Permanent Famine

Ethiopia’s severe drought in 1984 affected 8 million people, with approximately one million dead. Only after Western nations learned the extent of the crisis did they donate enough grain to end the famine by 1985.

After that time, aid organizations and wealthier nations made a general push to eradicate hunger everywhere. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute’s “2009 Global Hunger Index” (GHI), “Progress was made in reducing chronic hunger in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s.”

However, this effort to erase famine faltered. The report continues, “For the past decade hunger has been on the rise.”

In Ethiopia today, WFP estimates that 46 percent of the population is undernourished. And the GHI warning level is “extremely alarming.”

What began in the 1980s for Ethiopia was something new: pockets of permanent famine. Despite years of foreign assistance, hunger still grips that land. Today, 39 percent of Ethiopians live on less than $1.25 per day. In the last 30 years, farm production has fallen despite the population doubling. Even worse, continual crop failure has meant the nation must rely largely on aid groups for survival.

But Ethiopia is far from alone in suffering continuous drought and famine. Other nations received ratings of “alarming,” “extremely alarming,” and “serious” on the GHI, including Sierra Leone, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Zimbabwe—once considered a breadbasket of southern Africa—is in the “alarming” category. Citizens in these nations remain under threat of famine due to inconsistent rains, civil unrest, military conflict and infertile land. Ever-worsening famine in these areas cannot be solved!

The country of Niger’s government report to the World Health Organization (WHO) “showed that rates of acute malnutrition among children under five had risen to 17 percent from 12.3 percent in 2009.” The WHO considers figures above 15 percent an emergency. It stated, “A severe form of hunger that can leave children permanently underdeveloped, acute malnutrition affects as many as one in five children in the hardest hit regions of Niger…” Niger’s rise of almost five percent occurred in just one year.

The WFP reported that in Chad, “Poor harvests, erratic rainfall and high food prices have hit countries throughout the Eastern Sahel [belt]…The number of people categorised as ‘food insecure’ in the Sahelian belt of Chad increased from 41 percent of the population in May 2009 to 61 percent in March 2010—just ten months time. WFP is responding with general food distributions to some 850,000 vulnerable people and assistance to pregnant women, nursing mothers and moderately malnourished children in supplementary feeding centres. The number of centres open went up from 36 in March to 52 in June and this figure is expected to increase to around 140 in the coming weeks.”

As devastating as recent African drought has been, history says it can get much worse. A news release from The University of Texas at Austin revealed, “Droughts far worse than the infamous Sahel drought of the 1970s and 1980s are…normal…for sub-Saharan West Africa, according to new research...These decades-long droughts were dwarfed by much more severe droughts lasting three to four times as long, scientists report…”

“According to a 2002 report by the United Nations Environment Program, the most recent Sahel drought killed more than 100,000 people and displaced many more.”

In Bangladesh, the WFP reports that 60 million people do not have sufficient food to eat. Nearly 8 million of its children under five years old are underweight. Make yourself ponder such huge numbers.

In Pakistan, an estimated 1.55 million people have fled their homes due to conflict, especially near the war-torn Afghanistan border. They rely on humanitarian aid for assistance. The World Food Programme reports that 24 percent of its population is undernourished. The list of nations requiring assistance could go on and on. Since the 1980s, aid agencies and rich nations have used money to stave off hunger in the developing world. But this support system has begun to collapse.

A July 2010 article, “Is the Next Global Food Crisis Now in the Making?”, provided a sobering reality check: “Recent weeks have produced a series of grim and related headlines: Russia has declared a state of emergency because of drought in 12 regions, while in major wheat exporter Ukraine, severe flooding may depress crop yields. Dry conditions threaten Vietnamese rice production. The USDA has projected a disappointingly low Midwest harvest, and China has raised questions on the demand side by doubling its imports from Canada.

“Fortunately, this run of unfavourable farming news follows strong harvests that for now should keep grain prices in check, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. But to see the effects of a bad year for food—and what the world could be in for if the present trend persists—one only has to look to 2008…[when] a confluence of environmental causes compounded by rising fuel costs and a global credit crunch caused food prices to skyrocket an average of 43 percent worldwide, leading to starvation and riots from Mexico to Bangladesh.

“Some are worried that was just a warning” (AOL News).

Drought—Lethal Accelerant

Among the causes of famine is drought. Perhaps none is larger. Without water, crops languish and food production grinds to a halt.

While the nations of the West have not experienced the plague of drought in life-threatening levels in recent years, this longstanding accelerant to famine will re-emerge. Extreme—devastating!—drought is long overdue. More than just a fact of science, God actually promisessuch drought among His many forms of punishment. Let’s read: “I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass” (Lev. 26:19).

Understand. “Iron” heavens produce no rain, and “brass” earth is the result. I know. I have dug many postholes in severely drought-hardened ground where even a power auger would not penetrate the earth with my full weight on it—and I am a big man.

