Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The 1985-9 famine in the Darfur and Kordofan regions of Sudan was exacerbated by
increased ecological pressure resulting from a doubling in the number of cattle over the
previous 30 years. Once again, much of this pressure was caused by the conversion of tra-
ditional tribal grazing lands to industrial farming producing sorghum and other crops for
export. The state-run Mechanized Farming Corporation acted as a conduit for a loan from
the World Bank to clear and cultivate around five million acres of land by 1984. As the soil,
inappropriate for intensive agriculture, became exhausted, the farms spread further into the
nomadic herders' territory.
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Two main ethnic groups the Baggara of Arab origin and the Dinka, of African origin,
found themselves competing for diminishing grazing land, and the Islamic Government in
Khartoum saw an opportunity to foster a conflict which would undermine the strength of
rebel resistance forces based in the south of the country. Allegedly with the collusion of
Chevron Oil who were prospecting in the region, the government armed Bagarra and oth-
er Arab militias to carry out raids on Dinka, stealing cattle, burning granaries and killing
people. By 1989 an estimated 30 per cent of the population of the South had been uprooted,
the economy of the Dinka was severely disrupted with the loss of hundreds of thousands of
their revered cattle, and the rate of people dying of starvation well surpassed that in neigh-
bouring Ethiopia. The conflict in the Darfur, as we know, continues to this day.
The causes of famine are many and complex; but one has to hunt high and low to find
any example of a famine being caused through 'inefficient' animal husbandry displacing
famine in particular offers a classic example of the dangers of overefficient vegetable farm-
ing. Subsistence farmers in the south and west of Ireland were forced by extractive rents
to live on the most efficient form of production available, the crop which provided most
nutrients from a given bit of land, namely potatoes, and very little else. They even con-
centrated all their efforts on the 'lumper', the most efficient varieties of potato. When the
potato harvest collapsed, because of blight, they had little in the way of animal or alternat-
ive vegetable produce to turn to - while the grain that was grown in the east of the Ireland
was exported to England. Total reliance on the most efficient form of production took sev-
eral million Irish people to the brink of starvation and then pushed them over the edge.
But the distinction between livestock and agriculture is a red herring. The conflict is not
between animal and vegetable, or between peasant farmer and nomad herdsman, who of-
ten, as in the example of the Deccan given above, are in 'symbiosis'. The conflict is more
often between a locally rooted and proven tradition of land-use which invariably has its
animal element, and a superimposed 'efficient' agricultural improvement, often a mono-
culture, designed to extract and deliver resources for the international market. Whether the
commodities so delivered are to provide consumers with meat that they don't need, cotton
tee-shirts they don't need, or palm oil they don't need, is almost immaterial. I say 'almost',
