June US SUBS cover Final2rev 4/28/09 11:24 AM Page 1

L I T T L E D R O P S O F WAT E R : A S T O R Y B Y K U R T V O N N E G U T

HARPER’S MAGAZINE / JUNE 2009 $6.95

LET THEM EAT CASH

Can Bill Gates Turn Hunger into Profit?
By Frederick Kaufman
MY GREAT DEPRESSION
Ten Dispatches from the Near Future
Kevin Baker, Thomas de Zengotita, Ruben Bolling, Jamaica Kincaid,
Colson Whitehead, Simon Critchley and Tom McCarthy, David Rees,
Sherman Alexie, Ben Marcus, Ben Katchor
Also: Werner Herzog and Stanley Crouch
◆
Kaufman Final2Rev2 4/27/09 6:38 PM Page 51

R E P O R T

LET THEM EAT CASH

Can Bill Gates turn hunger into profit?
By Frederick Kaufman

T he latter-day emperors arrived in

Rome. Presidents, prime ministers, plu-
During the three days of the hunger
summit, more than a thousand reporters
piles, fear, flood, hoarding, war, and
an increasing world appetite for meat
tocrats, puppets, dictators, and thugs filed stories they culled from more than and dairy had bubbled into a nasty
left their limousines across the street a hundred hunger speeches and hunger poison. Every day, another 25,000
from the Circus Maximus and parad- news conferences, a vast testament to people starved to death or died from
ed into the High-Level Conference hunger-related disease: every four sec-
on World Food Security and the Chal- onds, another corpse. Rising prices
lenges of Climate Change and Bioen- for corn, cooking oil, rice, soybeans,
ergy. That was quite a bit to consider and wheat had sparked riots in
in one conference, but as the number Bangladesh, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire,
of starving people on earth rose to- Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, and
ward one billion, famine pushed aside nineteen other countries. Not to men-
all other concerns. tion Milwaukee, where a food vouch-
On the first day, Iran’s president, er line of nearly 3,000 people de-
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, echoed the scended into chaos. (“They just went
wisdom of Thorstein Veblen as he crazy down there,” said one witness.
blamed world hunger on “conspicu- “Just totally crazy.”)
ous consumptions,” which have “put Oddly enough, almost none of the
all nations in the world on the verge food riots had emerged from a lack of
of destruction.” Such practices, de- food. There was plenty of food. The
clared Ahmadinejad, were satanic. riots had been generated by the lack
Mahmoud al Habash, the Palestin- of money to buy food, and therein lay
ian minister of agriculture, articulated what may have distinguished today’s
a different perspective. “The main rea- hunger from the hunger of years past.
son for the world food problem is po- Therein lay the substance of the
litical,” he said. “The rich countries the involuntary urge of non-hungry Rome conference.
want to control the world.” The way to people to say something in the face of In 1798, Thomas Malthus predict-
end world hunger, explained al hunger, to explicate starvation, to of- ed that population growth would in-
Habash, was to end the occupation of fer a solution. The conference in Rome eluctably outpace food production, a
the West Bank. may have inspired the greatest mass prediction yet to be proven correct.
The Pope sent an envoy with bless- recital of famine narratives in human For much of the past century, global
ings from the Almighty, and a few words history, and as I downed my espressos crop production has actually outpaced
of advice. “Feed the hungry,” said His in the mornings before the assembly global population growth. Even so,
Eminence Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. I’d read the latest installments. people continue to starve to death.
The stories varied in focus and em- In 1971, when starving children
Frederick Kaufman is the author of A phasis but employed the same basic from Bangladesh to Biafra became the
Short History of the American Stomach.
His last article for Harper’s Magazine, plot points: biofuel production, cater- topic of dinner-table conversation
“Wasteland,” appeared in the February pillar plagues, commodity speculation, across America, 961 million people in
2008 issue. crop disease, drought, dwindling stock- the developing world went hungry.

