Africans eat less than US And EU pets

In 1984 the world was shocked by a famine which claimed nearly one million lives on the Horn of Africa. Meanwhile Europe had a bumper harvest and ample food aid made its way to the struggling African Sahara region. Characteristically, this famine was not brought on by a lack of food, but by poverty and rising food prices which left the poor most vulnerable. This illustrates that even though advances in agricultural practice since the 1960s ensures that food production is keeping pace with modern population growth, food is not spread around evenly like a neatly buttered slice of toast.

Unequal distribution of resources

By the end of the twentieth century enough food was produced to fill every stomach on the planet. But, writes historian Clive Ponting, most of it was being eaten by western Europe, Japan and North America where ‘half the world’s food was eaten by only a quarter of the world’s population’. During this time, the ‘domestic cat in the US ate more meat than most people living in Africa and Latin America’. While the First World literally eats itself into an early grave with adult-onset diabetes, heart disease and obesity, elsewhere in the world a child dies from hunger-related causes every eight seconds. By 2015, 6% of the world population will eat less than 2 200 kcal per day while sub-Saharan Africa will be the most undernourished

 Drought has been the mainstay behind famine in Africa during the past three decades, which does not bode well for the region in a changing climate. While the global trend for per capita food production goes up elsewhere, across Africa it has been declining for two decades. No matter how good modern farming techniques are, food production is still dependent on water, soil moisture, nutrients and temperature – at least three of which will be hit by changes in climate. An increase of more than 2.5°C would increase world food prices and diminish productivity in the middle to high latitudes while the tropics and subtropics would see a severely decreased crop growth.

The developing world will feel the pinch most. SA is precariously arid, but shifts unexpectedly between extremes of drought or flood, with rain falling erratically between regions and years. Even without climate change, the country is expected to use up its available surface water by 2030. With climate change, rainfall will become even more unpredictable, possibly changing in its intensity as well as the seasons in which it falls. This will affect rivers and the replenishment of groundwater. About 55% of people now live in cities, creating a new sector of potential food insecurity. Informal housing provides meagre shelter for millions. Newly urbanised, they have no arable land to grow food. One can only imagine what will happen to people living on the fringes of the economy when food shortages hit the country in the next few decades.

 Story: Leonie Joubert (Excerpt from Chapter 13 -Scorched: South Africa’s Changing Climate")  Photos: A. Cameron