North Korea Watch: The Famine Wolf Is Here

For a decade we have been waiting for the next North Korean famine. Now Marcus Noland is saying that we aren't waiting any more: http://www.iie.com/publications/newsreleases/northkorea0408.pdf

Calculations by Noland and Stephan Haggard, University of California, San Diego, indicate that the country’s margin of error has virtually disappeared... in recent years available supply has exceeded more appropriately calculated grain requirements... but that this gap has virtually disappeared. “This is a yellow light about to turn red,” says Noland.

Food prices have almost tripled in the last year.... Anecdotal reports describe a breakdown in institutions and increasingly repressive internal behavior. Noland and Haggard forecast that the North Korean regime will ultimately weather this challenge politically by ratcheting up repression and scrambling, albeit belatedly, for foreign assistance.

The North Korean food crisis, now well into its second decade, presents a difficult set of ethical choices. North Korea is critically dependent on food aid, but the government has recklessly soured its relations with the donor community. Yet in the absence of vigorous international action, the victims of this disaster will not be the culpable but the innocent.

As of this writing, it already may be too late to avoid at least some deaths from hunger, and shortages of crucial agricultural inputs such as fertilizer are setting the stage for continuing food problems well into 2009.

Comments

[Maynard Handley]

"the victims of this disaster will not be the culpable but the innocent"

Well, of course, you should all be able to predict my reaction to this.
Take a look at this graph here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Korea-North-demography.png
NK's population in 1961 was just under 12 million; today it's just under 23 million.
How exactly did each of these NK parents, having their 6.5 kids in 1966, or even their 2.5 kids in 1988, imagine things would play out? NK is, in this respect, very much a microcosm of planet earth as a whole --- unable to get extra resources from outside to augment what is available (and already spoken for).

Who exactly are "the innocent" in this scenario? At some point humans have to accept the consequences of their actions.

[bigTom]

To slightly modify what Maynard was saying. The Peak Oil types, regard NK as an example of our dependence on cheap fossil fuels for our industrial agricultural systems, and of what will happen, when this input is removed. According to this line of thinking, humans on our planet are like the humans in an isolated NK, we consumed a one-off resource in order to increase our numbers well beyond the planets carrying capacity. I.E. we are in population overshoot, and will be hardpressed to avoid a dieoff. Now I'm far from completely sold on this dire prediction, I think that even with a reduction in some of the natural resource inputs (fossil fuels, and some mineral inputs such as phosphates), our technology will produce a much higher carrying capacity (maximum sustainable human population) much larger than was the case prior to the industrial era. Nevertheless we are in for challenging times. We had better pay attention to this issue, least we get ourselves into a situation where a dieoff is inevitable.

[Ronald Brak]

"At some point humans have to accept the consequences of their actions."

I couldn't agree more. If children can't be bothered to focus their will and collapse their quantum wave function so that they never existed, the consequences are their own look out.

[PSP]

I thought it was Lenin that said "No country is more than three meals away from a revolution," but an internet search attributes it to Mao. There is some serious irony there.

[John Emerson]

Off-topic: A Fistful of Euros has a man on the spot in Tbilisi (though not Ossetia).

http://fistfulofeuros.net/

[John Emerson]

Off-topic: A Fistful of Euros has a man on the spot in Tbilisi (though not Ossetia).

http://fistfulofeuros.net/

[John Emerson]

Off-topic: A Fistful of Euros has a man on the spot in Tbilisi (though not Ossetia).

http://fistfulofeuros.net/

[anne]

"North Korea Watch: The Famine Wolf Is Here"

That the United Nations month on month, week on week, even this day, has reported on the famine wolf being in Ethiopia * and Somalia ** is somehow allowed to pass by with no notice. Again, what of the famine wolf in Afghanistan, repeatedly reported on by the United Nations? Of course, the encouragement of war makes us turn from selected sorts of wolves.

* http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=79714
** http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=79722

[Leila Abu-Saba]

Re: famine wolf - aren't they having bread riots in Egypt and tortilla riots in Mexico City? What about Gaza? The wolf is at the door in quite a few places.

Meanwhile, I live in Oakland CA where I saw two pre-adolescent boys cruising the market aisles at 9:30 one morning last week, looking to steal some food by their behavior. People are hungry in Oakland. hHe city is feeding free lunch to anyone under 18 who wants it, no questions asked, at several locations in poor neighborhoods. Food pantry shelves are bare and more people are asking for help. There may be enough food to fill every American belly but not every American can get at it.

I have seen our food supply described as either three days or nine days from running out entirely, should the transportation system suddenly collapse for some reason.

Those of us with the funds should be compensating for retailers' "just-in-time" practices by maintaining our own stockpiles in case of earthquake or other sudden shock. But what about the wolves? Two hungry boys on the prowl today - what if a whole city is hungry next week?

The N Koreans may face wolves but we are foolish if we ignore the hunger in our own front yard.

[Leila Abu-Saba]

PS my pantry includes: 25 lbs flour; 10 lbs white rice & 5 lbs brown; ~25 lbs. various dry legumes and pulses; canned beans, veg, fruits, pumpkin, and fish; at least 12 lbs. dry pasta; two large boxes dried milk; oats, quinoa , bulghur, cornmeal and popcorn to total about 20 lbs, cooking oil and olive oil, plus emergency rations for car and earthquake kit.

If you stock your pantry with potato chips, froot loops and juice you might be knocking on my door for dinner in a supply or other crisis. Plan ahead, and know how to cook what you store. Even FEMA now recommends at least a two week supply of food & water. Why buy car and house insurance but no pasta & oatmeal?

[Leila Abu-Saba]

Raj Patel at Stuffed and Starved (author of the book and fellow at Cal) reports on first US food riot of the 21st century: http://stuffedandstarved.org/drupal/node/375

You might want to follow Landandpeople.blogspot.com if you are interested in these matters. Warning. He hates neo-liberals and capitalists.

[C R Krieger]

Sir

This was an April press release. I am not an agro-economist, or an economist, but should we have expected to see the crisis becoming full blown by now or is this a warning of something that will appear this winter or next spring?

Thanks

Regards -- C R Krieger

[capitalistpig]

Is this yet another indication that Thomas Malthus should not have been so eagerly swept under the table! Wait until the earth more fully feels the effect of global warming.