The profits of famine: Southern Africa's long decade of hunger

This article explores the causes of famine and chronic malnutrition in Southern Africa. It argues that famine and malnutrition are the product of poverty, not of food shortage, and that this is the result of the policies of the United States and the European Union aimed at defending the interests of transnational food corporations.Claims include:food aid is the way the US has to deal with the food excedents that its subsidisation of American agriculture producesthese subsidies allow American food corporations to increase their benefitsthese subsidies, along with imposed free trade policies, create poverty in the developing world, leading to famines and malnutritionmost Southern African governments are following the policy recommendations of the United States, leading to greater integration with the world economy, as the NEPAD initiative showsZambia is the only exception, as its government has recognized that the problem is the lack of food available within the means of the poor. Therfore, it has adopted as a short-term solution the rejection of the output of US agribusinesses and the purchase of grain from domestic and regional suppliers to make it available to the hungrythis approach needs to be supplemented by more enduring social change for the poor through investment in education and health, serious measures to tackle HIV/AIDS, and land reformthese issues cannot be resolved with the vast debt that currently shackles the regiondespite the difficult situation in the region, there are spaces of hope, such as the recent development of soil fertility replenishment programs. These new methods rejuvenate the soil with leguminous tree fallows rather than with fertilizers that cost between two and six times more in Africa than in Europe and the US, and tens of thousands of farmers have adopted this practice with rapid success and increased productivity in their fieldslocal communities in the U.S. can effect change, too, as the WTO, IMF, and World Bank are controlled by the US government, in the name of US citizens[adapted from author]