
Is the Era of Great Famines Over? - upen
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/09/opinion/is-the-era-of-great-famines-over.html
======
genieyclo
It is amazing to see this on the top of HN right after I get off a call with
my mother about sending more emergency remittances to my uncle's family in
remote east Ethiopia/Ogaden. The situation there is very dire with all the
livestock (all their wealth) perished, no rains from this year's Deyr rainy
season that just ended and no working wells for groundwater.

If anyone is reading this and wants to help with the crisis situation there,
please donate to The Denan Project[1] which is basically the only aid group on
the ground. All the majors (Oxfam, ICRC, etc) have been awol during this
year's extreme drought (worst in more than 30 years). 100% of donations go to
directly supporting people with food and water aid, medical aid (we built the
only clinic for hundreds of miles) and other direct support. All overhead
costs are already covered by the very generous, selfless folks behind The
Denan Project.

Dick Young, founder of The Denan Project wrote a letter to the editor response
to this same article by Alex de Waal in the NYT:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/opinion/ethiopia-and-
the-e...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/opinion/ethiopia-and-the-end-of-
famine.html?_r=0)

[1]: [http://www.thedenanproject.org/](http://www.thedenanproject.org/)

~~~
pdeuchler
It's rather disturbing to see such a disconnect between reality and the
perception of it among the western elite, specifically concerning the general
living conditions most of the world lives in. This article seems to be nothing
more than the same old post-scarcity rhetoric that certain groups push for
political gain every couple of years.

The world is as it has always been; some things are getting better in some
places, other things getting worse elsewhere, and in many places the status
quo is largely continued. Making such sweeping declarations like the article
does merely serves to turn extremely nuanced and interconnected systems into
black and white judgement calls. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader as
to why that is, and why it's being printed in the NYT.

~~~
andrewmutz
Perhaps the article linked is wrong about the conditions in Ethiopia. However,
aside from this particular instance, I think it should be mentioned that the
world is not as it always has been. Tremendous progress is being made at
reducing global poverty and global undernourishment. You can see evidence and
data here:

[https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-
undernourishment/#ref-...](https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-
undernourishment/#ref-8)

I think it is important to acknowledge successes so that we don't falsely
believe we are failing and as a result, reject systems that are working.

------
drcross
Across the world we really need to start providing free food at a national
level-

1\. Many large nations already heavily subsidise food for food security as it
stands. We need to avoid butter mountains and milk lakes because it's
wasteful.

2\. Many first world countries already feed their population to high school
level anyway.

2\. A national plan for good, healthy, free food will prompt people to eat
properly, on average it would encourage responsible eating (you can only get
so big eating potatoes, broccoli and meat, it's the heavily processed stuff
that is dangerous).

3\. Job Automation is going to change our work situations anyway, within 5
years alone we'll have taxi drivers and hauliers without jobs. Once AI removes
these jobs we'll have serious problems on our hands with unemployment.

4\. If everyone didn't have to struggle with the time and money to feed
themselves maybe we could concentrate on what's more important, like getting
to mars or something.

~~~
nostromo
Basic income is better because you provide people with the money to feed
themselves while preserving the free market and all its benefits (efficiency,
choice, etc).

We see over and over that cash assistance is preferable to providing goods
(like food or housing) directly.

~~~
devoply
The "free" market with companies under heavy competition looking to make
consumers into fatty addicts obvious fails in many ways. The choice which is
available is often extremely unhealthy and dominated by a few conglomerates.
So though the argument for the free market works for many things, I think
there is ample proof that it does not produce good outcomes for food.

It's optimized to produce cheap, addictive food because that's what the people
crave. Much like Brawndo.

~~~
jlarocco
It's dubious to blame obesity on the free market. At the end of the day eating
well and staying healthy is a personal responsibility. In most cities and
towns there are just as many healthy options available as there are unhealthy
options, and most of the time it's no more expensive (or even cheaper) to eat
well than it is to buy junk. Fact of the matter is, a lot of people _choose_
to eat poorly.

I strongly disagree with the concept that another person knows better than I
do which food I should eat or how I should otherwise live my life.

That said, there should be more education around nutrition. Even free healthy
food doesn't help anything if people are too dumb to choose it over junk.

~~~
devoply
> At the end of the day eating well and staying healthy is a personal
> responsibility.

