Kenya — Starvation and Food Insecurity in the Land of Plenty

My last month in Kenya has been sobering. Ten million Kenyans were reportedly facing starvation. There were daily reports on affected districts, those most vulnerable, and the government’s mishandling of the disaster. Newspapers reported heavily on the incompetency of the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB), which is responsible, under the guidance of Trustees, in maintaining a Strategic Grain Reserve of about 6 million bags of maize cereal. How best to do this? An obvious way is through purchase of local grain supplies. Despite drought and resultant famine, poor infrastructure, high farm input costs, serious planting disruption after last year’s post-election violence, and destruction of grain stores in the same violence – food is available. Maize, a Kenyan staple, is available.

Despite maize in the fields, it is widely known that farmers are hoarding stocks in many districts. Farmers are refusing the NCPB/government price of Sh1,950 per 90-kg bag. They are waiting to be offered at least the same amount of money as that which was being assigned to imports (Bii, 2009b). “The country will continue to experience food shortages unless the Government addresses the high cost of farm inputs to motivate farmers to increase production,” said Mr. Jonathan Bii of Uasin Gish (Bartoo & Lucheli, 2009; Bii, 2009a, 2009b; Bungee, 2009).

Pride and politics, racism and corruption are to blame for food deficits (Kihara & Marete, 2009; KNA, 2009; Muluka, 2009; Siele, 2009). Clearly, what are needed in Kenya are food system planning, disaster management planning, and protection and development of agricultural and rural economies.

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Photos taken by G. Berardi

Cabbage, an imported food (originally), and susceptible to much pest damage.


Camps still remain for Kenya’s Internally Displaced Persons resulting from post-election violence forced migrations. Food security is poor.

Offices of Rural Focus, an important NGO in Kenya focused on water resource development.

Lack of sustained recent short rains have resulted in failed maize harvests.

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Disaster reduction and the sustainability challenge

Today I went to a lunch time discussion of sustainability. This concept promoted development with an equitable eye to the triple bottom line - financial, social, and ecological costs. We discussed the how it seemed relatively easier to discuss the connections between financial and ecological costs, than between social costs and other costs. Sustainable development often comes down to "green" designs that consider environmental impacts or critiques of the capitalist model of financing.


As I thought about sustainable development, or sustainable community management if you are a bit queasy with the feasibility of continuous expansion, I considered its corollaries in the field of disaster risk reduction. It struck me again that it is somewhat easier to focus on some components of the triple bottom line in relation to disasters.

The vulnerability approach to disasters has rightly brought into focus the fact that not all people are equally exposed to or impacted by disasters. Rather, it is often the poor or socially marginalized most at risk and least able to recover. This approach certainly brings into focus the social aspects of disasters.

The disaster trap theory, likewise, brings into focus the financial bottom line. This perspective is most often discussed in international development and disaster reduction circles. It argues that disasters destroy development gains and cause communities to de-develop unless both disaster reduction and development occur in tandem. Building a cheaper, non-earthquake resistant school in an earthquake zone, may make short-term financial sense. However,over the long term, this approach is likely to result in loss of physical infrastructure, human life, and learning opportunities when an earthquake does occur.

What seems least developed to me, though I would enjoy being rebutted, is the ecological bottom line of disasters. Perhaps it is an oxymoron to discuss the ecological costs of disasters, given that many disasters are triggered natural ecological processes like cyclones, forest fires, and floods. It might also be an oxymoron simply because a natural hazard disaster is really looking at an ecological event from an almost exclusively human perspective. Its not a disaster if it doesn't destroy human lives and human infrastructure. But, the lunch-time discussion made me wonder if there wasn't something of an ecological bottom line to disasters in there somewhere. Perhaps it is in the difference between an ecological process heavily or lightly impacted by human ecological modification. Is a forest fire in a heavily managed forest different from that in an unmanaged forest? Certainly logging can heighten the impacts of heavy rains by inducing landslides, resulting in a landscape heavily rather than lightly impacted by the rains. Similar processes might also be true in the case of heavily managed floodplains. Flooding is concentrated and increased in areas outside of levee systems. What does that mean for the ecology of these locations? Does a marsh manage just as well in low as high flooding? My guess would be no.

And of course, there is the big, looming disaster of climate change. This is a human-induced change that may prove quite disasterous to many an ecological system, everything from our pine forests here, to arctic wildlife, and tropical coral reefs.

Perhaps, we disaster researchers, need to also consider a triple bottom line when making arguments for the benefits of disaster risk reduction.

