Posted on February, 6, 2017 at 10:25 am
A number of stories caught my attention last week. The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation said that its food price index rose 16.4 per cent from a year before to the highest level since February 2015. Sugar prices jumped 45 per cent from a year before and 10 per cent month-on-month. Cereal prices hit a six-month high with wheat, corn and rice all increasing. Food prices reached an all time high in 2011 and surely one of the conditions precedent of the Arab Spring. People may vote with their pocketbooks, but more often than not, they revolt with their bellies [Joshua Keating Slate] If you want to predict where political instability, revolution, coups d’etat, or interstate warfare will occur, the best factor to keep an eye on is not GDP, the human development index, or energy prices.
“If I were to pick a single indicator—economic, political, social—that I think will tell us more than any other, it would be the price of grain,” says Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, who has been writing about the politics and economics of food since the 1950s.
Interestingly, President Daniel Arap Moi understood this correlation very well and interventions like ''Nyayo'' milk were introduced. In an election year, food prices need to be damped down otherwise it can metastize into a big political head-wind.
Last Year was the hottest on record and its following on a series of hottest years on record. Parched conditions scorches yields. It is estimated that 18 out of the most 20 affected [by climate change] countries are in Africa. Famine is threatening Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen. The Kenya Red Cross has cranked up its interventions.
Reports out of Laikipia last spoke to a dystopian situation. Reuters reported Armed cattle herders have been flooding onto farms and wildlife conservancies in drought-ravaged northern Kenya, leading to violence in which at least 11 people have been killed and a tourist lodge torched, residents said on Thursday. You could argue that Laikipia finds itself in the eye of the storm. That storm is being a cocktail of global warming [which has reduced available pasture] and a surge in livestock +76% as per the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi. Exacerbating the situation, the value of cattle has increased dramatically, making it a smart investment for urban elites, a mobile bank account hidden from scrutiny and taxation [Reuters]
ILRI's Joe Ogutu pronounced
"At the basis of all this is the human population explosion"
According to Tristan Mcconnell writing in France24, Last month perhaps 30,000 livestock arrived on Mugie, displacing wildlife. The illegal herders - some armed with spears, others with AK47s -- cut through fences, making off with wire and posts. The shooting, looting, poaching and rustling that accompanied them left Perrett despondent.
"Twenty years of time, effort, sweat, money... it's fallen apart in two weeks, destroyed," says the 35-year-old.
The cause and effect for the current situation is being disputed.
County Commissioner Onesmus Kyatha said the situation was under control and blamed drought in the region for the tensions. "It is a conflict over pasture," he said. "Once the rains come, they will leave."
Francis Narunbe, a local chief of the Turkana tribe. "The drought has been a problem for years but people have been living peacefully. This (flare-up) is because of politics."
Martin Evans, head of the Laikipia Farmers' Association. "There's political incitement."
The bottom line is we will need more political will because it seems to me Laikipia is a laboratory experiment and where just about everything is colliding.
Source: The Star