A significant portion of human beings are wired for addiction. It's a fiction
to claim that people are all free and are responsible for every choice that
they make. We for instance control market on all drugs that have any potential
for addiction, food has a potential for addiction for lots of people. If
people are so free to choose to stay healthy and eat well, then why are all
drugs not freely available to anyone who wants them. Opiates, benzos, etc.

No one is saying that anyone else should tell you what to eat. I am simply
saying that free food that is healthy should be freely available. No friction
and no excuses to not eat healthy. And economically there is a huge incentive
to eat that free food as it's free.

~~~
jlarocco
Drugs are kind of a straw man, but FWIW, I think those should be legal too.
I'd rather my tax money not be spent baby sitting people.

But they are a great example of just how useless it is trying to control
people. Heroin is illegal, yet overdoses are at an all time high. A lot of
people only end up on heroin because it's so difficult to get less powerful
opiate pain killers. Prohibition doesn't work. People are going to do what
they want to do anyway.

Some portion of the population are going to make really stupid decisions no
matter what. The rest of us need to get over it and stop trying to "help" them
if they don't want it.

------
ewindisch
No.

[http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/03/31/north-korea-warns-
ne...](http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/03/31/north-korea-warns-new-famine-
as-kims-weight-belligerence-balloon.html)

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/19/north-korea-
fe...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/19/north-korea-fears-famine-
as-drought-halves-food-production-says-un)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/pyongyangs-
hunger...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/pyongyangs-hunger-
games.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine)

~~~
tomjen3
Lets rephrase it to include only people not run by batshit crazy clones of
Stalin.

~~~
snrplfth
"Let's do what North Korea does, that seems to be working out really well,"
said nobody.

~~~
m0llusk
The situation in North Korea actually works out quite well for a very small
number of people which is one of the main reasons why it endures.

~~~
snrplfth
But not even _that_ well by global standards of autocrats! I mean, that small
group could be like the wealthy, globe-trotting Communist Party of China
apparatchiks, or the gilded, pampered princes of the Middle East. But instead
they get to sit around their grey concrete bunkers, watch irritating
propaganda TV, and drink overpriced imported cognac. Whoopee.

I mean, you have to be truly incompetent to be next door to China for the last
thirty years and think "nah, we shouldn't do reforms - wouldn't want to lose
our luxuries as members of the political class!"

~~~
m0llusk
They have different goals such as enjoying power and raping young girls. Do
you really think that other autocrats and oligarchs get to do things like rape
with impunity? Maybe some of them. You are projecting your own tastes and
ideas onto people with orders of magnitude more power and money than you will
ever have.

~~~
snrplfth
I guess so. But they're not even actually that good at being dictators. Even a
solely power-maximizing autocrat should realize what does and does not work
economically. It's like Venezuela - their incompetence means that their
influence is limited and their eventual downfall made more likely.

------
phreack
It's easy to not realize that without major single headline grabbing
breakthroughs, progress on ending these injustices is still ongoing. So it's a
refreshing reminder to see articles like this one every now and then,
specially after such a hard year.

~~~
tajen
In France evryone is convinced that "The rich are getting richer, the poor are
getting poorer". This proverb/pseudo-analysis is a huge emotional trigger for
a leftish vote, and is liberally repeated by many newspapers. I systematically
try to counter this proverb, because every available evidence points at the
opposite:

\- The poor are getting less poor. Famine is less harsh and UN reports lower
poverty levels for the bottom 10%. There are severaly explanation, basically
the poorer benefit from the globla growth and global scientific advance. Of
course it's limited because of patents and other hindrance, but we should not
deny the globlal trend.

\- The rich are getting richer, that's exact, but it's also because the
population is increasing and the top people today serve bigger economic
interests than 50 years ago (whether it be Snapchat for beginner CEOs or Tesla
for traditional CEOs).

Hence, maybe the spread between the rich and the poor widens, but that's not
what the proverb denounces, and the proverb is wrong. The proverb specifically
says the poor are getting poorer, which is widely false. Moreover the
variation of gap is not demonstratedly unfair.

~~~
gph
>"The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer"

I think typically when people say that they mean within their own country, not
globally. And in some Western countries if we look at the very recent trend
(last 10-20 years) I think they have somewhat of a point. The poor are mostly
stagnant while the rich are getting much richer and those in the middle are
generally getting poorer. The proverb may be technically incorrect, but the
sentiment behind it may not be all that far off.

------
jandrese
From the headline only: no.

Why? Because we still have political strife in the world, and political strife
has been the root cause of famine for over a thousand years.

If anything our political systems are gearing us up for even more devastating
famines, as countries turn inward and more oppressive.

