Dry-season milk supplies to pastoral children improves their nutrition, development and health

Fresh camel milk from Somali youths (photo on Flickr by G A Hussein).

The Feinstein International Center, at Tufts University (USA), has published a report of a study on the impact of dry-season livestock support on milk supply and child nutrition in Somali Region, Ethiopia.

Ethiopia’s Somali Region is the easternmost of Ethiopia’s 9 ethnically based administrative divisions and most of the people there are Somali. The region is remote with a mobile nomadic population and little infrastructure. It is mostly desert with high average temperatures and low bi-modal rainfall. Its economy is weak and reliant predominantly on traditional animal husbandry and marginal farming practices. The predominantly livestock-based economy has, for centuries, relied up on herding a primary stock of camels, flocks of sheep and goats, as well as the raising of cattle in settled agricultural areas where conditions are favourable. Export of live animals to the Gulf countries to the north is the main source of cash in the local economy.

The Feinstein Center provides the following synopsis.

‘Children in the pastoral areas of Somali Region Ethiopia are increasingly among the most nutritionally vulnerable populations in the world. In response to more frequent droughts and recurrent nutritional emergencies in the Region, the international community has tended to prioritize the provision of food aid and therapeutic treatment of severe acute malnutrition; Little has been done to understand the potential role of milk, a well-established pillar of the pastoral diet and one of the world’s most nutritionally complete foods, in maintaining child nutritional status.

‘This report presents the findings of two cohort studies assessing the impact of small-scale livestock interventions, designed to sustain access to and availability of animal milk at the household level over the dry season, on the nutritional status of children under 5 years of age. The studies were conducted for one calendar year, July 2010 to July 2011, in two pastoral Zones of the Somali Region.

‘The results reveal that, in sites exposed to the intervention, animal milk off-take improved dramatically, child consumption of animal milk increased, and child nutritional status stabilized compared to that of children in the control sites. Moreover, the direct costs of the livestock interventions were found to be 45 to 75 percent less than those incurred through therapeutic feeding programs, and the benefits were found to extend beyond nutrition to include developmental, health, and livelihoods aspects.

‘The study represents the culmination of four years of investigative research into the role of milk in pastoral child nutrition and a call for new, holistic, and preventative approaches to addressing child malnutrition in pastoral regions.’

Read the whole report: The Impact of Dry Season Livestock Support on Milk Supply and Child Nutrition in Somali Region, Ethiopia, By Kate Sadler, Emily Mitchard, Abdulahi Abdi, Yoseph Shiferaw, Gezu Bekele, and Andrew Catley, Feinstein International Center, at Tufts University, May 2012.

 

Extreme hunger in East Africa and the Sahel: Building response systems that work

Arid soils in Mauritania, where crops have failed because of a severe drought and the Sahel region faces a major food crisis: Over 700,000 people are affected in Mauritania and 12 million across West Africa (picture credit: Pablo Tosco/Oxfam International).

Senegalese singer Baaba Maal has visited Mauritanian communities at the center of the current food crisis in the Sahel. Low rainfall, poor harvests, a lack of pasture and rising food prices are among the key factors driving this crisis, which now affects one in four people across the country.

Andrew Wander, media manager for humanitarian emergencies for Save the Children, writes in the Guardian‘s Poverty Matters Blog that ‘forewarned is not forearmed’ when it comes to dealing with slow-onset food crises.

‘After the hunger crisis that engulfed east Africa last summer, there was plenty for the world to think about. After all, we’d been warned it was coming—the first alerts of a potential crisis came the previous year. But not enough was done to avert it, and we now know that failure cost tens of thousands of lives and millions of dollars in aid money. . . .’

The good news, Wander  says, is that ‘despite the bleak forecasts from both east and west Africa, progress has been made. Governments, UN agencies and NGOs are acutely aware of the need for change and are actively seeking improvements in how we respond to hunger. We’re on the ground earlier, more funding has been made available by donors, and journalists have been covering the story of the growing crisis in west Africa since January. In comparison, previous seasonal hunger crises in the Sahel have never attracted attention before the summer—there’s no doubt that more is happening earlier this time round.

‘But it is not enough. . . .

‘In east Africa, we are in danger of seeing the improvements from last year wiped out by poor rains, failed crops and ongoing conflict. Parts of Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya are always vulnerable to hunger. After last year’s horrors, millions of people are especially vulnerable and, like last year, the money for preventive work is not there. Without funding, those people could find themselves facing a second summer of extreme hunger.