Illustrations by Raymond Verdaguer REPORT 51

Kaufman Final2 4/22/09 9:02 AM Page 52

That year, the Rockefeller and Ford assistance was dead; that now was the olithic poverty, so-called savage hunter-
foundations had joined forces with the time for a new conceptualization of gatherers ate better than we eat, worked
United Nations, the World Bank, and the old problem. less than we work, slept a lot more than
other organizations to fund research Everyone could agree that when the we sleep, and spent a great deal of their
in high-yield varieties of rice and price of your daily bread topped your time hanging out, doing nothing. “The
wheat; this research, along with daily salary, all the agricultural amount of hunger,” Marshall Sahlins
expanded use of fertilizers, pesticides, methodology in the world would not wrote three decades ago in his book
herbicides, and irrigation, and sub- make a difference. Money, on the oth- Stone Age Economics, “increases rela-
sequent changes in agricultural er hand, could help. But how much tively and absolutely with the evolution
methodology—collectively dubbed the money? And what, precisely, should of culture.” Indigent or not, peckish
Green Revolution—more than dou- we do with it? primitives found ready supplies of
bled cereal production in Asia over In his opening address, the director mollusks, moths, and caterpillars.
the next quarter century. Today, there general of the Food and Agriculture “Hunters,” concluded Sahlins, “keep
is enough production capacity to feed Organization of the United Nations banker’s hours.”
the planet—enough, in fact, to feed a made it simple. Dressed in flowing Perhaps there really was a golden
planet with double the population. blue robes, Jacques Diouf assured the age of plenty, a time and place removed
The world population has, of course, assembly that his organization could from everything we know of the world,
already nearly doubled since 1971, and take care of the problem for $30 bil- a time without money, a time without
the proportion of people who are hun- lion a year. At which point Diouf re- hunger: the ever fruiting plains of Ava-
gry has fallen considerably. Despite the quested donations. lon and Eden, the big rock-candy
undeniable magnitude of this achieve- Later that afternoon, the president mountain, and Cockaigne, where fish
ment, the Green Revolution is far from of Senegal put the problem more blunt- and fowl begged to be eaten and the
complete. In fact, just two decades af- ly. “This concept of assistance is now rivers flowed with wine. Explorers who
ter they launched it, the agrocrats have sought such lands of primal
were blindsided by an astonishing satiation have more often than
reversal: the real number of hun- MALTHUS WAS CORRECT TO PREDICT not found themselves floating
gry people in the developing world THAT AS TIME WENT ON, MORE PEOPLE
around the South Pacific. Here
began to climb again, from 823 they discovered Tikopia, an island
million in the early 1990s to 907 WOULD STARVE TO DEATH. HE JUST where the natives feast all visitors
million in 2008. And since 2003, GOT THE MECHANISM WRONG with roi, upupu, and oka, rich and
the overall proportion of hungry fragrant dishes concocted from
people is also on the rise. Which great piles of almonds, cassava,
leads to the inevitable conclusion: out of date,” declared Abdoulaye breadfruit, sago, taro, and yams—all
Malthus was correct to predict that as Wade. “Don’t tell us what to do,” he pounded together and slow-cooked
time went on, more people would continued. “We know what to do. You over hot rocks until the ingredients
starve to death. He just got the mech- will see. We will change everything.” have coagulated into a thick, sweet
anism wrong. Which was how Wade requested $800 pudding. There’s plenty for everybody.
Lack of money, not lack of food— million for his own country’s use, no Tikopia was living, breathing, eth-
that was the new answer, and at the questions asked. nological proof of prelapsarian satia-
Rome hunger summit, money solutions “Modern agriculture requires capital tion. Then, half a century ago, the is-
abounded. Rent support, social secu- and technology,” noted Uganda’s min- land hit a spot of bad luck. Back-to-back
rity, and subsidized electricity had be- ister for water and the environment. cyclones laid waste to huts, trees, and tu-
come part of the debate. One group of “And for these inputs we need both bers. The almonds, cassava, sago, taro,
delegates advocated price-fixing and local and foreign investors.” and yams disappeared into the sea, along
tariffs; another argued for free markets Perhaps the latter-day emperors with every last betelnut and breadfruit.
and the abolition of tariffs. Decrease were right. Nothing improved the hu- The big rock-candy mountain trans-
exports, demanded some; increase ex- man condition like cash. Which meant formed into a wasteland, and the ema-
ports, pleaded others. Subsidize the rice that the only way to understand world ciated natives, once renowned for their
trade; tax the rice trade. Purchase more hunger would be to follow generosity and kindness, turned kins-
grain from abroad; purchase less grain the money. man against kinsman, tribesman
from abroad.
Despite such an abundance of di-
vergent tactics, the general under-
A lthough food and coin made a
nice pair, there was a certain irony to
against chief. “Nearly everyone was
stealing,” reported the anthropologist
James Spillius, “and nearly everyone
standing at the summit was that the old the betrothal, considering that years was robbed.”
model of hunger management no before the debut of shekels and bul- Indeed, even the most bucolic of
longer worked; that the age of ship- lion, there were plenty of bananas and the loinclothed set don’t always like to
ping surplus rice and wheat across the coconuts. Indeed, many anthropolo- share, particularly around dinnertime.
oceans was over; that handing out can- gists who study pre-industrial societies “Broil your rat with its fur on,” goes the
dy bars and sacks of flour was not a have asserted that instead of slogging Maori proverb, “lest you be disturbed
long-term solution; that direct food through a short, brutish life of pale- by someone.” And the Bemba have a