~~~
snrplfth
Well, a modern economy is pretty thoroughly different from the premodern one.
When it took 90% of the population working in agriculture to feed the whole
population (nonfarmer/farmer ratio of 1:9), and food transportation costs were
extremely high, then even a minor shortfall in food production could induce
famine conditions in short order. Now that the nonfarmer/farmer ratio in an
industrialized economy is more like 97:3 (and moving toward that figure
elsewhere) famine is decreasingly caused by shortfalls only, and increasingly
by other factors. Fundamentally, though, it's about productivity.

And there's no obvious reason why productivity will be going down in most
places in the world, nor why transportation should be getting more expensive.
I think short-term oscillations in political fortunes are not a very good
marker of these things.

~~~
jandrese
That was my point. We have produced enough food to feed the world for
centuries now, and we have had the means to transport it, but choose not to
for political reasons. North Korea is a prime example, there's no reason
anybody in the country should be hungry, except that their government is both
highly isolationist and likes to meddle with the internal food supply.

~~~
snrplfth
No, you said that "political strife has been the root cause of famine for over
a thousand years." Which is not true - in a low-productivity, pre-industrial
economy, inherently near the subsistence baseline, food shortfalls (and
consequent famines) are frequently caused by weather, pestilence and other
non-political-strife events. When it takes 8 or 9 farmers to feed themselves
and one non-farmer (and year-to-year food storage capability is very poor)
then even a 10% food production decline is a crisis.

We absolutely have not had "enough food to feed the world for centuries", nor
the means to transport it. In 1800, worldwide GDP per capita was barely above
$1000 USD (current, PPP), and by 1900, just over $2000. The supposed surpluses
simply did not exist. Ship transport was still relatively inefficient, and
overland transport was extremely expensive in a world where ~80% of people
lived in small rural communities with no paved roads between them, and even
where roads did exist, they were of poor quality. The food surpluses and easy
transport we see today are really quite a recent development, well within the
20th century.

------
exit
_" Some 795 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a
healthy active life. That's about one in nine people on earth."_ [0]

that's more people than were alive globally in 1700 [1]. looks like the last
300 years have been a complete catastrophe with respect to hunger.

[0] [https://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats](https://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats)

[1]
[https://www.census.gov/population/international/data/worldpo...](https://www.census.gov/population/international/data/worldpop/table_history.php)

~~~
snrplfth
But that's a smaller _proportion_ of people than ever before. So not only are
we capable of supporting more people total, but a far smaller percentage of
those are hungry.

~~~
exit
do you believe one persons happiness redeems another persons suffering?

~~~
snrplfth
...what?

No, what I'm saying is, if you're trying to figure out "how well we're doing"
at solving some particular problem, then you have to look at proportions. Any
group of humans will suffer various things, the point is to decrease the
likelihood that they do. If there's a group of ten people, and five are
hungry, then they're doing worse on that metric than a group of a _hundred_
people where five are hungry. This doesn't change when the groups you're
looking at are "humans in past" and "humans presently".

------
jerkstate
Headline says world hunger, article is about Ethiopia. This is good news but
does the article support the headline?

~~~
dang
We reverted the title to the article's original. (Submitted title was 'World
hunger reached its lowest point in 25 years'.)

------
poiuz
There shouldn't be any hunger. We produce enough food to feed 10 billion
people. There are only 8 billion people. Yet 20'000 die everyday of
(capitalism) hunger.

~~~
dwe3000
Capitalism? Did you read the article?

> In 1987, .... We reached a simple conclusion: When farmers could bring
> foodstuffs to points of sale — when the roads were clear of army
> checkpoints, when markets were held at night to reduce the risk of being
> bombed — the local economy worked efficiently enough. With markets in
> operation, the production of local crops increased, and food prices fell to
> levels people could afford.

> Ending famine required ending fighting.

Seems capitalism improved things once the government got around to providing
basic security.

~~~
doodeoo
markets != capitalism

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Could you explain what you mean here?

~~~
hx87
A communist society where the government owns all the means of production and
everyone gets a $60,000 UBI can still use markets to allocate resources for
production.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
_Can_ , in theory. But in practice, it's much more likely to use politics and
bureaucracy. (Source: The last two hundred years of government behavior.)

