In a Voices video for PovertyCure, Hope International’s Peter Greer tells of the devastating effects that food dumping has had:

Jan was a friend in Rwanda, and he told me the story that after the Rwandan genocide, that he had a church from Atlanta, that started sending over eggs, and ended up just distributing eggs in a small community outside of Kigali. And this seems like a great thing to do, right?  The church wanted to help after the genocide, but Jan, a few years before, had started a small egg business himself. So, he’s in a small community, he put this investment in all the materials that he needed to start this egg business. His business was starting to grow, was starting to take off. And then, all of a sudden, in one summer, there become this surplus of eggs that were flooding the market in his area.

So, Jano described that he couldn’t compete with a free good. And so, this desire that the church had, to really take care of a need, it did take care of a need, but the problem is that it put Jano out of business. He ended up selling his hens. And then the next year, the church decided to focus its attention to somewhere else in the world, meaning that there was no local provider of eggs. Jano was out of business, no one else was there providing eggs, so they had to bring the eggs in from another community.

The local community had to pay more for egg; they didn’t have the same availability.  So this desire to help in that community actually had a long-term negative impact on the community.

Clearly, the answer is not to just simply dump food in the form of donations into needy communities.   But just as evident is the fact that there are areas of our world where people are not only undernourished, but starving.  What can we do to effect real change, and avoid causing harm to local farmers and markets?

The Christian Science Monitor offers a story about five corporations that are exploring this very idea.  For instance, Land O’ Lakes Inc., a company known primarily for its dairy products, is working in Mozambique to help train dairy farmers in the areas of  proper animal care, weeding systems, cart making, road building, and other important skills. As a result, farmers are learning how to raise and utilize livestock to improve their incomes, diets, and crop productivity.

(photo courtesy of http://blogs.worldwatch.org/)

PepsiCo is investing in Ethiopia and its chickpea production by introducing more modern agricultural practices and irrigation techniques, such as use of better-quality seeds and drip irrigation, and considering important factors such as seasonality and the need to optimize soil quality. It also aims to address malnutrition by developing a ‘locally sourced, nutrient-rich, ready-to-use supplementary food’ and wants to ‘scale up and strengthen the Ethiopian chickpea supply chain to harness the potential of a domestic and export market and increase the availability of locally produced nutritious products for consumers.’

These are just two examples of how people and the corporations they work for are beginning to see that food dumping is not a beneficial, sustainable answer to hunger.  Instead, companies like Land O’ Lakes and PepsiCo are moving from the paternalistic notion of food donation, to the mindset of partnership with people in the developing world.  No longer should we view the poor as pitiful creatures waiting for a handout, but rather as capable partners in the work of creating sustainable markets and food production throughout the world.
 

(cover photo courtesy of http://www.icrisat.org)

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Related Voices ↓

• 

  Peter Greer

  President CEO, Hope International, USA

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Related Issues ↓

• Paternalism vs Partnership
• Agriculture

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