Feeding hunger and insecurity

4. the hunger crisis: what happens when food prices rise?A consistent feature of discussions surrounding seasonalpoverty is price fluctuations. Figure 4.2 showsthe extent of maize price fluctuations in Malawi in 2000and changes in the price of millet in Ghana in 1988as the agricultural season progressed. Poor peoplethroughout the developing world face an annual ‘hungerseason’ in the build up to the harvest period.[Then], during the rains poor people are repeatedlyoppressed and screwed down by a cruelcombination of lack of food, lack of money, highfood prices, physical hardship, hard work vitalfor survival, debilitating sicknesses such as diarrhoeasand malaria, and isolation and lack ofaccess to services. It is then that they are materiallymost poor, most vulnerable, most powerless,most exploited, most isolated, and most short offood…it is then that poor people are most vulnerableto becoming poorer. (Chambers in Devereuxet al. 2008:xvi)Fluctuations in food prices are compounded by lack ofaccess to formal credit and storage facilities as familiesare forced to sell produce, even in good years, torepay expensive debts (with informal interest rates ofover 200 percent recorded in Bangladesh and Ethiopia),pay school and hospital fees and to avoid losinga significant proportion of the harvest to pests and decay.The effects of seasonality are especially acute intropical regions characterised by short, unimodal rainfall(occurring only once per year), where the populationis rural and dependent on small-scale, subsistence,rain-fed farming. Seasonality is not just a ruralphenomenon, but affects (to a lesser degree) urbanpopulations too.Dostie et al. (2002) estimate that the number of peoplein Madagascar living below the national poverty-lineincreases from nine million to almost ten million eachyear in the hunger season. Child mortality increases byover 300 percent between May/June and the peak ofthe hunger season in December/January – 26 percentof child deaths were attributed to diarrhoea and 22 percentto malnutrition (Dostie et al. 2002). The seasonaldimensions of poverty are complex, and it would bedifficult to attribute any one factor as contributing mostto overall poverty. However, there is a clear correlationbetween increased food prices and acute malnutrition.(see Box 5 for the working definitions of malnutrition).Figure 4.3 shows how prevalence of malnutrition followsprice increases in Ghana in 1988/89. Mousseauand Mittal (2006:23) concluded from similar findingsin Niger, “high food prices reduce people’s access tofood and directly trigger malnutrition and death.”Figure 4.2: Price fluctuations of millet innorthern Ghana 1988/89 and maize in Mchinjidistrict in Malawi in 2000/01Figure 4.3: Seasonality in food prices andmalnutrition in northern Ghana, 1988/89Ghana: % change in millet price16015014013012011010090Ghana 1988Malawi 2000480430380330280230180130Malawi: % change in maize price£ / kg0.350.300.25MalnutritionMillet price525048464442Malnourished children (%)80HarvestHungerseasonHarvest800.20JFM A M J J A S O N D40Source: Devereux (1992) and Government of Malawi (2001)Source: Devereux 1992ACF International Network Feeding Hunger and Insecurity 25