52 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / JUNE 2009

Kaufman Final2 4/22/09 9:02 AM Page 53

special name for the person who sits in offered more drachmas. In 323 B.C. the The World Food Program had been
your house and says: “I expect you are penalty for breaking grain contracts recycling agricultural surpluses and
going to cook soon. What a fine lot of during a hunger crisis was death, but sending them across the world since
meat you have today!” That person is Dionysodorus, like many an ancient 1962. Now, Sheeran declared, the pro-
called a witch. merchant, almost certainly managed gram was facing the biggest challenge in
Of course, as Stone Age economies to evade his mug of hemlock. its history, and if her organization and
progress toward cash economies, war- The standard reaction of the Ro- the famine-relief industry in general
locks and devils become poor people— man plebeian in times of food shortage did not take immediate action, the
which may be a step in the right direc- was to rush the Palatine and threaten number of hungry people in the world
tion. Perhaps the radical anthropologists to burn the grain-rich senators alive. “It would soon double. “The bottom billion
of the 1960s had let politics slip into is most unjust that the hunger of one’s will become the bottom two billion,”
their fieldwork, and had been wrong to own fellow-citizens should be a source said Sheeran. It was the 1970s all over
vilify modern markets. Perhaps the of profiteering for anyone,” lamented again. By percentages, as bad as it got.
Congolese Pygmies, the Komu-Konda, the Roman consul Antistius Rusticus— By real numbers, beyond the beyond.
and the Wugukani worked harder than but nobody listened to him. When se- The press scribbled in their note-
we do, for much less. Not to mention vere food shortages struck during the books and tapped their laptops. And
the various and sundry other savages Middle Ages, merchants set up stalls Josette Sheeran smiled. An ex-
of Africa and Melanesia, whose in the open market and purveyed journalist, she had learned the subtleties

famished gullets drove them to sorcery, chops and steaks of human meat. of media relations at the Washington
senilicide, and cannibalism. During Eastern Europe’s great hunger Times, the conservative daily broad-
But what about all those other gold- of 1032, parents sold sheet founded and bankrolled by the
en ages, particularly the ones that fea- their children. Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unifi-
tured money? When classical Athens
descended into one of its periodic food
shortages, long-forgotten celebrities like
O n the third morning of the Rome
hunger summit I sat in the back row of
cation Church. Sheeran joined the
church in 1975 and could boast a clas-
sic ’70s de-programming story where-
Xenokles and Archestratos would be- the Iran Room, where the United Na- in her father—the former mayor of
stow hundreds of thousands of medim- tions held its press conferences, and West Orange, New Jersey—stormed a
noi of grain upon the suffering city-state listened to the remarks of Josette Sheer- church-run school and tried to rescue
and make things right. Like their mod- an, executive director of the World his daughter. The attempt failed, and
ern equivalents, the ancient celebrities Food Program. The WFP is the largest Sheeran remained a member of the
were rewarded with prime-time bronze humanitarian organization in the world, church for more than two decades,
statues, names carved in marble, and part of the elite club of NGOs that even as her spiritual leader declared, “I
front-row seats at the games. have spent billions trying to end world will conquer and subjugate the world”
Of course, there was plenty of grain hunger. Sheeran had just completed and, “I am your brain.” She reached a
hoarding and price gouging, too. A her first year as executive director of the pinnacle of sorts as the managing editor
couple thousand years ago, a Greek WFP, and already rumor had it she of the Times. Then, having exhausted
shipping merchant named Dionysodor- might be next in line for president of the social, political, and professional
us was hauled into court for promising the United Nations. “High food prices possibilities of Moon’s church, Sheer-
to deliver grain to Athens but instead and increasing demand present a huge, an left the paper, converted to Epis-
selling it to Rhodes, where buyers had historic opportunity,” said Sheeran. copalianism, took a job as an under-

REPORT 53
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secretary of state for the George W. gram came in the form of food, but ther reaches of their client nations.
Bush Administration—and, finally, as the years went by a growing pro- Such purchases, as logistically diffi-
decided to feed the hungry. portion of the contributions came in cult as they might be, would in-
Sheeran was now directing the the form of cash. Originally, the or- crease and support the agricultural
World Food Program’s $6 billion bud- ganization had focused on delivering efforts of these so-called smallhold-
get. She commanded their vast fleets of its rice and beans directly to those ers. “This is the next wave of the
barges, camels, donkeys, planes, trains, who had the bad luck to inhabit the story,” said Sheeran.
trucks, and elephants. When Sheeran most cursed spots on earth. But as Grain purchases from small farm-
finished her remarks I followed her out grain surpluses went down and the ers and traders would put cash into
of the Iran Room and asked if she could price of shipping went up, the WFP the hands of hundreds of thousands
explain what she had meant when she took the logical step of purchasing of people and encourage farmers to
said, “High food prices and increasing food supplies from sources closer to plant and harvest more and more
demand present a huge, historic op- the famine, in many cases even from food. In addition, the WFP would
portunity.” Where was room for op- within the borders of the affected put these farmers in contact with
portunity in high food prices and in- country. Thus did the WFP purchase other groups, who would in turn
creasing demand? Were not high food 18,000 metric tons of corn and beans help them acquire better seeds,