‘So why can’t we fix this broken system in time to stop crisis in the Sahel and east Africa? . . .

The hard truth is that pictures of starving children give donors an instant justification to release significant amounts of money. Predictions of starvation, however accurate, do not. . . .

‘The truth is that for many people, giving to crisis appeals is an emotional response, not a logical decision. . . .

‘But change is a process. It will take time, and there’s a long way to go. The lives of thousands of children depend on us completing the journey, and building a system that works.’

Read the whole article at the Guardian‘s Poverty Matters Blog: Extreme hunger in East Africa and the Sahel: forewarned but not forearmed, 9 May 2012

 

Meat exports and livestock jobs could transform Kenya’s drought-stricken northern lands

The main road running north to Ethiopia from Samburu land, in northern Kenya (photo on Flickr by meaduva).

‘Livestock could turn Kenya’s drought-stricken northern lands into an engine of job creation, rather than a sinkhole for emergency aid, the minister for the region has said.

‘Almost 4 million Kenyans needed food aid in early 2012 following a devastating drought the previous year. Many communities were left destitute as their cattle, sheep and goats were wiped out.

The potential of livestock has not even been touched a little,” Mohamed Elmi, minister for Northern Kenya and other arid lands, told AlertNet in an interview.

‘“In North Eastern (Province) alone, if the Kenya market was made more efficient it would create 400,000 jobs.”

‘He was referring to the epicentre of last year’s crisis, which borders Somalia and Ethiopia, where people traditionally keep animals on drylands that cannot support arable farming.

Kenya is a meat‐deficit country. A 2008 paper by the International Livestock Research Institute suggested the 400,000 jobs could be created if half of that domestic deficit were to be met by increased livestock production from North Eastern Province.

‘. . . The government is now in the final stages of finalising a 10-year strategy paper aimed at transforming the arid and semi-arid lands that occupy over 80 percent of Kenya. Current plans include constructing abattoirs and improving infrastructure.

‘Livestock already contributes to almost half of Kenya’s agricultural gross domestic product (GDP).

‘With the right investment, Elmi believes, Kenya could export vast quantities of meat to regional markets. . . .’

Read the full article by Katy Migiro in Alertnet: Kenya’s north—from aid basket to meat exporter?, 8 May 2012.

 

Coping with drought: Assessing the impacts of livestock insurance in Kenya

In January 2010 the index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) pilot project was launched in Marsabit District of northern Kenya as an effort to help pastoralists manage drought risk, and its pernicious ex ante and ex post effects.

A Brief from the I4 Index Insurance Innovation Initiative reports results based on the impact of insurance on households’ anticipated changes in their coping behavior after receipt of their October 2011 IBLI insurance payouts. It gives a preliminary appraisal of the impact of drought insurance on household well-being.

The IBLI index insurance contract uses satellite-based measures of vegetative cover to predict average livestock mortality experienced by local communities. Households receive a payout if the predicted average livestock mortality rate reaches 15%. In October-November 2011 the first IBLI payouts were made to households who had purchased insurance earlier in the year. Households in our study received an average payout of about 10,000 Kenyan Shillings (or roughly $150).

The IBLI pilot was implemented in connection with a rigorous impact evaluation. This long-term research design will allow researchers to explore whether the beneficial effects of insurance (on both ex ante and ex post coping strategies) are large enough to warrant increased development of similar products. While we await those long-term findings, this Brief reports results based on the impact of insurance on households’ anticipated changes in their coping behavior after receipt of their October 2011 insurance payouts. By comparing these anticipated coping changes with those of their uninsured peers, we are able to arrive at a preliminary appraisal of the impact of drought insurance on household well-being.

Download the Brief

 

Recurrent drought can encourage, not kill, pastoralism

Pastoralists take their livestock to sell at a market in Moussoro, Bahr El Ghazal Province, in northern Chad. In 2012 countries across the Sahel region are once again facing a serious food crisis. This ecologically fragile region is becoming increasingly vulnerable to insufficient rainfall, and fluctuating animal and food prices that are affecting millions of pastoral and agro-pastoralists across this region of Africa. Grazing areas for their livestock are also fast disappearing, and as a result, their livelihoods are being threatened as the desertification takes its grip. (Photo on Flickr by Oxfam International.)

As many people in the West African Sahel begin to endure a particularly food-scarce  ’lean season’, IRIN News reminds us that ‘drought does not mean the death of pastoralism’.

