Setbacks: Global Hunger is Solvable

0:15Speaker 1:Pushkin, this is solvable. I'm Jacob Weisberg. There's no reason in the twenty first century that people should be going hungry. But people are going hungry. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, in twenty nineteen, nearly seven hundred million people across the world we're facing hunger and poor nutrition. That's almost one in ten people. With the onset of the global pandemic, some experts estimate that one hundred million more people might be added to that number.

0:53Speaker 1:It's not a time to give up against the global goals. It's a time to redouble our effort. As part of our Setback series, we're examining world hunger, both to get a sense of the magnitude of the challenge we face and because of the new sense of opportunity as we've come together to battle this pandemic. What we really need now is a radical reset at this moment, the commitment globally and nationally to reverse the trend. Abbey Maximin is President and CEO of Oxfam America. There is enough food for all of us, and when we work together, global hunger is solvable. One thing I'd love to understand better is the impact that the pandemic has had on global hunger.

1:41Speaker 1:I've seen estimates from the UN Food and Agricultural Organization that COVID nineteen might have added something between eighty and one hundred and thirty million people to the total number of undernourished in the world. Are those accurate numbers? And how much did it increase from the baseline before the pandemic. Well, the numbers that you were already quoting are ones we are seeing consistent in terms of the rise of people who are living in hunger, and certainly the number of people facing extreme on the verge of the word that we don't use lightly famine. But there's a confluence of factors COVID, climate conflict, inequality, and the broken food systems that have people have been experiencing and we've seen for years that has now been clearly unveiled for the world to see. Yeah, I mean talk about the actual mechanism around the pandemic. We had Paul Farmer on recently and he pointed out that many countries in Africa have done much better with the pandemic for a variety of reasons, and probably a variety of reasons we don't understand, but it's a cruel irony that they get these indirect effects

3:04Speaker 1:even if people aren't succumbing to the virus or affected by the virus as much. How is the virus making people, particularly in Africa, which I think includes something like six or seven of the country's most afflicted by hunger, how is it making things towards there? About two thirds of the population across Africa are smallholder farmers. And what COVID has done to local economies, to food systems, and also the issues of conflict going on in the places that have the highest proportion of hunger, there's been this confluence of factors. So the smallholder farmers are really faced with very few choices in terms of how to produce and move their food through a supply chain, if you will.

3:55Speaker 1:And we've spoken to a number of people, of course, the communities we work with, and there's a woman named Kadidia Diallo, who's a female milk producer in Burkina Fasso, who told us she can't give her children in something to eat in the morning because they're totally dependent on the sale of milk and with the closure of the market, they can't sell the milk anymore, and if we can't sell milk, we don't eat. And those are kind of the anecdotes that are widespread at the moment. You know that notion of what we call the hunger virus and oxfam were produced or report last year that COVID is unveiling or unleashing a number of shadow pandemics, if you will, hunger among them. I want us to talk a little more about that where question. I'm looking at that report right now and I was just going to read the top ten countries for millions of people facing crisis level hunger. Now, this report was done in July twenty twenty, so it may have been updated since then, but at the time, the worst afflicted countries were Yamen, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Democratic and Republic being dubious parts of the name, Afghanistan, Venezuela,

5:10Speaker 1:West Africa, sa Hale, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria, Sudan, and Haiti. Is that still pretty much the list? I think that's pretty much consistent today because you can see the overlay with those those factors that I talked about, conflict being amongst them, but then the climatic changes and implications and that becomes this toxic situation, if you will, around people's ability to access and how markets work and how those at the bottom are really left behind. Another impact of the crisis is that aid organizations like Oxfam, which is the pre eminent one in many parts of the world, have had to cut back themselves and have found it harder to operate in some of those countries. I know Oxfam at in the early days the pandemic had to close number of offices, lay off a number of people.

6:07Speaker 1:In the UK, it's everyone knows Oxfam for the shops it has everywhere, which are like second hand shops that help to fund Oxfam relief activities and a lot of those, of course we're not open. How has that affected the ability to provide relief in those places. Well, it's certainly challenging. I mean, as we all know, resources are key. You know, the demand is greater than ever and then you know there's always a challenge when you're in nonprofits. But certainly what you just described when the shops closed, that has a big impact on our ongoing operations when there's a demand that is increasing. But I also Jacob would like to talk about the meadow or more macro level too.