prices driving riots and famine across from Rwanda last year, for $6.3 mil- fertilizers, and pesticides, more ad-
the globe? Were not there more hun- lion, and 210,000 metric tons of vanced irrigation systems, larger
gry people than ever before? food from Uganda, for $55 million. warehouse facilities, and improved
“There was a time when we did Which made these countries’ re- access to roads. Thus could a poverty-
not know how to produce enough spective presidents, Paul Kagame stricken peasant move from being a
food in the world,” Sheeran said, and and Yoweri Museveni, happy to co- recipient of food aid one year, to cre-
gave me a dazzling smile. “Now we operate with the WFP’s designs for ating a bit of surplus the next, to
do.” Of course, every hungercrat at the future. making a profitable business out of it
the Rome conference understood In fact, World Food Program plans a few years down the line—and sup-
there was enough food for everyone, called for the presidents of Rwanda plying food for others.
even if the fact of food paled before and Uganda to travel to New York In order to realize these plans, the
the privilege of purchasing it. just a few months after the Rome World Food Program would guaran-
As Sheeran began the narrative of hunger summit. There, at United tee a market where none might now
how the World Food Program would Nations world headquarters, presi- exist. They would do so, in part, by
eradicate world hunger, we were dents Kagame and Museveni would “forward contracting,” whereby the
joined by her second in command, welcome the WFP’s newest program. WFP would promise to purchase a
Nancy Roman, the WFP’s director of And on that morning, Josette Sheer- certain amount of a farmer’s output,
communications, who observed an revealed, the African presidents at a certain price, either one, two, or
Sheeran the way campaign managers would be joined by none other than three years down the line. Such guar-
monitor their candidate. “This is not Bill Gates. antees would give small farmers the
your grandmother’s food aid,” Sheer- Gates, Sheeran explained, was go- incentive to plant more crops, since
an quipped as Roman kept watch. ing to help the WFP expand its pro- they could count on an eventual
In the beginning, most of the con- gram of local purchasing to small market for their goods. A WFP con-
tributions to the World Food Pro- farmers and grain traders in the far- tract might even help farmers get

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credit from the local bank, or per- valleys, doldrums, and crashes. The and huge tracts of land. Indeed, as
haps a bit of crop insurance. happy news was that the solution to the world’s best and brightest fo-
Josette Sheeran told me the world hunger would no longer have cused on food security, the solution
acronym for her pilot program: P4P, to be about the food. It could be to the age-old problem of hunger ap-
which stands for Purchase for Progress. about the money. And I imagined peared increasingly to coincide with
The $76 million program would be the sowers and reapers of Africa, the age-old techniques that the best
funded by the Howard G. Buffet Foun- Asia, and South America trans- and the brightest themselves em-
dation, the Bill and Melinda Gates formed into a massive cartel of grain ployed to ensure their own security.
Foundation, and the government of dealers—leveraging, diversifying, The solution to world hunger was
Belgium. In its first year of forward and cornering markets, driving the more investment all the way up and
contracting, P4P would commit the price of rice and beans as high as the all the way down the line, and all in-
World Food Program to purchasing market could bear. The peasant- vestments were speculative.
40,000 tons of food from 350,000 small turned-trader could wait as long as “What people are uncomfortable
farmers. “We are studying a proposal he liked to go to market and, while about is when you speculate about
with Bill Gates on a way to do the he waited, place bets on which way food,” continued Roman, “something
contract,” Sheeran said. the market would move. He could so fundamental to life. When you’re
P4P was designed to mimic so- hoard in the great tradition of grain speculating on something that is the
phisticated global markets. Along dealers, hedge in the great tradition essence of life, when you’re speculat-
with its purchase guarantees, P4P in- of bankers, and eventually pull in ing in that space—” and here she
cluded plans to support countrywide enough profit to render obsolete stopped. She gazed across the press-
commodity exchanges, which the every guarantee and support of the room and she frowned.
WFP hoped would develop along the World Food Program, quit farming, “People don’t like that,”
lines of the Chicago Board of Trade. and go into insurance and banking she said.
(In Ethiopia and Uganda, exchanges
have already opened.) In the new
paradigm, the smallest farmer can
for himself.
Thus the new paradigm. Thus the
end of world hunger. And thus the
I n good times and in bad, it’s
hard to say no to money—which
benefit from the biggest market. end of my conversation with Josette can foster dependency like nothing
In some cases, P4P would not pur- Sheeran, who had to run to her next else. Of course, the purpose of trans-
chase a farmer’s grain immediately meeting. Nancy Roman stayed be- forming the international food-aid
but instead would encourage him to hind, so I asked her about rising food business into an international-
warehouse his product and receive a costs and all those riots. Higher business business is to foster entre-
receipt. More mysterious than rice or wheat and rice prices could conceiv- preneurial independence, not sub-
millet, this slip of paper presented a ably help farmers, higher grocery servience. So in order to be truly
number of intriguing possibilities. bills might benefit agribusiness, and transformative, the money gift cannot
First of all, the receipt allowed the speculation in commodity markets simply be a gift and nothing but a
farmer to register with his country- might be a boon for investors of all gift. If that money is not to create a
wide exchange, a place in the capital shapes and sizes—but how did such perpetual state of subordination, the
city where all the grain from all the financial fluctuations affect the ur- money gift must create business. As
country’s farmers could be bought ban underclass of Nigeria and the in P4P, the cash might impel small
and sold. Henceforth, the rural rural poor of Guatemala? farmers to purchase more loans, more
farmer could follow fluctuating prices “Listen,” said Nancy Roman, “spec- pesticides, more seeds, more land; to
with the technology of his mobile ulation always drives up the cost of buy low and sell high.
phone. The once indigent peasant everything. Housing, telecommunica- Of course, when money has been
could become a commodity trader tions, shoes . . .” deployed as a spur to action, the de-
and peg his sale to any time of the Before she joined the WFP, Ro- ployment becomes entangled in ide-
year. In this way, he could forecast, man had been president of the G7 ology. The money may eventually
model, and leverage more financing. Group. She had made her living spark the widest variety of political
No matter that commodity specula- explaining Washington policy to and economic reactions. For exam-
tion and grain hoarding had helped hedge-fund managers, and as a re- ple, Maori warriors believe that all
trigger the world food crisis. No mat- sult she could situate virtually any gifts ultimately accrue to the giver, so
ter that the recent Agribusiness Ac- political or social phenomenon that if you give a hungry man a fish
countability Initiative declared that within easily comprehensible fi- he may rightfully gut and cook and
massive and unregulated commodity- nancial constructs, and she could eat the fish, but the spirit of the fish,
market speculation “has pushed the explain why, in the midst of the its hau, will eventually become rest-
prices of wheat, maize, rice and other world food crisis, the Ospraie Spe- less and return to the giver of the
basic foods out of the reach of hun- cial Opportunity Fund and the fish. And if the gift happens to be the
dreds of millions of people around BlackRock Agricultural Fund had guaranteed-grain-purchase formulae
the world.” gone on their latest buying sprees, of the World Food Program, the hau
Of course, the WFP would take snapping up grain silos, grain eleva- will journey through the spirit land
no responsibility for market peaks, tors, fertilizer-distribution centers, of giftdom until it returns to its