‘. . . Policies and attitudes towards pastoralists are changing (in Niger and Mali in particular) and helping communities to maintain their cultural integrity and become resilient as rains become more erratic, said Peter Gubbels, who authored the multi-agency 2010 study Escaping the Hunger Cycle: Pathways to Resilience in the Sahel.

‘Changes to Niger’s pastoral code ensure animals can drink water from public reserves such as ponds which happen to be located in cropping areas. The code also earmarks certain times of the year when agricultural fields can be accessed by their animals. But some pastoralists said the code is not always adhered to at the local level.

‘Aid agencies are creating and maintaining water points along corridors used by pastoralists to move their animals. The government and aid agencies are also paying pastoralists to stem the desert with planting schemes, which also help restore the fragile ecosystem.

‘Experts support diversification. “To some extent, livelihood diversification among pastoralists is not a totally new phenomenon but it can strengthen resilience to shocks like drought,” said Peter Little, a leading expert on pastoralism and the director of Emory University’s (Atlanta, USA) development studies programme.

‘Many policymakers mistake diversification among pastoralists as a desire to exit pastoralism“Those who are able to keep their animals mobile to adapt to climatic and vegetation variability but also have some family members pursue non-livestock activities are those who tend to be most resilient to drought.”

‘So the communities are not strictly nomadic (where both people and animals are mobile) any more.

That does not mean giving up on a way of life. “Many policymakers mistake diversification among pastoralists as a desire to exit pastoralism, but in reality it actually allows them to remain in pastoralism and to reap benefits both from livestock production and non-livestock activities,” Little said.

‘Studies from Niger show that sedentary forms of animal production are 20 percent less productive than mobile herding. “Nomadic herding generates six times more total revenue than agriculture practised in the same zones,” noted Gubbels. With droughts becoming more frequent, the already vast expanses of dry land will continue to grow, and pastoralism will be the only sustainable way of life. But it needs support in the form of financial services, improved access to water, education and health care. Urban areas are not able to sustain the many pastoralists who may no longer be able to sustain their lifestyles, he said. . . .’

Read the whole article at IRIN News: Drought does not mean death of pastoralism, 22 Mar 2012.

 

FEWS NET says rainfall in Africa’s eastern Horn may be below normal again this year

FEWS Net Estimated Food Security Conditions for Mar 2012 (map credit: USAID and Famine Early Warning System Network).

Bloomberg News has reported a new report from the Famine Early Warning Systems network (FEWS NET) that East African rainfall ‘may be “significantly” below average in the Horn of Africa’s main growing season, potentially threatening a region still recovering from famine in 2011.’

‘Rain from March through May in the region, which includes Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, is expected to begin late and amount to only 60 percent to 85 percent of average.’

FEWS NET, a provider of food-security warnings funded by the US Agency for International Development, accurately forewarned of last year’s food crisis in the same region, the Horn of Africa, which affected more than 13 million people.

‘In the worst-case scenario, rainfall would be less than 60 percent of average, meaning a “major failure” of the region’s main growing season similar to the “very dry years” of 2000 and 2011, according to the report. The chance of the worst-case scenario is estimated at 30 percent, FEWS said. . . .’

Read the whole story at Bloomberg News: East Africa may get below-normal rain, threatening food security, 4 Apr 2012.

The recent FEWS NET report Bloomberg picked up says that although ‘Significant improvements in food security have occurred in most parts of the eastern Horn after favorable October-December rains, leading to increased livestock productivity and prices . . . food security outcomes in these areas and other parts of the Horn depend heavily on the performance of the March to May 2012 rains.

The forecast for the March to May rains indicates that rainfall will be near normal to below normal and poorly distributed in key areas of concern, including Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya, with the potential for significant erosions in food security gains during the March-June outlook period. As of late March, there is a delayed onset of the seasonal rains with significant rainfall deficits over the western Horn and Belg cropping areas of Ethiopia.

‘In contrast to other parts of the Horn, severe water shortages are occurring in parts of Afar, Jijiga and Shinile, in Ethiopia. Extended migrations due to poor rains could cause a marked decline in livestock productivity, limiting access to milk and constraining capacities to purchase food to meet household food needs. Emergency levels of food insecurity are projected in these areas during the outlook period.

