Radio Australia Today Editorial

Hunger is coming, and in a big way.

26 October 2009

It was 25 years ago that Ethiopia suffered the famine to end all modern-day famines. One million Ethiopians died and millions more were debilitated by malnutrition.

It’s a problem that as not gone away.

And sadly it looks like it’s not going to go away any time soon. Next time you see a baby at the mall or in a pram on the street, think of what that child has coming up. By the time he or she reaches adulthood, that baby will be facing the problems that we could never have imagined. The Ethiopian famine was caused largely by a drought, and climate change is going to make sure that drought is going to stay with us, and going to get worse. There are plenty of climate change scientists who have slipped into pessimism about our ability to fight off global warming. There are plenty who haven’t yet, but the slowness of the world community to act is only going to increase the levels of concern.

Only last week we heard predictions that the world is not going to be capable of producing enough food to supply a burgeoning population. Australia is going to be fine for quite a while. It has plenty of agricultural land and natural resources. It is capable of handing a few more millions of people, but even the population projections for this country are predicted to take it beyond its food capabilities within a few decades.

So where does this leave countries such as Ethiopia, who are dependent on world aid right now and have been for decades?

In real trouble, that’s where. Oxfam has called for the world to help Ethiopia to build resistance, to help it become self-sustaining. Too much aid to this African nation has come in food, most of it from the United States. The sad fact is that the cost of packaging and shipping this food is as much as the food itself. Oxfam is right when it says that this kind of aid should only be used in an emergency situation. Trainers and infrastucture are what Ethiopia and other agriculture-poor countries need right now.

The rest of the world also needs to look at how it can boost food production and help each other out as the twin problems of climate change and population booms hit us by time that baby turns 20.