REPORT 55
Kaufman Final2 4/22/09 9:02 AM Page 56

nativity, the warm, rich, capitalist “For what?” asked one hungercrat ny food “counter-movements” led Sen
womb of Bill Gates. I met in the hallway. “It to the insight that if governments were
Along the same lines, Claude Lévi- is unclear.” to intervene in such situations,
Strauss noted that the Nambikwara
chieftains of the Brazilian Amazon
proved their chieftainship through gen-
A s the New York P4P press con-
ference approached, I began to con-
famines would not be so very difficult
to prevent. “The rulers,” he wrote,
“never starve.”
erosity. By distributing food and other sider a question for Bill Gates. Why, de- Sen had crunched the hunger num-
goods, the big man retained and in- spite our spending more money than bers as no one else had done before,
creased his power. Thomas Hobbes had ever been spent to solve the prob- not just for Bengal in 1943 and Ire-
made “gratitude” his fourth Law of Na- lem of world hunger, and why, despite land in the 1840s but also for Ukraine
ture: “No man giveth, but with inten- everybody’s best efforts to reconceptu- in the 1930s, China in the 1950s and
tion of good to himself.” And the Es- alize the problem—why were more and 1960s, Ethiopia in the 1970s, Bangla-
kimo have a proverb: “Gifts make slaves more people going hungry? Perhaps desh in 1974, Somalia and Sudan sev-
as whips make dogs.” Gates would consider the paradox that eral times over. In 1982 he published
In Niger, following a spate of local our efforts might be exacerbating the a book called Poverty and Famines: An
purchases like those promised through problem, that all we were doing was Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation
P4P, millet prices rose by 13 percent in wrong. Obviously, this was not the kind that transformed the field. Other books
local markets, followed by a 7 percent of thing I could vet beforehand with a followed, including Inequality Reex-
uptick in the national average. amined and Rationality and Free-
Guaranteed sales had increased dom. In 1998, Sen was awarded
consumer prices, which would W HY, DESPITE OUR SPENDING MORE the Nobel Prize in Economics.
eventually send more people into MONEY THAN HAD EVER BEEN SPENT TO
He lives in one of those quaint
poverty and starvation. The mon- shingle-style houses a few blocks
ey gift triggered all manner of un- STOP WORLD HUNGER, WERE MORE AND from Harvard Square, and on the
foreseen consequences. MORE PEOPLE GOING HUNGRY? rainy day I came to visit I found
It may be best not to know the him dressed in an Oxford button-
ultimate effect of your gift. Such down, a gray sweater vest, a pair of
knowledge might compromise the ide- publicist, or send over to media@ khakis, and baby-blue socks. First we
ological romance that made the gift gatesfoundation.org expecting a re- ate, then we talked. His daughter served
possible in the first place. Thus did a sponse. The nature of the question baked fish in mustard seeds, and after
frenzy of cash pledges mark the end of seemed to defy reason. Which was why lunch, since Sen was recovering from
the hunger summit in Rome, although I went to visit Amartya Sen. surgery, we retired to his living room
no one at the conference really un- As a nine-year-old boy, Sen wit- and he reclined on the pink couch, a
derstood what would be done with nessed the Bengal famine of 1943, the yellow coverlet tucked under his chin,
their money. Ed Schafer, the United last Indian famine, which occurred his head and his knee propped up on an
States secretary of agriculture, led the only four years before the end of the elaborate arrangement of seven pil-
flurry with an announcement that the Raj. Between 2 million and 3 million lows. Next to him sat a pitcher of ice
United States Department of Agri- people died, and Sen watched them water, a bottle of Evian, a box of
culture would donate $5 billion over drop in the streets. This was the famine Kleenex, a pair of crutches, two phones,
the next two years. French President that occasioned Winston Churchill’s and two assistants.
Nicolas Sarkozy announced that his remark that the famine was of no great “When people think they believe
country would donate one billion eu- account because the Indians would in this or that,” said Sen, “I’m not
ros. “Dying people are not happy simply “breed like rabbits.” sure.” He paused for an enormous pe-
people,” noted Sarkozy. When Sen grew up he became a riod of time. He moved the pillows,
After Sarkozy, the International professor of economics and philoso- straightened the coverlet, and glanced
Fund for Agricultural Development phy. His specialties included the eco- at the two watercolors that hung above
announced a gift of $200 million. The nomics of poverty and famine, and the fireplace, portraits of Willard Quine
World Food Program mobilized $750 many of his 26 books and 375 articles and John Rawls. Old friends of his.
million, and Robert Zoellick, presi- deal with these subjects. And it occurred to me that Sen was
dent of the World Bank, pledged $1.2 For much of his career, Sen focused not an economist so much as a philoso-
billion. The African Development on the fact that during the worst pe- pher, and that the solution he had
bank pledged $1 billion; Spain pledged riod of the Irish famine of the 1840s, found to world hunger had been the
$773 million; the United Kingdom, “ship after ship sailed down the Shan- outcome of a purely rational analysis,
$590 million; Japan, $150 million; non, bound for England, laden with the same approach Descartes employed
Kuwait, $100 million; Venezuela, $100 wheat, oats, cattle, hogs, eggs, and to cast a cold eye on the nature of his
million; the Netherlands, $75 million; butter.” Similarly, during the Ethiopi- own existence, and that Socrates used
and New Zealand, $7.5 million. On an famine of 1973, food moved out of to face death without flinching.
the last day of the hunger summit, the the hardest-hit Wollo province and “I believe in reason,” said Sen.
Islamic Development Bank chipped headed toward more affluent pur- “There are those who want to repress
in $1.5 billion. chasers in Addis Ababa. Such uncan- reason. Christian, Muslim, and Hin-