‘Serious concerns remain in several areas where conflict and civil insecurity are driving food insecurity, namely in Sudan, South Sudan, and Somalia. In Somalia, livelihoods remain particularly fragile due to previous Famine conditions, and Emergency levels of food insecurity are expected through June in some areas because of ongoing conflict and/or slowed recovery from the devastating impact of the 2011 season. Continued insecurity in Sudan, South Sudan, and Somalia is likely to precipitate further population displacements, deterioration of livelihoods, and lack of access to markets, grazing resources, and humanitarian assistance. . . .’

In early April, FEWS Net reported that:
‘As detailed in the April 3 FEWS NET East Africa Special Report, rainfall for the March-May season in the eastern Horn of Africa is expected to begin late, to be poorly distributed over space and time, and to total only 60 to 85 percent of average. Significant negative impacts on crop production, pasture regeneration, and the replenishment of water resources are likely. The most serious and immediate impacts are expected in root-crop and Belg-producing parts of Ethiopia. Additional areas of concern include the marginal rainfed cropping areas of southern Somalia and southeastern Kenya, and pastoral areas of the greater Mandera Triangle, where the impacts of the poor rains will be felt later in the season as conditions progressively deteriorate. Given extreme food insecurity and famine in these areas during 2011, and the likelihood of a poor March-May season, humanitarian partners should immediately implement programs to protect livelihoods and household food consumption in the eastern Horn of Africa.’

Read the whole reports at FEWS Net: East Africa Food Security Outlook: March to June 2012, 3 Mar 2012, and East Africa Food Security Alert, 6 Apr 2012.

In West Africa, FEWS Net reports that:
‘In areas of the Sahel most affected by poor crop production, high cereal prices, or conflict, some very poor and poor households will require targeted emergency assistance during the peak lean season (Jul–Sep) to meet minimum food needs and prevent increases in already high background levels of acute malnutrition . . . .’

 

To market, to market–but where is the market? Jimmy Smith and Namanga Ngongi say agricultural markets could be the engines of Africa’s development

Three diapered goats in the trunk of a car, bought at the local livestock market, await the drive in Mali (photo on Flickr by Romel Jacinto).

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) recently released a book of case studies illustrating ‘high- payoff/low-cost’ initiatives that could help avoid future African food crises.

This publication on African markets comes just as the immediate impacts of a great drought that ravaged East Africa’s Horn throughout the second half of 2011 are finally declining and another drought begins to take its toll across West Africa’s vast Sahelian agropastoral lands.

Based on the case studies presented in the new book, Jimmy Smith, director general of ILRI, and Namanga Ngongi, president of AGRA, argue in a joint opinion piece this month that we have to ‘bring markets to farmers’ doorsteps’.

AGRA president Namanga Ngongi (photo on Flickr by World Economic Forum).

OPINION BY ILRI’S JIMMY SMITH AND AGRA’S NAMANGA NGONGI
Pyramids of stacked tomatoes, sacks of cowpea and pigeon pea, cassava standing against the curb, bundles of greens, trucks of gleaming milk containers, wheel barrows of dried fish—all are for sale. Goats bleat as vendors sell clothes, caps, sodas, ceramic plates, with prices scrawled on boards. Sounds of trade and traffic fill the air: cell phones, motorcycles and matatus, taxis and trucks, and people bargaining for the best price.

In cities and villages across the continent, markets are at the centre of African life. Yet, vital as Africa’s agricultural markets are for millions of small-scale farmers, or smallholders, too many markets aren’t reaching their potential as an engine for transforming Africa’s countryside.

Stored grain rotted by weevils never makes it to market. For every truck in the market lot, others idle at roadblocks as paperwork and bribes pass hands. Milk spoils before it can reach the city. Without access to market information and crop storage, smallholder farmers may lose money if they sell—and lose more if they don’t.

Across Africa, poorly functioning markets undermine farmers’ incentives to grow more food, and entire economies lose out. Women suffer, as both farmers and marketers, and the younger generations leave the sector when they see farming as all work with no reward.

Although Mali has abundant cattle herds, beef from subsidized European cattle arrives at neighbouring West African ports. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Nigeria alone foregoes an estimated USD10 billion in agricultural export opportunities annually. Many of these exports would be to other African countries, as intra-regional trade represents a potential USD150-billion market.

Today, strong markets are as important to poverty reduction and economic growth as increased farm productivity. It is time to transform Africa’s markets, and seamlessly connect Africa’s smallholder farmers with its centres of agricultural exchange. This is no small task. Farmers need access to financing and to market information, to crop storage and transport. Policies need to eliminate, rather than encourage, bureaucratic delays and price volatility, providing incentives for farmers to invest and produce more.

But the reverse is often the case. Regulatory, infrastructural, and institutional hurdles to trade, so-called ‘non-tariff barriers’ (NTBs), contribute up to 40 per cent of the price of commodities in some parts of Africa. For example, moving products from northern Mozambique to neighbouring southern Malawi requires getting an export permit in the distant port city of Quelimane. In Zambia, trucks operated by the grocery store Shoprite carry up to 1,600 documents to meet border requirements.

Such policies and practices present enormous obstacles to smallholder farmers hoping to market a modest surplus. But today, new initiatives that link farmers to markets are emerging, according to a report recently released by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

ILRI director general Jimmy Smith (photo credit: ILRI/Zerihun Sewunet).

The changes are local, national and regional. In one effort, addressing frustrations at the border, 34 countries have enacted compatible excise tax and customs software. Market integration efforts such as the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) are adapting regulations to encourage the flow of goods, including through adopting common food safety measures.

In some cases, market reforms bridge the gap between the formal and informal market sectors, enabling smallholder farmers to cooperate in the processing, transport and marketing of goods. This is particularly important, as 60 per cent of trade in staple grains and 95 per cent of trade in livestock take place through such informal channels.

One concerted effort has benefitted 40,000 small-scale milk traders in Kenya. By focusing on business skills as well as the standards for milk safety and quality, the Smallholder Dairy Project helped milk traders receive certification from the Kenya Dairy Board, a national regulatory agency, in effect ‘formalizing’ their enterprises. The program helped boost Kenyan dairy industry revenues by USD16 million annually.

Meanwhile, a warehouse receipt program operated by the Eastern Africa Grain Council and Kenya’s Maize Development program offers farmers both easier access to credit and a safe place to store surplus harvests, protecting grains from rot and pests. Farmers can store their surplus while using the deposited grain as collateral to obtain credit, which they can use to purchase farm inputs and pay for transport to ensure that the stored grain can ultimately reach the market.

African governments should follow these positive examples and break with the ad-hoc policies that do more harm than good. This will ensure that African markets benefit the continent’s smallholder farmers and consumers—who are often one and the same.

Read the opinion piece as published in The Star (Kenya): Bring markets to farmers’ doorstep, 3 Apr 2012.

Or read the ILRI-AGRA news release on this topic on the ILRI News Blog or on AGRA’s website: Experts: Linking farmers to markets critical to rural development and efforts to combat Africa’s food woes, 1 Mar 2012.

Both the book, Towards priority actions for market development for African farmers, and a synthesis document are available for download here. Many market images are posted on ILRI’s Flickr page at this link.

About AGRA
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is a dynamic partnership working across the African continent to help millions of small-scale farmers and their families lift themselves out of poverty and hunger. AGRA programmes develop practical solutions to significantly boost farm productivity and incomes for the poor while safeguarding the environment. AGRA advocates for policies that support its work across all key aspects of the African agricultural value chain—from seeds, soil health and water to markets and agricultural education.

 

Oxfam on the West African food crisis that is building

Goats are rounded up for a vaccination program run by Oxfam in Saraf, Guera Province, Chad (picture credit: Andy Hall/Oxfam, 9 Feb 2012).

In 2012, countries across the Sahel are once again facing a serious food crisis as the rains have failed to come. This ecologically fragile region is becoming even more vulnerable as grazing areas for livestock are disappearing, affecting millions of pastoralists across this region of Africa.

Grazing areas for their livestock are also fast disappearing, and as a result, their livelihoods are being threatened as the desertification takes its grip.

Oxfam is working to raise USD37 million to reach around one million people across the Sahel region with vital aid such as food, cash, support to livestock, water, sanitation and hygiene promotion campaigns (West Africa Food Crisis Appeal). By investing more in longer-term interventions to reduce the people’s vulnerability to external shocks, Oxfam hopes to help break the hunger cycle in the Sahel.

‘Some 13 million people are at severe risk from a food crisis which is set to escalate into a full-scale humanitarian emergency in the Sahel region of West and Central Africa if urgent action is not taken . . . .

‘Across Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and northern Senegal malnutrition rates hover between 10 and 15 percent, and in some areas rates have risen beyond the emergency threshold level of 15 percent. Over one million children are at risk of severe acute malnutrition.

‘In parts of Chad some villagers have been reduced to pounding ant hills to gather grain the ants have stored. They say unless they get help they will have to abandon their villages in a month’s time. . . .

‘The agency said that a lethal mix of drought, high food prices, entrenched poverty and regional conflict is behind the crisis.

‘Across the region, food prices are higher by on average 25 to 50 percent compared with the last five years average. Prices could increase by another 25–30 percent by the peak of the hunger season in July–August, putting the most vulnerable families at increased risk of malnutrition.

‘The hunger season has started early in the Tillabery region in western Niger. Communities have seen their food stocks dwindle and their debts pile up. Families are migrating to the cities in search of food and jobs. Some 33,000 children have dropped out of school, according to government’s figures, as they follow their parents.

‘Erratic rains have caused a poor harvest especially in Niger, Chad, Mauritania, Mali and Burkina Faso. Added to this people have had little time to recover from the food crisis of 2010. People have also been hit by an increase in the frequency and severity of food crises in the Sahel region in the last decade. . . .

‘According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, agricultural production in the region is down 25 per cent from 2010. The grain harvest is down by 1.4 million tonnes (metric tonnes) for the six Sahelian countries. The most affected country is Mauritania, with a 52 percent drop in crop production from last year, while Chad’s food production is down by 50 percent and Niger’s is 27 percent. . . .

‘Oxfam said that with the next harvests not due until October a concerted aid effort is needed. . . .’

Read the whole Oxfam press release: Drought could become a catastrophe for 13 million if action not taken in West and Central Africa, Oxfam warns, 9 Mar 2012.

 

Are ILRI warnings of continued maize failure in Kenya’s drylands coming true?

Maize plants in Kenya (photo on Flickr by Vanessa Meadu).

‘There has been a lot of talk, research, and policy documents on climate change and what this portends for the country’s food and even national security.

‘However, not much has been done on the ground to mitigate the effects of climate variability despite the knowledge.

‘Prof Margaret Kamar, the Minister for Higher Education Science and Technology, has warned of a catastrophe unless practical steps are taken to increase forest cover and protect the environment.

Almost three years ago, the International Livestock Research Institute warned that Kenyan’s staple food—maize—would continue to perform poorly in parts of Eastern Province because the crop cannot tolerate high temperatures.

‘This year, the region is reporting another maize crop failure, despite efforts to support farmers with seeds and other inputs. . . .’

Read the whole editorial at the Daily Nation (Kenya): Heed climate warnings, 12 March 2012.

Read related articles on this ILRI Clippings Blog:

‘Climate models need to shift focus from global to regional’, 14 Mar 2012

‘Worldwatch Institute project highlights CGIAR report on farm regions on collision course with climate change’, 6 Mar 2012

‘Climatic conditions linked to Horn’s 2011 drought persist–could spell another food crisis’, 13 Feb 2012

 

Landscapes of chronic hunger: Eating food aid in empty deserts and desert slums

Untitled (Desert Landscape), by Salvador Dali, 1934 (source: Wikipaintings.org).

Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Paul Salopek has published in Foreign Policy this week a feature article, at times lyrical and elegiac, stemming from a walking trip he and his wife made last August, as a great drought gripped the Horn of Africa, across a part of the arid Turkana Basin, a hot, harsh, wind-blown and ‘freakishly beautiful’ landscape in Kenya’s northwestern frontier. The Salopeks made this trip with a nomadic goat herder and two other local Daasanach people, he writes, to get an understanding of the ‘natural history of hunger’ in this remote hunger-friendly pastoral region.

Some climatologists are predicting another drought in the Horn this year.

‘Early in February, without much fanfare, the United Nations officially declared the famine over in the Horn of Africa. This is welcome news. . . . In the end, an estimated 35,000 Somalis—along with some Kenyans and Ethiopians—are thought to have died; most were children under five. . . . Twenty years ago, a quarter of a million Somalis perished during a similar wartime drought. And before that, in the Sahelian emergencies of the mid-1980s, a million emaciated bodies were spooned prematurely into sandy graves.

‘Last August, I took a long walk with Daasanach nomads in northern Kenya, well inside the disaster zone, to see what it was like to move, as most famine victims do, on foot, through a landscape of chronic hunger. It was a way to look at hunger beyond the carefully framed shots of television cameras, and an occasion to ask: When will Africa’s vast hunger pangs finally end? . . .