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Civil Service In A Time Of Need

This past week the Northwest experienced a severe barrage of weather systems back to back. Everyone seemed to be affected. Folks were re-routed on detours, got soaked, slipped on ice, or had to spend money to stay a little warmer. In Whatcom and Skagit Counties, there are hundreds to thousands of people currently in the process of recovering and cleaning-up after the floods. These people live in the rural areas throughout the county, with fewer people knowing about their devastation and having greater vulnerability to flood hazards.

Luckily, there are local agencies and non-profits who are ready at a moment’s call to help anyone in need. The primary organization that came to the aid of the flood victims was the American Red Cross.

The last week I began interning and volunteering with one of these non-profits, the Mt. Baker American Red Cross (ARC) Chapter. While I am still in the process of getting screened and officially trained, I received first-hand experience and saw how important this organization is to the community.

With the flood waters rising throughout the week, people were flooded out of their homes and rescued from the overflowing rivers and creeks. As the needs for help increased, hundreds of ARC volunteers were called to service. Throughout the floods there have been several shelters opened to accommodate the needs of these flood victims. On Saturday I was asked to help staff one of these shelters overnight in Ferndale.

While I talked with parents and children, I became more aware of the stark reality of how these people have to recover from having all their possessions covered in sewage and mud and damaged by flood waters. In the meantime, these flood victims have all their privacy exposed to others in a public shelter, while they work to find stability in the middle of all the traumas of the events. As I sat talking and playing with the children, another thought struck me. Children are young and resilient, but it must be very difficult when they connect with a volunteer and then lose that connection soon after. Sharing a shelter with the folks over the weekend showed a higher degree of reality and humanity to the situation than the news coverage ever could.

I posted this bit about my volunteer experience because it made me realize something about my education and degree track in disaster reduction and emergency planning. We look at ways to create a more sustainable community, and we need to remember that community service is an important part of creating this ideal. Underlying sustainable development is the triple bottom line (social, economy, and environment). Volunteers and non-profits are a major part of this social line of sustainability. Organizations like the American Red Cross only exist because of volunteers. So embrace President-elect Obama’s call for a culture of civil service this coming week and make a commitment to the organization of your choice with your actions or even your pocketbook. Know that sustainable development cannot exist with out social responsibility.

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And Here We Flood Again

Its been two days now that schools have been closed in Whatcom County, not for snow, but for rain and flooding. This unusual event coincides with record flooding throughout Western Washington, just a year after record flooding closed I5 for three days and Lewis County businesses experienced what they then called an unprecedented 500 year flood. I guess not.

There are many strange things about flood risk notation, and this idea that a 500 year flood often trips people up. They often believe a flood of that size will happen only once in 500 years. On a probabilistic level, this is inaccurate. A 500 year flood simply has a .2% probability of happening each year. A more useful analogy might be to tell people they are rolling a 500 sided die every year and hoping that it doesn’t come up with a 1. Next year they’ll be forced to roll again.

But, this focus on misunderstandings of probability often hides an even larger societal misunderstanding . Flood risk changes when we change the environment in which it occurs. If a flood map tells you that you are not in the flood plain, better check the date of the map. Most maps are utterly out of date and many vastly underestimate present flood risk. There are several reasons this happens. Urban development, especially development with a lot of parking lots and buildings that don’t let water seep into the ground, will cause rainwater to move quickly into rivers rather than seep into the ground and slowly release. Developers might complain that they are required to create runoff catchment wetlands when they do build. They do, but these requirements may very well be based upon outdated data on flood risk. Thus, each new development never fully compensates for its runoff, a small problem for each site but a mammoth problem when compounded downstream.

Deforesting can have the same effect, with the added potential for house-crushing and river-clogging mudslides. Timber harvesting is certainly an important industry in our neck of the woods. Not only is commercial logging an important source of jobs for many rural and small towns, logging on state Department of Natural Resource land is the major source of funding for K-12 education. Yet, commercial logging, like other industries, suffers from a problem of cost externalization. When massive mudslides occurred during last year’s storm, Weyerhaeuser complained that it wasn’t it’s logging practices, but the fact that it was an unprecedented, out of the blue, 500 year storm that caused it. While it is doubtful the slides would have occurred uncut land, that isn’t the only fallacy. When the slide did occur, the costs of repairing roads, treatment plants, and bridges went to the county and often was passed on to the nation’s tax payers through state and federal recovery grants. Thus, what should have been paid by Weyerhaeuser, 500 year probability or not, was paid by someone else.