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du fundamentalists, and those who any institution in the world been able more by the irrational gut than the ra-
pick a totem market economy, the to end world hunger. “No one organi- tional mind. Unreason may not seem
liberal economic state. These are all zation alone can do it,” Sen said. so unreasonable when you are dying of
anti-reason.” “None of the organizations alone can.” hunger, but full stomachs also make
He paused again and closed his eyes. I asked if the United Nations Food their demands and possess their in-
I knew that Sen had written the in- and Agriculture Organization was up voluntary ideologies.
troduction to a book on AIDS in In- to the job. Even the most well-intentioned,
dia that had been funded by the Gates “No,” he said, and closed his eyes. well-fed capitalist may fail to recog-
Foundation, and I wondered if the af- “That I profoundly doubt.” nize that his own actions are causing
filiation would cloud his perspective, What about Bill Gates and the the very problems he most sincerely
but after a few minutes he began to World Food Program? wants to solve. After all, it is rational
expound upon the relationship of to invest in a commodity when its
market-based movements of food to price rises, even if corn costs do hap-
demand and purchasing power, and to pen to push up feed prices. Chickens
explain that none of these forces nec- eat chicken feed made from that corn,
essarily have anything to do with who so the price of a dozen organic eggs
gets enough to eat and who doesn’t. In hits $6.39. “All indications are that
fact, there was no fixed relation of any soaring feed costs are going to force
sort between food and famine. Some livestock and poultry producers to raise
famines, like Bangladesh in 1974, oc- prices,” said Joel Brandenberger, pres-
cur in years of peak food availability. ident of the National Turkey Federa-
In the midst of a severe hunger cri- tion, “or risk going out of business.”
sis, agricultural subsidies do not make Bill Roenigk, chief economist of the
much of a difference. And in the face National Chicken Council, predicted
of famine, a reliance on market that “food inflation is poised to begin
economies is as ineffective as a reliance and continue for many, many months.”
on loaves and fishes or manna from All of which impelled Iowa Senator
Heaven. Even so, said Sen, famines Charles Grassley to wax rabid and
are not terribly difficult to avoid. liken the American grocery lobby to
Prevention requires the speedy imple- the Nazi Party. “They have to have
mentation of emergency income- an excuse for increasing the price of
creation and employment programs, their food,” said Grassley. “It’s anoth-
in combination with the broader social er Adolf Hitler lie.”
infrastructure of representative democ- As food prices rise, profit margins
racy and a free press, which happens to recede, and Sara Lee Corporation
be the best early-warning system. makes the front page of the Wall Street
Famine happens when rulers are alien- Journal with a $695 million quarterly
ated from those they rule, he explained, loss. Meanwhile, in El Salvador, the
and a functioning democracy is a sim- government suggests that hungry
ple way to remove such alienation. people simply tighten their belts.
Famine happens when there is no free Was anyone or anything immune
press, because rulers tend to feel em- from hunger’s plague of unreason?
barrassed when photographs of starv- Were academics like Amartya Sen
ing children appear on the front page. the only ones with the proper ana-
New formulations of the hunger lytical tools to withstand the on-
problem were not necessary. Sen had slaught of hysteria? Was there any ev-
discovered the solution and he had idence, in all of human history, that
gone over it many times, in abstruse those who lived the life of the mind
tables for Econometrica, in articles might rise above their intestines?
for the Handbook of Mathematical From 1919 to 1922, as 5 million
Economics, and in features for Gran- people across Russia died of famine,
ta. He had explained the solution in “It can do a lot of good,” he said. “But professors at the University of St.
his hundreds of essays and dozens of it’s not the way of solving Petersburg—some of the most civi-
books in thousands of seminars and the problem.” lized and gifted people in the world—
public addresses, yet his endlessly re-
hearsed points had not been enough.
The world remained irrational, and
“N othing but money is sweeter
than honey,” Benjamin Franklin fa-
began to realize that they were all
going to starve to death. During this
crisis the intelligentsia kept a careful
people starved. mously remarked. The portliest founder watch on themselves, as Professor
Of course, no other hunger narrative understood that market dynamics re- Pitirim Sorokin reported in his mono-
had ever succeeded either. Nor had flect appetites, and were thus driven maniacal world history, Hunger as a