6:53Speaker 1:Um I love talking about OXFAM and when you look back at what was happening last year when we wrote the Hunger Virus Report, the ten largest food and beverage companies in the world had eighteen billion dollars of profit that was distributed across shareholders. And those are ones who rely on global value chains at a time when the global humanitarian response needs was barely funded at under twenty percent at the time of eight billion of a total need or seven point eight billion. Let me question a little further whether or how those two things are related, because when I look at the countries on your top ten list, the majority of them have been suffering from civil war or civil conflict or at least political breakdown.

7:44Speaker 1:And much of the challenge is getting help to people, not the willingness of the outside world to provide help to a place like Yemen or Syria. So, you know, is the question of how much money food companies are making really germane to the problem. There's no reason in the twenty first century that people should be going hungry, and there's a question of human act and inaction and policy choices that are made. Their German relationship of looking at the entire ecosystem, where we're looking at multilateralism and choices that are made to be able to increase resourcing at a time to prevent the loss of life and livelihoods while the corporations can be profiting significantly. You know, there's a whole range of interconnections between what's happening and unequal tax systems and where the resources are flowing at a time when they could be flowing in other directions. Yeah, when you look at the UN sustainability goals, one of the core ones was eradicating hunger and famine worldwide. By twenty thirty, the first part of the millennium, we saw tremendous progress against extreme poverty, including hunger. And a question

9:10Speaker 1:running through this mini series we're doing on the pandemic setback is how temporary is the setback or is this setback temporary? That is, are we going to lose a year or a couple of years and then get back on the positive trajectory we were on, or is this something more dire that's going to reverse the progress we were seeing. What do you think? Well, I think it will depend on the ability of wealthy governments to make real commitments to look at the debt some of the low income countries are forced to carry, and so that the right investments can be made at country level, for investing in food security and food systems, in livelihoods, in public health. We've seen a whole disproportionate level of debt repayment that could have covered entire social protection mechanisms in certain countries. Is what we really need now is a radical reset at this moment, the commitment globally and nationally to reverse the trend. Let's talk about solutions a little bit.

10:24Speaker 1:I'm interested in what some of the most effective strategies are for OXFAM right now. Solvable listeners have heard a couple of times from big advocates of cash transfers who argue that we've figured out what works in aid. Basically, it's giving people money. It's not giving people food or other are trying to help necessarily more specific ways. That's not necessarily Oxfam's approach. I wonder what you think is working well. That is a component of it. There's not a single approach. I think it's a suite of approaches together.

10:59Speaker 1:So we're very supportive of cash transfers and local solutions and safety nets be at food. There are appropriate times when food delivery might be the right thing, promoting agriculture development and smallholder farmers, giving farmers tools and seeds that are appropriate and adaptive to climatic conditions. And we also work and support what we call female food heroes, women who can be productive both in their communities but raise their voices to help influence policy and production practices. And big social protection programs that we've seen very successful in places like Ethiopia where there have been as we know, chronic food and security back from the nineteen eighty four famine to early two thousands. We're putting in place a productive safety net program that works with multilateral governments, the local national government and NGOs including Oxfam protect the lives and livelihoods of eight million chronically food and secure people in the country. So there's a combination of events or approaches that can really make a difference. I've seen you say that hunger is about power, and you know, I

12:14Speaker 1:think a lot of younger people feel that aid organizations and aid institutions in many ways reflected even as they're trying to address it. That you have rich countries who you know, often go in with a colonial mentality or a savior mentality and are treating the recipients in a patronizing way, and they would like to see much more of a power balance in the way aid is distributed, in the way these organizations work. How has OXFAM been affected by that kind of conversation. Well, it's an important one and it's one where Oxham has been committed to real change for many years. Back in twenty fifteen there was a World Humanitarian Summit where we were championing and we continue to with others what we like to call local humanitarian leadership. We know who are the frontline responders.

13:19Speaker 1:Invariably it is those living locally in communities, and so we take a partner led approach. Just over the course of COVID, we've worked with over seven hundred partners globally across almost seventy countries in terms of supporting locally led response. So we look at the local leadership and how do we support local organizations to access the resources they need and be able to deliver, but ensure global connections to make sure that lessons and resourcing can help support the local action. And that's relevant here in the United States too.