Finally, there is local government. Various folks within local governments set regulations for zoning, deciding what will be built and where. Here is the real crux of the problem. Local government also gets an increase in revenue in the form of property, sales, and business income taxes. Suppress the updating of flood plain maps, and you get a short term profit and often, a steady supply of happy voters. You might think these local governments will have to pay when the next big flood comes, but often that can be avoided. Certainly, they must comply with federal regulations on flood plain management to be part of the National Flood Insurance program, but that plan has significant leeway and little monitoring. Like the commercial logging, disaster-stricken local governments can often push the recovery costs off to individual homeowners through the FEMA homeowner’s assistance program, and off to state and federal agencies by receiving disaster recovery and community development grants and loans. Certainly, some communities are so regularly devastated, and are so few resources, that disasters simply knock them down before they can given stand up again. But others have found loopholes and can profit by continuing to use old food maps and failing to aggressively control flood plain development.

What is it going to take to really change this system and make it unprofitable to profit from bad land use management?


Here’s a good in-depth article on last year’s landslides in Lewis County. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008048848_logging13m.html

An interesting article on the failure of best management practices in development catchment basins can be found here: Hur, J. et al (2008) Does current management of storm water runoff adequately protect water resources in developing catchments? Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 63 (2) pp. 77-90.

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Simone Goes to the Market: A Children's Book of Colors Connecting Face and Food

It’s difficult to imagine a more colorful book, celebrating locally-grown and –marketed foods, than David Westerlund’s Simone Goes to the Market: A Children’s Book of Colors Connecting Face and Food. This book is aimed at families and the foods they eat. Who doesn’t want to know where their food is coming from – the terroir, the kind of microclimate it’s produced in, as well as who’s selling it? Gretchen sells her pole beans (purple), Maria her Serrano peppers (green), Dana and Matt sell their freshly-roasted coffee (black), Katie her carrots (orange), a blue poem from Matthew, brown potatoes from Roslyn, yellow patty pan squash from Jed, red tomatoes (soft and ripe) from Diana, and golden honey from Bill (and his bees). This is a book perfect for children of any age who want to connect to and with the food systems that sustain community. Order from faceandfood@gmail.com.

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Food and farm security, farmland preservation, and resilience

Reflections on agriculture and food security, farm living and livelihoods, and urban-rural encroachment -- Whatcom County agriculture’s biggest challenge
Can be found at the IGCR website (http://igcr.blogspot.com/) shortly.

The following are some excerpts from those reflections, as they relate to Whatcom County farming, resilience and vulnerability, and decision-making in times of uncertainty.


Over the past 350 years, the North American landscape has been rapidly “tamed” from wildlands to agricultural fields, with settlers claiming, often brutally, traditional homelands of American Indians. Once appropriated, settlers cleared land by cutting forests and burning woods to cultivate plants and raise livestock for human consumption (and some export). In the last 150 years, though, another force has been claiming the land base – urban-rural development. Such development seeks the same kind of land used for much of agriculture – level, well-drained soils; it is a kind of development that is the subject of study in academic planning departments as well as in state agencies. The reader is referred to the excellent work of faculty members in the Planning and Environmental Policy degree program at Huxley College of the Environment for examples of land use planning cases and planning tools and vehicles for preserving farm land and promoting wise land use. This paper, however, highlights the implications of such development pressures as well as trends in the industrialization of agriculture.

One consequence of such industrialization is increases in certain efficiencies, for example, related to land productivity – the production of more food on less land. Implications for the structure of agriculture also are considered, in light of the geography of place, and, lastly, the implications for food security, a term which we use to mean, quite simply, knowing with some certainty how much food one is likely to have and from where it is coming from. We also include a few case studies of farm diversification in Whatcom County. This paper is put forth for purposes of discussion only, and continued development and improvement.

……..

U.S. farm policy has typically emphasized intensification of cultivation and production for export, ultimately increasing agriculture’s share of U.S. exports and favorably impacting our national balance of payments. Global trade in cheaper food products sourced elsewhere to “free” American soil for other uses besides agriculture for domestic use, has made possible the expansion of the land base for residential development. The phenomenon of residential development encroaching on or consuming farmland has been known as urban encroachment, but perhaps is better described as urban-rural encroachment, as development occurs further and further outside a metropolitan core. (see Encroachment and historically agricultural areas
http://japr.fass.org/cgi/reprint/14/2/378).