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Factor in Human Affairs, which he selves or by drowning. “Mostly the peasant and Paul Kagame had spent
wrote while he was starving. Sorokin conversation turned on who had been his youth in refugee camps, but today
categorized world hunger into a strict arrested, or had been executed, who they would sit with one of the world’s
taxonomy of absolute-deficiency had died,” Sorokin reported. “In one richest men. Jakaya Kikwete’s grand-
starvation, relative-deficiency starva- way or another all became father had been a chief, so perhaps he
tion, individual-comparative starva- thieves and swindlers.” felt a bit more comfortable than the
tion, social-comparative starvation,
and quantitative-qualitative relative-
deficiency starvation. So the faculty at
T he United Nations had convened
its Sixty-third General Assembly, which
others in the presence of power. When
President Kikwete came to America
in 2006 he visited the headquarters of
St. Petersburg knew precisely what to meant block after block of river-view NASDAQ and appeared on CNBC to
expect: feelings of hurt, weakness, high-rises cordoned off by riot police, tout Tanzania as an international in-
headache, dizziness, and upset stom- gunships on the East River, frogmen in vestment opportunity. But as business
ach, followed by nausea and terrible the water, helicopters in the sky, with Shell, Dominion Petroleum, and
aches in the joints. Later, when un- SWAT units in SWAT vans, waves of De Beers increased, Kikwete’s country
remitting hunger obscured the clarity incensed demonstrators from China veered into what the International
of consciousness, they knew they would and the Upper West Side, and a rain- Food Policy Research Institute was now
forget where they were, where they bow coalition of dark-suited, grim-faced, calling an “alarming level of hunger.”
lived, and, finally, their names. A dull crew-cut, heavyset men who spoke into When Bill Gates and Josette Sheer-
and hopeless apathy would set in, and their lapels. Past the police barricades an walked up to the dais, deep in con-
then the infamous “famine psychosis” the climate-change, bioenergy, versation, the flashbulbs lit her red
would reign: depression, paralysis, and and hunger crowd had magically dress and his yellow paisley tie. Silence
an overwhelming sensation of exis- reappeared—the same presidents, prime settled as Bettina Lüescher, the for-
tential emptiness. Pathological ex- ministers, and assorted excellencies, in mer CNN International anchor and
pressions of anger and rage would soon addition to a new entourage whose current World Food Program senior
follow, along with hunger delirium and identity badges read, BILL GATES DELE- public-affairs officer, took her spot off
hallucinatory paroxysms like those ex- GATION. Among the representatives of to the side and soberly thanked every-
perienced by Saint Anthony, Saint Ig- 192 member states, the presidents of one for coming. “This is a wonderful
natius of Loyola, and Jesus in the Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda may event,” she observed. Then she intro-
wilderness, as Satan tempted him to have been happiest of all to see this duced her boss.
twist stones into bread. new delegation, for it signified a gift. “Thank you,” said Josette Sheeran.
As the professors quietly awaited I wound through the United Na- She welcomed everyone to the kickoff
their fate, the rest of Russia went mad. tions’ underground maze of baby-blue of Purchase for Progress and then got
In Moscow, a starving husband mur- barricades, mini-militias, and metal de- right to the point. “Today you see a
dered his wife, carved a roast out of tectors until I reached Conference partnership determined to put hunger
one part of her body, made a soup Room 4, one of those vast interiors that out of business.”
from another, and a jelly loaf from her promised the future of the world in its Sheeran recited her litany of ever
feet. In Minsk, two children killed bold angles and curves and molded plas- worsening facts and figures, including
and gradually consumed a third. In tic chairs bolted to the floor. The burly the latest hunger statistics, which in-
the village of Esipovka, a woman cut guys with automatic weapons were not dicated that the number of malnour-
up the body of her seven-year-old letting anyone in until the K-9 unit ished people had gone up once again
daughter and ate it. “Hunger makes a had given the all-clear, so I loitered be- and the cost of fertilizer in some areas
norm of abnormality,” wrote Pitirim side a huddle of World Food Program had risen 400 percent. “Farmers are
Sorokin. “Starvation tends to alter underlings who snapped to attention reeling,” said Sheeran.
our ideology.” when Nancy Roman marched into their ActionAid International, the glob-
Every evening, the professors would midst, followed by their executive di- al anti-poverty organization, had re-
seat themselves around the universi- rector, Josette Sheeran. cently reported that a full quarter of
ty refectory for their single daily meal When the hounds headed out of the world’s population were now being
of watery broth flecked with scraps of Conference Room 4 the press headed denied their “right to food.” The
potato peel. As they ate, the biolo- in. We dispersed around the great mod- droughts in Australia and Ukraine had
gists among the crowd would grimly ernist semicircle of egalitarian unidesk, destroyed harvests. In Nigeria, the price
prognosticate how long each could and I settled less than ten feet from of gari had doubled. And authorities
expect to survive. The behaviorists the big nameplates. The three African in Bihar, one of India’s poorest states,
would report how many laboratory presidents were flanked beyond the suggested that everyone switch from
dogs had died that day, while the empty chair for Bill Gates, their ex- eating rice to eating rats. “Eating of
philosophers discussed the growing cellencies Yoweri Museveni of Ugan- rats will serve twin purposes,” Vijay
wave of hunger suicides. Entire fami- da, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, and Prakash, an official from the state’s
lies had ended their lives by carbon Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania, all in their welfare department, told Reuters. “It
monoxide poisoning, others by in- gray suits, all attended by bodyguards will save grains from being eaten away
fecting themselves with spotted ty- and aides. by rats and will simultaneously increase
phus fever, others by hanging them- Yoweri Museveni had been born a our grain stock.”