13:59Speaker 1:We work the Deep South and Puerto Rico in Appalachia as well to support activities as well as we do around the world. Abby, I wonder why hunger is You're solvable at a personal level, what led you to devote your life to this huge challenge? But this issue in particular, well this issue, you know, I know my own personal I would say reckoning or awareness was the nineteen eighty four Ethiopian famine. I was just about to finish high school at the time, but the images that came through in the global attention around this really struck me and thinking how can this be? And you know, that was a time where I think it was galvanizing for the world to understand what was really happening and the full gravity of that. I went on to work in Southern Africa and then in the Horn of Africa, including living and working in Ethiopia for eight years, but spending decades working working there, and as we look at what the issues of inequality and poverty and the issue of hunger, I've seen when there's political will, collective action, local empowerment, women's voices at the table, that real change can happen. Yeah,

15:25Speaker 1:I mean that whole history you point to of the international crisis and response, which you first saw around the Ethiopian famine, but even before that goes to the back to the Bangladesh famine and the Nigerian civil war and Biafra in the late sixties. Is a very frustrating model because the pattern going back to those crises is the world gets notices, the world is horrified, the world provides a lot of aid, and then it doesn't really the aid doesn't really A lot of it doesn't really get there either be gets obstructed by politics and conflict or because of inefficiencies and distribute hian or you know, there's some aid that gets through, but it doesn't it doesn't fundamentally alter the situation. What have we learned since you started paying attention to the issue thirty five years ago?

16:22Speaker 1:Have we gotten better at providing aid and relief and in crisis and in crisis prevention? Well, I truly believe so. And as I look at the genesis or founding of OXFAM in the United States was during the Bangladesh and Cambodia civil wars and the hunger issues there, and so part of it is not just moving food but understanding the complexity of the issues influencing you know, geopolitical and bilateral engagement by countries like the United States, which can have a big impact on what happens in other places.

17:05Speaker 1:So we've seen lots of learnings. I think of how do you we mobilize action in places like Ethiopia where there have been some real learnings over decades of looking at chronic vulnerability and food insecurity, and how do you respond with a joint government, US, World Bank, multilateral and NGEO response to look at social protection not just through food but through cash and looking at hungry periods, but then overlaying it with the issues of understanding the impact of climate change. So those are big climate policy related commitments that can need to be considered as well with collective action and political will you see when you can prevent and even reverse the trajectory of some of these issues.

17:56Speaker 1:What are the most important things that listeners can do to reduce the worsening of global hunger because of the pandemic. Well, thank you for bringing attention to this issue. I would say that despite the setbacks we're seeing, it's not a time to give up against the global goals. It's a time to redouble our effort. So what can people do donate to address hunger locally or globally either. I know people have been really stepping up to support their local food banks and charities. That remains an important component of the effort, not the only thing. Supporting local farmers and food systems, and people in the United States can make choices of being much more conscious of knowing where their food comes from because of the supply chain, if you know, getting cheap food in the United States often starts somewhere else and kind of end the extreme asymmetry between small scale producers and big food companies and really encourage people to learn more and be an advocate on the issue of hunger with family and friends, and get involved politically and reach out to their representatives to let them know

19:08Speaker 1:they care about it. Is there anything you've read recently, either a book or an article or a film or TV show that has brought home and would bring home for listeners the dimensions of the problem and the way you're talking about it. I'd say Roger Thureau the last Hunger season, and he has a TED talk and other things that helps unpack the question for people. Michael Pollen in Defense of Food that helps look at the bigger issues in the industrialization of food. Movies goosh like Was It The Boy Who Harness the Wind? It's a book and a movie that looks at a water related situation in Malawi during a food crisis that also brings to life some of these issues. Those are some things to come to mind. Abbey, thanks for joining us today. Thanks Jacob, good to be with you. Abbey Maximan is the President and CEO of Oxfam America. To learn more about progress in the fight against global hunger and how the pandemic has affected it, as well as other global development goals, check out the links in our show notes and Solvable listeners.

20:22Speaker 1:We have some exciting news to share it. You might have heard him on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour as a guest contributor or on a number of other podcasts Inside and Outside the World of Public Radio. Host Ronald Young Junior is joining our team. I'm thirty seven. I'd love to get married and have kids within the next three years by the time I'm forty. Tell me what the world looks like for them if we continue on the path that we're on. More from Ronald coming soon.

20:49Speaker 1:Solvable Senior Producer is Jocelyn Frank. Research in booking by Lisa Dunn. Catherine Girardo is our managing producer, and our executive producer is Mia Loebell. Special thanks to Sasha Matthias and Sophie mckibbon. Solvable is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review. It really helps us get the word out. You can find Pushkin podcasts wherever you listen, including on the iHeartRadio app and Apple podcast. I'm Jacob Weisberg.