Amos 4:9 adds this: “I [God] have smitten you with blasting and mildew: [and also] when your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees increased, the palmerworm devoured them: yet have you not returned unto Me, says the LORD.” Notice that blasting (hot, dry winds) and mildew (too much rain) are both mentioned. These opposite extremes produce the same thing—low crop yield and famine. So do worms eating plants.

The impact of drought in just the twentieth century—only part of the run-up to awful droughts soon to canvas the earth—is important to contemplate. In the 1930s, America saw a near 10-year drought with effects reaching across a staggering 65 percent of the United States. During this same time, drought in China claimed 5 million people—just in 1936! Consider a single day during this decade-long period: On April 14, 1935, referred to as “Black Sunday,” a massive dust storm more than 8,000 feet high engulfed the entire lower Midwestern United States—from Kansas to Texas—with winds exceeding 70 mph.

Such storms accompanying drought can produce mile-high “black blizzards,” which are truly terrifying to behold. The debris and silica particles in the air stirred up by these storms—invariably inhaled by human beings—can cause several serious lung diseases. Pollution, overwatering, misuse of the land and SIN will give rise to catastrophe of epic proportion. Drought—paling America’s “Dust Bowl” years into near insignificance—lies just over the horizon!

God says this, not I.

Global Water Shortage

Everything in this booklet so far has spoken to lack of food. But water shortages of colossal proportion are also on the way. Crumbling water systems in Western nations, coupled with global pollution and increasing drought, will lead to widespread thirst alongside hunger.

Understand that just 2.5 percent of the earth’s water is fresh. Only 20 percent of this (or 0.5 percent!) is accessible ground or surface water. Current population needs consume over half of this available water. By 2025, water use is expected to rise by 50 percent in developing countries, and 18 percent in other areas. As the earth grows by 77 million people per year, an additional amount of water equivalent to the mighty Rhine River is required each year.

Also, developing countries dump up to 90-95 percent of their sewage, untreated, and 70 percent of all industrial waste into surface waters. Population growth guarantees this problem will only grow worse. In addition, chemical runoff from fertilizers, pesticides, and acid rain sufficiently ruin water quality to make it unusable. Some experts predict the world will also completely run out of usable drinking water by 2050.

Trends indicate that most of the world will soon be thirsty. Water wars have already long been the subject of various legal fights between states and countries. This will grow much worse!

Growing Global Crisis Famine has been steadily spreading and worsening for years. Recently, the worst contributing factor has been the continued international financial downturn. Wealthy nations are no longer able to support impoverished peoples financially.

After the 2008 Cyclone Nargis disaster in Myanmar, the Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and USAID Administrator at the time, Henrietta Hols man Fore, said, “We are in the midst of a global food crisis unlike other food crises we have faced, one not caused simply by natural disasters, conflict or any single event such as drought. It is not localized—but pervasive and widespread, affecting the poor in developing nations around the world.”

Understand. The financial crisis has brought us to the brink of pervasive, widespread famine! The World Food Programme, also in 2008, said global increases in food prices were creating “the biggest challenge” it has faced in the organization’s 45-year history—what the organization termed “a silent tsunami threatening to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger.”

Ms. Fore pointed out that the international food price index rose 43 percent in 2007, immediately affecting the world’s poor. “For the poorest one billion, living on just a dollar per day, very high food prices mean stark choices between taking a sick child to the clinic, paying school fees, or putting food on the table.”

USAID estimates that of the world population one billion people subsist on less than a dollar per day. Of these, 162 million live on less than a tiny 50 cents per day. These households are generally spending 50 to 60 percent of their income on food, compared to less than one-fifth in nations such as the United States.

Remember what is coming: “A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny” (Rev. 6:6).

Meeting with the British government in April 2008, WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran described the millions now priced out of the food market as “the new face of hunger.” Price increases from the global economic collapse have left millions in urban areas around the world hungry, unable to afford the rising cost of groceries.

As the economic crisis worsened, the World Food Programme announced a $500 million deficit in its budget in February 2008, and urged wealthy nations to increase contributions. Two months later, Ms. Sheeran announced that the gap had risen to $755 million. At that time, she said the WFP was “putting out an urgent appeal for the world to help us meet not only our base budget to meet the accessed needs of people from Darfur to Uganda to Haiti and beyond, but also to meet this gap.”

In July of 2009, the situation grew even more dire. Ms. Sheeran said that the WFP’s “assessed approved needs” were $6.7 billion for the year. After discussions with governments, the agency received only $3.7 billion in donations—a $3 billion budget deficit! Clearly, this is a “crisis unlike other food crises.” Something on this scale has never been seen before. This is the makings of global famine!

For now, though, it seems there is only one solution—throw money at the problem. Yet this is money that governments—ever more frequently—no longer have.