Cassava

"I yam what I yam." - Popeye

Twice this week I've come across a reference to cassava, a yam like vegetable that is rarely seen in America (except as tapioca) but vitally important in other parts of the world. The cassava, also called a yucca, is an odd food that contains nearly the maximum theoretical concentration of starch on a dry weight basis among food crops. Fresh roots contain about 30% starch plus calcium, phosphorus and vitamin C but very little protein or anything else useful. It can be poisonous with traces of cyanide that must be removed when preparing. Nutritionally it's like eating unenriched white bread.

And yet the cassava has fed South America for thousands of years and is today either the primary or secondary food source in the humid and sub-humid areas of tropical Africa and vital to sub-Saharan Africa. It is a vital staple for about 500 million people and is grown in India and across Asia into Thailand, Vietnam and China. On reason for its popularity is its hardiness. Cassava thrives better in poor soils than any other major food plant and rarely needs fertilization. Cassava is very drought resistant and very tolerant of neglect; it can be left for up to three years in the ground before harvesting. So if a farmer catches malaria and is laid up for a month or two, the crop won't care. In additional the cassava leaves contain protein and vitamins.

My first encounter with cassava this week was in a TED talk describing an attempt to genetically alter cassava to contain vitamin A (like a yam) to improve the health of millions. The second encounter was no so positive, there is a global virus infecting cassava crops. “Even the pigs refuse [to eat] this,” said one farmer. Some are comparing this to the great potato famine of the 1840s that caused starvation in Ireland and resulted in mass migration of Irish to the US. Fortunately the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (yes the Bill Gates of Microsoft) is spending tens of millions of dollars to find a cure.

Bottom Line

Hopefully a cure to the cassava virus will be found soon and starvation will be prevented. In the meantime the Gates Foundation is teaching farmers how NOT to spread the virus.

See also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava

What Causes Famine?

"Give a Man a Fish, Feed Him For a Day. Teach a Man to Fish, Feed Him For a
Lifetime" - Lao Tzu

Starvation is a horrible way to die. It tugs at our hearts to see people suffer and frequently we are asked to donate money to help those starving in Ethiopia and other regions of the world. But sometimes you need to step back and ask – Why are these people starving?

Drought & lack of rain is an easy answer for famines. But when droughts historically reoccur, as in Ethiopia, and nothing changes, then one needs to look at the bigger picture. In the informative article, Uprooting the Root Causes of Famine in Ethiopia, by Ghelawdewos Araia (founder and president of the Institute of Development and Education for Africa), Araia points out that Egypt receives nearly no rain but exports foods by using irrigation from the Nile River. Ethiopia has “the blessings of hundreds of major rivers and thousands of streams” but fails to use them. While hundreds of thousands starve, scientists debate the irrigation side effects salinity and silt and the local government lacks the means or the will to finance an irrigation infrastructure.

Some activists blame the Ethiopian government for deliberating starving 15% of the population. The article, The Real Cause Of Famine In Ethiopia, claims that Ethiopia in 2000 had 20% more grain than required for the needs of the country but 17% of the people were locked into “famine zones” and denied access to this local grain (or are too poor to buy it). There are stories of the Ethiopian government seizing the UN supplied famine relief grain and selling it for profit rather than allowing it to go to the famine zones for free.

Interestingly Ghelawdewos Araia doesn’t blame an evil government. He sites many problems (such as government bureaucracy) but also problems with local traditions. The drought regions are dependent on a single water dependent grain. Araia says the locals need to break with tradition and plant many kinds of crops, including some that are more drought resistant. Another cultural problem is sited on Wikipedia, “Due to a number of causes, the peasants lacked incentives to either improve production or to store their excess harvest; as a result, they lived from harvest to harvest.”

Bottom Line
Famines rarely have simple answers. Giving food (i.e. sacks of grain) is simple but won’t solve the underlying problems. The BBC asked, Famine in Ethiopia: How should the world react?, and got dozens of different answers. Some blame the locals for having too many babies, some blame the world for spending money on wars instead of people, some blame the country for a failure to learn from and correct past mistakes, etc. As one respondent put it, “Why is this happening again? I thought the point of Live Aid, etc was not just to feed people but to improve infrastructure to ensure that this wouldn't happen again.” I agree! What happened to past donations to stop this from happening again?

P.S.
For a related story on famine and politics check out, Remember the Holodomor The Soviet starvation of Ukraine, 75 years later.