………
It is understandable that consumers want low-priced food, but such “cheap” food may come at a high price – for example, compromised environmental health. Further, across all stakeholder groups, there is increasing concern about farmers’ resilience to extreme events. We are grouping such concerns, under the umbrella of “food security” – which includes considerations of vulnerabilities to food shortages, i.e., to extreme events, as well as environmental and personal health concerns, and economic robustness of economies. For more on this, please see the excellent 2008 work titled, “Issues in Emergency Food Distribution for Whatcom County,WA.” written by Abby Vincent, Chris Phillips, Matt Hoss, and Casey Diamond (with revisions by Rebekah Green and Jon Lowes-Ditch; Dr. Green is currently working on a 3-5 page policy brief based on the longer work, which will appear on the Institute for Global and Community Resilience (IGCR) website (http://www.wwu.edu/resilience/); she can be contacted at Rebekah.Green@wwu.edu).

A critical question here is “Can industrial farms feed us in an emergency where access to imports is denied?” and is discussed some in the Vincent et al “Issues in Emergency Food Distribution” report. This key question will be further explored in subsequent IGCR work.
…….
…..

In our Backyards: Whatcom County?
………..
Clearly, Whatcom County acreage is being used for the production of a select number of products (other specialty crops include, for example, potatoes and nursery stock) geared primarily for exports. This is due to some combination of comparative advantage, economies of scale, history and markets, and production and reproduction of knowledge systems. However, what would happen in the county if, for any reason, we were cut off from our customary food supply? Would we be surprised to find ourselves with a food shortage, in such a highly productive agricultural area

Hunger amidst plenty is ironic in such an agricultural county. Whatcom County, alone, is the largest producer of powdered milk in the United States, producing enough dairy to meet as much as 75% of the demand for dairy products in Washington state (http://www.whatcomcounts.org/whatcom/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1811). Yet, production is threatened due to looming poor market prices; in such an economic climate only the most resilient farms, able to adjust production practices and product mix may be able to survive (http://www.bellinghamherald.com/602/story/714074.html).

Through Whatcom County’s farmers’ markets, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) or subscription buying, and “Eat Local” campaigns, Whatcom County is proud of its agricultural identity

…..What is clear, however, is that land “lost to development” is very difficult to later develop for food production. It would be exceptionally difficult in Whatcom County, for example, to recapitalize a dairy farm after the real loss of “dairy infrastructure,” upon development.

…….
An important hypothesis to consider in the discussion of land productivity and development pressures in light of food security questions, is whether or not it is in the economic interest of a particular region to prioritize agriculture by preserving its farm land and diversifying crop/livestock production. But is the diversification of crops essential to a community’s food security? If so, then policymakers need to consider boosting support for small- and medium-sized farms. According to the 2002 National Agricultural Statistics Service and other sources mentioned in this paper, of the 1,485 farms in Whatcom County, 1,061 had less than $50,000 in value of sales; the value of sales category that represented the most number of farms was ‘less than $1,000,’ with 396 farms in this category. These figures reveal that the majority of Whatcom farms are small and medium sized operations. In 2002, 923 farms -- 62% of all county farms –- were less than 50 acres in size (http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2002/Volume_1,_Chapter_2_County_Level/Washington/st53_2_001_001.pdf http://www.co.whatcom.wa.us/assessor/taxguides/openspace/openspace.jsp).

An interesting consideration here also is that such small- and medium-sized farms seem to figure prominently in conservation programs. For example, such farms accounted for 82% of the land enrolled by farmers in the Conservation Reserve and Wetlands Reserve Programs (see http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/EIB12/EIB12_reportsummary.pdf). These farms also accounted for considerable crop diversification. It’s a trend spreading throughout Whatcom County. In the past decade, for example, roughly 100 Whatcom mid-sized raspberry growers have supplemented their revenue streams by adding blueberries and some strawberries (http://www.thebellinghambusinessjournal.com/september2007/cultivation.php) in order to mitigate unpredictable weather and the low prices offered by central distributors.

…..
What can be concluded from this discussion? For one, scale matters. And policymakers need to consider an all-inclusive structure of agriculture that values place and locale, production that is environmentally sound and economically robust – i.e., able to withstand uncertainties in weather, production costs, and markets.

