, a drought has decimated her family’s herd of goats, turning their sole livelihood into a pile of bleached bones and papery skin.” Safia and her family and millions of others in the Horn of Africa are facing famine. Part of the reason is that those on the bottom rung of the ladder simply cannot compete with the rest of us for basic essentials like grain, milk and oil.¹ As followers of Jesus we need to imagine new ways to enable them to increase the self-sufficiency in uncertain times. Essentially, this global economy is not working at all well for those in poorer countries, and many like Safia and her family are not just left behind, their very lives are at risk. To illustrate this point, let’s look at another family in Bangladesh living on $5 a day. Such a family would usually spend $3 on food. Even a 50% rise in food prices would take $1.50 out of their budget, leaving them with only 50 cents to spend on the other necessities of life. In this case, most families go without enough to eat, or they start to depend more on aid organizations to meet their daily nutritional needs. Three distinct forces of economic globalization, creating the “perfect storm” for the world’s poor, directly cause this crisis. Let’s take a look at these three forces.

Demand for Grain by the Swelling Global Middle Class is Soaring
Between 1981 and 2001, 400 million Chinese lifted themselves out of extreme poverty into the burgeoning middle class. Part of the reason for the rise in global food prices for the poor, therefore, comes from the fact that the appetites of the increasingly prosperous Chinese are changing. Whereas the average Chinese consumer ate 44 pounds of beef in 1985, this year she will consume 110 pounds. It takes eight pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef. India, also on the rise, is seeing an increase in the amount of dairy and meat it consumes. In China, their appetite for alcohol, which is also grain-based, is increasing as well. These soaring appetites for meat and alcohol are likely to continue to send the global grain price even higher at the expense of Safia and her family and so many others.

Demand for Grain to Fuel Middle-Class Cars Is Soaring
Analysts say that as much as 30% of this year’s cereals crop in the US will go towards producing ethanol, which could only be the beginning. Forecasts show the price of corn rising by another 25 percent by 2020 due to the increased demand. And the trade-off? Fill up an SUV’s tank with ethanol and you have used enough corn to feed a person for a year. Again the global poor simply cannot compete with the appetites of those of us in the middle class.

While the Demand for Grain Is Soaring, the Dollar Is Sinking
Compounding the reality that grain prices are soaring is also the reality that the dollar is sinking like a rock. In fact it has declined in value over 15% in the past eight years. Two of the major reasons for the sinking dollar is the huge debt the US has incurred to fight the war in Iraq and our high balance of trade deficits with countries like China. As a consequence, the purchase power of major relief agencies has declined by 15% while the prices are rising into the stratosphere. The World Food Program’s (WFP) spokesman Robin Lodge put it succinctly when he said, “The same dollars don’t buy the same amount of food they used to,” and donations to the WFP are flat due to tightening purse strings in governmental budgets. In the short term, this situation is turning into a major crisis for the world’s hungry. The situation is made much worse because donations are flattening and our ability to purchase food is also declining dramatically. This is probably also caused by the growing economic pressure on the middle class. On March 20, 2008, the World Food Program (WFP), the UN’s food and agriculture organization that annually feeds at least 73 million people in nearly 80 countries, issued an emergency appeal for funds in order to close a funding gap of more than $500 million by May 1. Their operating costs have risen substantially due to the rising cost of food, despite their efforts to cut transportation costs by using local and regional markets to buy up to 80 percent of their food. As followers of Jesus, we need to join others in creating new ways to enable the global poor to live and become more self-reliant in these uncertain times.

Implications for the Global Poor
Clearly the global poor cannot depend on the global free market to work in their best interest. But neither can they count on international humanitarian organizations to always come to their rescue any longer. Increasingly the poor will need to create local and regional agricultural and economic systems that serve the basic needs of people in their region. Then they have freedom to participate in the global free trade where it doesn’t place their survival or well being at risk.

Creating New Possibilities with the Global Poor

Creating more local and sustainable food sources
Rising food prices limit the amount of food that aid agencies can purchase to help the hungriest, which is an immediate need that should be addressed. But the crisis also presents an opportunity. Farming accounts for two-thirds of jobs in the poorest countries and, as was the case in China, is the most important contributor to the early stages of economic growth. The example of the WFP buying local and regional sources of grain shows how the market-driven food shortage can benefit farmers and agricultural communities. Purchasing food in-country or regionally will boost the most important source of jobs and economic growth in poor, rural areas where 75% of the world’s poorest live. It also provides a ready source of food rather than just a cash crop that is dependent on a volatile market.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is developing a program to offer vouchers to poor farmers for seeds and fertilizer to help them adapt to changing climate conditions, which would help alleviate the shortage of food in the long term, and make these countries food exporters once again. These are encouraging developments, but most people want to know how they can be personally involved.

Creating more intercropping to increase food self-sufficiency
If you live in a food-insecure region, one of the best things you can do is encourage intercropping. Intercropping is a method of cultivation that provides a year-round supply of food and makes optimal use of available land by growing tree crops, shrub crops and row corps together. It can be practiced on large plots or in family gardens. Though it has recently been supplanted in favor of mono-cropping, which is suitable for international export, intercropping has been around for millennia because it makes efficient use of soil nutrients and provides a safeguard against pestilence and weather events. The FAO has several descriptive and useful pamphlets that provide all the information that one would need to begin using this method.²

Creating alternative protein sources
Animals are like savings banks in many regions of the world. They provide a path of self-sufficiency and act as a source of income and food when times are hard. Protein sources are needed that do not rely on grain. A wealthy Chinese philanthropist who works with Heifer International has given rabbits to some 200,000 rural framers in China. They eat grass that is abundant in rural areas and breed rapidly. They not only provide poor families with a new protein source, but they also sell them in the markets, which both increases their income and the amount of protein in the diet of people in their villages.

One of the most immediate ways people of faith can make a difference is to support programs to increase local and regional agricultural and economic self-sufficiency. This will enable our poorest neighbors to selectively participate in this new global economy instead of being at the mercy of forces over which they have very little influence. If followers of Jesus reduced the amount we invest in the global mall, we could free up much more resource to invest in everything from regional agricultural to micro-enterprise projects. We could not only help "make poverty history," we could also help people all over the world to create sustainable communities.

Works Referenced
“A Delicate Condition,” The Economist, January 19, 2008, pp. 81-82.
Rosenthal, Elisabeth, “World Food Supply is Shrinking Agency Warns,” The New York Times, December 18, 2007, p. C5.
“The End of Cheap Food,” The Economist, December 8, 2007, pp. 11-12.
“Why the Era of Cheap Food is Over,” The Christian Science Monitor, December 31, 2007, p. 13.
“Famine Looms As Wars Rend Horn of Africa,” The New York Times, May 17, 2008. 2.
fao.org has a series that addresses agriculture; Pamphlets 11, 12, and 13 are particularly useful.

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