Food shortage: Is the next global crisis coming to Kenya?

By Dan Okoth

Kenya has not had a good year. As if post-election violence was not enough, the country now has to contend with crazy food prices.

Yes, crazy prices. How else can one describe a country endowed with arable land and favourable climate selling maize meal, the people’s staple food, at more than double its price this time last year?

Taken as porridge in the morning, as the main lunchtime meal, and again the main serving for supper – for those still able to afford three meals a day - the place of maize meal at the table for many Kenyans remains unassailed. Now a 2kg packet costs Sh120, up from Sh48 last December, and is it difficult to find.

Hardly any alternatives exist. Forget about rice and chapati; the price of rice and wheat went through the roof early this year. Maybe potatoes, if one can convince Kenyan men that they are "as food as ugali". Harvests from traditional foods such as cassava and millet are at subsistence level.

Early warnings this year predicted that food prices would soar, largely because of post-election violence. Reports showed that the killing of over 1,300 Kenyans, most of them in the Rift Valley province, and the displacement of over 350,000 after disputed presidential elections affected the country’s bread basket.

Despite the return of some of the displaced to their farms, it was too late to salvage granaries burnt in the chaos, neither was there any more keenness to tend farms in a neighbourhood deemed hostile.

But post-election violence only explains part of the problem. If it were to blame, Central province, for example, would not be starving, since it remained largely unaffected by the violence. Unless, of course, one factors in the number of those displaced from Rift Valley coming back to Central Province.

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Other analysts blamed escalating food prices on the global trend of converting food to biofuels. Others also blame the global financial crisis that has trickled down from banks to matters of the stomach.

But discussion on the effects of post-election violence would not be complete without stepping into the minefield of the Waki report. Whether the discussion ends in the setting up of a local tribunal or The Hague, Kenyans will still remain with rumbling stomachs that require calming down.

For a country grappling with the aftermath of post-election violence, Kenya can ill afford food riots. Hot on the heels of reports that potbellied MPs are abusing their positions to travel abroad at the expense of hungry taxpayers, it is a tad ironical that the decision on what to do about the escalating food prices rests with potbellied MPs.

Whether it is to secure their electoral base or to avoid a very noisome scandal, one hopes it will not take another foreign trip to make a quick decision. Agriculture minister William Ruto was quoted as saying the shortage of maize was only artificial, resulting from the refusal of millers to buy maize directly from farmers.

It does not help matters that Tanzania, Kenya’s southern neighbour to whom it could have looked for help, is increasingly belligerent in its regional trade ties. Although the extent of hunger in Tanzania is unclear at the moment, it is telling that the country banned maize exports in March.

Meanwhile, the ordinary Kenyan’s woes are piling. In case MPs did not notice, fuel prices have ran amok. Despite threats, cajoling and a call to reality by the Ministry of Energy, civil society, the President and the Prime Minister, the cartels that run the oil industry in Kenya have only given token notice. Added to the biting food shortage, fuel prices sound like the death knell.

Yet Kenya is not alone. In a report by the Financial Times, at least 35 countries have had food riots in the past year. Food riots have hit Egypt, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. In southern Haiti, food riots resulted in at least four deaths.

Although the Food and Agriculture Organisation forecasts world cereal production in 2008 at 2,242 million tonnes - 5.3 per cent more than in 2007 and a new record - it also warns that the financial crisis could lead to food problems in the developing countries.

If 2008 has been a hungry year for Kenya, 2009 could be grimmer than hell. With no signs that the causes of post-election violence are being resolved, continued dependence on rain-fed agriculture means predictions of a bumper harvest invite yawns.

Thankfully though, the ministry of Agriculture has been keen on subsidising fertiliser prices this year. That may mean the difference between hunger and subsistence.

The Financial Times Report is available Here: