Who's Nightmare?
I just watched the film Darwin’s Nightmare, which is a recent documentary ostensibly on the link between the fishing industry surrounding Lake Victoria and the arms trade. Cargo planes flown by Russian pilots come in laden with arms and other machinery of war, and fly out with tonnes of fish fillet. That Europe, Asia and the middle east is supplying arms to Africa is nothing new…I have ran into several Russian pilots in Kigali who could never tell me what they were doing here. What was a real shocker for me, even after a few years in Africa, is how we in Europe are quite literally taking the food out of people’s mouths. The documentary highlighted, among other things, the large fish being caught in the lake, processed in factories around the shore, the fillets sent to Europe while only the carcasses are affordable to the local population.
I am generally in favour of free market capitalism but this one gave me pause for thought. In so far as I understand such things, the first step in economic growth is agricultural surplus: One produces more than one can eat, which allows some in the community to diversify their activities, then those with surplus may trade it for other goods or services. And things take off from there. How do things get so far out of whack that no one can afford the food they harvest in their own local market?
It all smacks of the fake “famine” in Ireland in the 1840s, when despite over a million people dying of hunger, boat loads of food were leaving the country, given over in payment for rent to the British landowners. People died not because there was a real famine, but because the only crop they could afford to eat had failed. Perhaps this historical context went someway to explaining my complete revulsion at the idea that while people in Tanzania went hungry, plane loads of fish fillet leave the country every day to feed Europeans. Even when the local wages go up due to employment in the fish factories, we can still pay a higher price for their food. We do our work, gain our hard currency wages, pay our taxes so that when there shortages somewhere in Africa, having bought up all the food and ensured there is no local surplus, we generously send food aid to famine victims. It’s so out of the realm of reason and decency that I wouldn’t believe it as a movie plot. We are taking food out of Africa. While people starve.
But something else was niggling the back of my brain. Why did this story affect me so much? The documentary makers had done a fine job in juxtaposing the poverty, hunger and social disintegration around the fishing communities against shots of the fillets leaving for Europe. But had I not seen and bought punnets of Kenyan strawberries in supermarkets back home? Was this not the same in principal? Why hadn’t I thought of this before? I guess I had assumed that even if there was famine or poverty in the country of origin, that at least there was enough food, enough nourishment for the agricultural communities who sold the food.
I was working on the agricultural surplus theory, which is fine unless you consider the customer having infinitely deep pockets. Like the story I heard in Ireland, where many Polish people have come for work with the intention of making a quick buck and returning to Poland in a few years with savings to buy a house. Many are finding that they have been priced out of the property market by Irish speculators. But, I digress…
The choice of fish and fishing communities as an exposé was a good one. The point is immediately clear – the fish and their nutritional value is going straight into European stomachs rather than African ones and this is what we call progress. The link with buying some strawberries or some coffee is a little less direct…we don’t consider people starving or malnourished for a lack of either of these two foodstuffs. And when we take things to their logical conclusion, why should I be any more offended at seeing fish fillets flying out of Africa than seeing its diamonds, gold or oil being siphoned off by corporations at little benefit to the many? Surely in the end the effect is the same, we are taking food out of the mouths of the hungry…directly or indirectly depending on whether its actual food or the potential to generate wealth and purchase food.
Darwin’s Nightmare may be Africa’s reality, but what is everyone’s future when we are done with plundering all of our primary producers?
I am generally in favour of free market capitalism but this one gave me pause for thought. In so far as I understand such things, the first step in economic growth is agricultural surplus: One produces more than one can eat, which allows some in the community to diversify their activities, then those with surplus may trade it for other goods or services. And things take off from there. How do things get so far out of whack that no one can afford the food they harvest in their own local market?
It all smacks of the fake “famine” in Ireland in the 1840s, when despite over a million people dying of hunger, boat loads of food were leaving the country, given over in payment for rent to the British landowners. People died not because there was a real famine, but because the only crop they could afford to eat had failed. Perhaps this historical context went someway to explaining my complete revulsion at the idea that while people in Tanzania went hungry, plane loads of fish fillet leave the country every day to feed Europeans. Even when the local wages go up due to employment in the fish factories, we can still pay a higher price for their food. We do our work, gain our hard currency wages, pay our taxes so that when there shortages somewhere in Africa, having bought up all the food and ensured there is no local surplus, we generously send food aid to famine victims. It’s so out of the realm of reason and decency that I wouldn’t believe it as a movie plot. We are taking food out of Africa. While people starve.
But something else was niggling the back of my brain. Why did this story affect me so much? The documentary makers had done a fine job in juxtaposing the poverty, hunger and social disintegration around the fishing communities against shots of the fillets leaving for Europe. But had I not seen and bought punnets of Kenyan strawberries in supermarkets back home? Was this not the same in principal? Why hadn’t I thought of this before? I guess I had assumed that even if there was famine or poverty in the country of origin, that at least there was enough food, enough nourishment for the agricultural communities who sold the food.
I was working on the agricultural surplus theory, which is fine unless you consider the customer having infinitely deep pockets. Like the story I heard in Ireland, where many Polish people have come for work with the intention of making a quick buck and returning to Poland in a few years with savings to buy a house. Many are finding that they have been priced out of the property market by Irish speculators. But, I digress…
The choice of fish and fishing communities as an exposé was a good one. The point is immediately clear – the fish and their nutritional value is going straight into European stomachs rather than African ones and this is what we call progress. The link with buying some strawberries or some coffee is a little less direct…we don’t consider people starving or malnourished for a lack of either of these two foodstuffs. And when we take things to their logical conclusion, why should I be any more offended at seeing fish fillets flying out of Africa than seeing its diamonds, gold or oil being siphoned off by corporations at little benefit to the many? Surely in the end the effect is the same, we are taking food out of the mouths of the hungry…directly or indirectly depending on whether its actual food or the potential to generate wealth and purchase food.
Darwin’s Nightmare may be Africa’s reality, but what is everyone’s future when we are done with plundering all of our primary producers?
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