How Ethiopia can tackle famine

A familiar story of looming famine is filtering out of East Africa.

Again, a World Summit on Food Security this week is addressing the symptoms but not the causes.

Part of the cause is years of poor rains: few African farmers have irrigation and in Ethiopia 90 per cent of agriculture is rain-dependent. But farmers in other parts of the world routinely face droughts yet avoid famine.

Before 1800, however, famine was a common cause of death around the world.

Most people everywhere were subsistence farmers.

When conditions were good, they produced enough to eat and a little more.

When conditions were bad, they consumed their savings.

If bad conditions persisted, they died.

This cycle changed slowly in Western Europe as urbanisation increased and people specialised in making certain goods that they traded with others.

Output increased and competition drove innovation, further increasing output.

Two European famines of the nineteenth century stand out as exceptions: Ireland from 1845 to 1852 and Finland from 1866 to 1868.

Both were caused by oppressive governments restricting the rights of individuals to own land and to trade.

Since the 1920s, global deaths from drought-related famines have fallen by 99.9 per cent.

The reason? Continued specialisation and trade, which have multiplied the amount of food produced per capita and have enabled people in drought-prone regions to diversify and become less vulnerable.

But where governments in Africa prevent the free movement of goods and people and where land rights are limited or insecure, people have few opportunities other than eke out a meagre living.