‘For three years, precipitation had fallen erratically, if at all, in [Inas's] isolated corner of the world, a Kenyan outback located 500 miles northwest of the famine’s epicenter in Somalia. It was not the focus of the massive international relief effort . . . . But the epidemic of hunger here was just as old and stunting. While an army of foreign journalists and relief workers converged on refugee camps on the distant Somali border, Daasanach children were starving in the more typical nomad way—more or less permanently and beyond the restless glare of the TV lights. Half of the Turkana Basin’s population of 500,000 livestock herders and subsistence farmers was on food aid. Indeed, some people had been collecting rations for 30 years. Even so, Mister Inas, a veteran of many starveling years, ranked the current dry spell the toughest he had ever experienced. Droughts used to be spaced further apart, he said. Nowadays, they came brutally hard and fast, and his goats were dying of thirst. He’d lost half his herd already. His seven children he parceled out among various relatives to avert starvation. When I asked how long he was prepared to endure such catastrophes, he shrugged.

‘”We have no education,” he said, knocking his bony forehead with a fist. “If the Daasanach go to school, then all these troubles will end. But we are stupid.” He talked at length about abandoning the nomad life altogether.

‘But I’d heard such declarations before. They weren’t credible. For the Daasanach, owning animals means everything—status, wealth, life. And like many disempowered minorities, they frequently said what they thought outsiders wished to hear. Trudging behind him for hours, I became convinced that the surer measure of Mister Inas’s future lay at the opposite end of his anatomy.

Horny with calluses, flat as slabs of jerked meat, his feet swung from his high, girlish hips like the weights on a metronome: smoothly, tirelessly—I am tempted to say, eternally—as though the surface of the savanna consisted not of burning dust, but greased ball bearings. His sandals rode the earth like skates. It was a gait of superhuman efficiency: transcontinental, very old, designed for chasing clouds, for swallowing endless miles of geography in the pursuit of the country of rain. . . .

‘One anthropological study pegs the number of African pastoralists, classic drought victims, at 20 million. When agro-pastoralists—herders who also scratch out a bit of farming—are included, the total grows to 280 million, about a quarter of the entire African population. . . .

‘”This country is too crowded,” Haskar Lotur, the gunman, snorted. He flicked his skinny wrist dramatically at the ringing emptiness. “Nobody stays in their place anymore.” . . .

‘The nomads, once canny at eking out a livelihood on the gauntest of Kenyan landscapes, had been settling into ramshackle outposts, essentially rural slums, where each household received a monthly allotment of 10 kilograms of maize. They were losing what relief workers termed “famine-coping mechanisms”—their ancestral survival skills. . . .

Outsiders tend to see their pet causes played out in African famines. Everyone brings something to hunger’s table.

Anti-globalization groups condemn stock market speculators for jacking up the costs of the world’s food staples (thus pricing the poor out of their next meal). Washington worries about famine’s role in political instability, particularly if relief is diverted to terrorist groups. . . . Nowadays, the latest meta-concern to be piggybacked onto the backs of the starving is global warming. Some reporters . . . have labeled the bloody clashes in the Turkana Basin one of the world’s first “climate-change conflicts.” Like most other imposed narratives, though, this one is blinkered.

At this stage, I don’t think there is any hard evidence to show conclusively that droughts are getting worse in the region, compared with the past,” Philip Thornton, a leading climate scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, wrote me in an email. “To call this a ‘climate change war’ may well be simply wrong.”

‘. . . [T]he point Thornton and other climate scientists make is that events in one lifetime aren’t a reliable enough gauge of what droughts loom ahead. Long-term rainfall statistics collected in the region—going back to British colonial times—are ambiguous, sometimes oscillating just as radically as today. And according to the most recent report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international agency spearheading the study of the man-made pollutants that cause global warming, East Africa is expected to get wetter, not dryer, in coming decades.

Even if East Africa does become wetter, this does not imply that the climate will be more conducive for agricultural production,” Thornton cautioned. Increases in temperature are likely to lead to decreased crop yields. . . .

The United Nations expects hunger to return again this year to the Horn of Africa. The next dry season begins in May. From that month on, it simply becomes a waiting game. . . .’

Read the whole article at Foreign Policy: The last famine: A natural history of hunger, by Paul Salopek, 2 Mar 2012.

View a slideshow that accompanies the article, A long walk through a dry country, with photos by Mike Hettwer, 2 Mar 2012.