Kenya is fighting now over their empty stomachs

Donette Read Kruger

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 17:00:00 +0000

Police clear up debris on road in Nairobi, Kenya on Sunday 1 June
2008. Picture credit: AFP
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SIX months ago, December 2007 Kenya made the world news for all the
wrong reasons. Political unrest, more clearly defined by machetes
being scraped along the tarmac, brought an instant halt to the arrival
of that instant money spinner, the golden rich tourist. If effect,
overnight, the country was divided in two and its pot of gold at the
end of the rainbow smashed to smithereens. It was during this period
that granaries and farms were set alight.




During Kenya’s disputed presidential elections in December 1,500 died
and some 600,000 were displaced. As a result, according to BBC reports
this morning, the Kenyan government has been forced to import three
million bags of maize.



In a month, basically due to increased food prices, from 21.8% in
March, the annual inflation rose to 26.6%.



Ultimately, political unrest has brought, in its wake, a tsunami of
food riots to Kenya.



Today’s news is that hungry protestors are storming the streets of
Nairobi, demanding the Kenyan government cuts back the cost of basic
staples like maize flour which will hardly auger well with the
foreigners who were assured during February that business was
“continuing as usual”.



The negative impact of these food riots will surely affect Kenya’s
Tourism even more?



According to the BBC, the Kenyan police have been forced to fire tear
gas in their endeavours to disperse hundreds of demonstrators.



It is ironic that, after destroying the granaries and farms, the
demonstrators in the city of Nairobi are now demanding that the
government subsidise the cost of food!



Throughout the world the prices of maize, rice and wheat has almost
doubled in the last year, and Africa is one continent that finds it
particularly difficult to feed itself.



While the world looks on and keeps repeating over and over again that
“Agriculture in Africa needs all the help it can get”, to no avail, GM
foods have been viewed with suspicion across the continent. In fact,
in 2002 GM foods were turned away during Zambia’s famine.



Closer to home, Europe rejected growing GM crops whereas the US
embraced the new technology and despite the negative rumours about GM
crops, it is a fact that an area twice the size of Britain now boasts
GM foods. There is now a global food crisis and shortages gripping a
world where once we were accustomed to seeing mountains of grain, and
Somalia, Cameroon and Senegal have themselves been subjected to deadly
riots over the cost of food in those places, especially in cities
which are struggling to import food.



Instead of growing food crops, in Tanzania the government is being
coerced into planting Jatropha, a weed that produces Jatropha curcas
seeds which are used in making bio diesel fuel, despite the fact that
the World Bank says “…overall food prices have increased 83% in the
last three years (2005)!” and they have announced emergency measures
which include double agricultural loans to African farmers to tackle
the problem.



Jatropha is no longer popular in India where the Indians discovered it
is more profitable to grow food crops because in that way they could
feed themselves and still sell vegetables to their neighbours. As the
Tanzanians are about to learn, you cannot eat Jatropha.



Nothing else will grow where Jatropha has been planted. Now because of
world population growth, it is important for Africa (more now than
ever before) to recognise that Jatropha production is having an impact
on the availability of precious food crops and ultimately, the prices
of food will increase. It need not be spelt out to the readers that
the rarer a commodity, the more expensive it becomes.



Wouldn’t it have been more prudent to go the route of GM crops
instead, because as a continent, instead of presumed toxic poisoning
from GM goods (about which are so far, there have been no reports of
environmental or human health disasters as warned!) we are now doomed
to die of hunger instead!



By endeavouring to cultivate bio diesel fuels across our continent,
such as Jatropha, instead of food crops �" a basic necessity �" by
burning our granaries and destroying farms as a form of protest
whenever we are disillusioned with our government, Kenyans today will
realise that they have just gone and shot themselves in the foot.

http://www.talkzimbabwe.com/news/119/ARTICLE/2588/2008-06-01.html