What can be done? Consumers need to be interested in food and farm systems that use sustainable connections between growers and producers. As discussed in the Vincent et al “Issues in Emergency Food Distribution” work mentioned earlier, Whatcom County is no different than the other counties in the U.S. – all are vulnerable to consumer food shortfalls due to extreme events (subduction-zone earthquake to seasonal flooding, uncertain energy prices to seed shortfalls) or endemic poverty. It is ironic that Whatcom County is rich with agricultural land, but produces little food for people to eat. The dependence on one or two crops “make it vulnerable to a disease outbreak or even climate variations” (Vincent et al, “Issues in Emergency Food Distribution”). How best, then, to decrease such vulnerability? Many approaches are possible, but one thing is certain – none are likely unless farmland can be protected.

As Whatcom County’s population grows, development pressures in farmland areas will continue to increase, especially since farmland is prime for building given its generally flat and well drained soil characteristics. Nevertheless, there are a number of tools available to protect farmland. For example, the county’s ‘preferential agricultural open space taxation’ program designates various zoning to protect agricultural lands. Further efforts to preserve farmland in Whatcom County reside with the State of Washington and its Open Space Taxation Act, enacted decades ago, which allows for differential property valuation of open space lands for the production of food, fiber, and forest crops.

Beyond state legislation to protect agricultural land from development, there are over a dozen nonprofit organizations working on behalf of Whatcom County agriculture -- Whatcom Farm Friends, Sustainable Connections, the Whatcom County Farm Bureau, Small Potatoes Gleaning Project are notable examples. The number of small farms in the county has actually increased in the past decade, indicating a growing interest from young and new farmers to establish farming businesses. Clearly, prioritizing food security, knowing with some certainty how much food one is likely to have and from where it is coming from is one way forward – and warrants further consideration by policymakers and politicians and the constituencies they represent.

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America's "death map" - heat is the big problem

I have been remiss about blogging these days, but this just out on Reuters. It comes from Susan Cutter's work on mapping disaster vulnerability. The work is a first take on creating an American death map. As such, it focuses on threats to human life, showing that heat and severe winter weather are major concerns, even as these culprits often go unnoticed on the national and global scale. A map of American "disaster-caused economic damage" showing what disasters caused the most dollar losses would likely prove to be much different. Together, the two would show what many already know - in the US, changes in codes and emergency response have lowered the loss of life from earthquakes, fires, and to a lesser extent, hurricanes. This has made it possible to put more of our stuff, houses and people, in harms way. Thus, we've lowered the death tolls, but raised the costs of earthquakes, hurricanes, fire and floods. What is left is the silent kills of extreme heat and cold where the lack of economic loss has meant little resources aimed at reducing loss of life.

I'm sure more nuanced work will likely follow this initial death map.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Heat is more likely to kill an American than an earthquake, and thunderstorms kill more than hurricanes do, according to a "death map" published on Tuesday.
Researchers who compiled the county-by-county look at what natural disasters kill Americans said they hope their study will help emergency preparedness officials plan better.
Heat and drought caused 19.6 percent of total deaths from natural hazards, with summer thunderstorms causing 18.8 percent and winter weather causing 18.1 percent, the team at the University of South Carolina found.
Earthquakes, wildfires and hurricanes combined were responsible for fewer than 5 percent of all hazard deaths.
Writing in BioMed Central's International Journal of Health Geographics, they said they hoped to dispel some myths about what the biggest threats to life and limb are.
"According to our results, the answer is heat," Susan Cutter and Kevin Borden of the University of South Carolina wrote in their report, which gathered data from 1970 to 2004.
"I think what most people would think, if you say what is the major cause of death and destruction, they would say hurricanes and earthquakes and flooding," Cutter said in a telephone interview. "They wouldn't say heat."
"What is noteworthy here is that over time, highly destructive, highly publicized, often-catastrophic singular events such as hurricanes and earthquakes are responsible for relatively few deaths when compared to the more frequent, less catastrophic such as heat waves and severe weather," they wrote.
The most dangerous places to live are much of the South, because of the heat risk, the hurricane coasts and the Great Plains states with their severe weather, Cutter said.
The south central United States is also a dangerous area, with floods and tornadoes.
California is relatively safe, they found.
"It illustrates the impact of better building codes in seismically prone areas because the fatalities in earthquakes have gone down from 1900 because things don't collapse on people any more," Cutter said.
"It shows that simple improvements in building codes in high-wind environments like hurricane coasts, and the effectiveness of evacuation in advance of hurricanes, has reduced the mortality from hurricanes and tropical storms," she added.
"So there are some things we are pretty good at in getting people out of harm's way and reducing fatalities."
Cutter said there is no national database on such deaths and this was a first try at getting one together.
(Editing by Will Dunham)

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