58 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / JUNE 2009

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As Sheeran continued from where “Thank you, Josette,” concluded from his perch beside the African pres-
she had left off in Rome, Bill Gates Yoweri Museveni. “She buys a lot of idents. “Incredible progress has been
began, as was his habit, to rock in his food from us,” he said. “And I salute made,” he recited. “You get operating
chair, his eyes fixed somewhere in the Mr. Bill Gates.” markets, they can feed the world very
middle distance. He rocked and Now Bettina Lüescher returned to well. This money is being spent be-
picked his ear and nodded and her microphone and asked if anyone cause it improves the human condi-
grinned, and eventually he turned on had any questions. I raised my hand but tion.” And now his smile returned. “If
his microphone. she called on someone else. Second you look at historical figures and do
“It is an honor to be here with this question, she looked right past me. not see a positive trend, you might not
group,” he said. He looked down the Ditto for the third. choose to be involved,” he said, “but I
table and nodded at the African pres- “We are running out of time,” said do see a positive trend.”
idents, who nodded back. Lüescher. “One last question.” Gates shook his head and turned
Then, in the great visionary tradi- She gazed at the multitude of hands off his microphone, and Bettina
tion of the United Nations, Bill Gates from front to back and all around the Lüescher announced that the news
spoke of a world in which the haves arc of the majestic semicircle. Then conference had come to an end. At
can teach the have-nots how to sell. she smiled and said, “Fred.” which point, Jakaya Kikwete switched
“Ultimately, the goal here is to have I clicked on my microphone and on his microphone.
these markets be self-sustaining,” he said I had a question for Mr. Gates: “To assume that what the assistance
said, noting that most of the world’s Despite all he was doing to end world that Bill Gates and Howard Buffet are
poor people happened to be farmers. hunger, might not programs like Pur- extending to African farmers is doing
“Allowing them to participate in these chase for Progress in the end perpet- is perpetuating hunger,” said Kikweke,
markets is a real win-win.” uate market conditions that actually “that is a big misconception.” The idea
Through such received wisdom and promote world hunger? that Bill Gates and the World Food
clichés did the chieftain display his An uncomfortable silence settled Program might actually be increasing
generosity, and turn wolves into dogs. on the room, and for the first time that famine had interrogated the very
“Let me join Josette in expressing morning Bill Gates stopped smiling. essence of the gift heading Kikwete’s
my sincere appreciation to Bill Gates,” Instead of answering my question he way: his fertilizer market, his seed mar-
said Jakaya Kikwete. “It is our prob- asked one in return, the only indica- ket, his loans, his commodity-options
lem,” continued Kikwete. “You are tion of his annoyance the fact that he technology, his slice of progress pie.
coming to our rescue.” had forgotten to turn on his micro- And so the president of Tanzania re-
Paul Kagame was the next African phone. “What do you mean by ‘market commenced his well-rehearsed paean
president to speak, and the Tutsi gen- conditions’?” he asked. to the new era of hunger management.
eral who had dominated Rwandan pol- I had planned my question in ad- “I am seeing a lot of sense in what
itics since the genocide was on his best vance, but never suspected I would be they are doing,” Kikwete continued,
behavior. “We are very happy in required to speak at any length. Now but no one was listening anymore,
Rwanda to be associated with this pro- I found myself in front of a micro- not even Bettina Lüescher, who re-
gram,” he droned. “It is our duty as phone, in full possession of my own peated that the news conference was
governments to make these coopera- famine narrative, a story that had been over. The press continued their
tive efforts work.” Indeed, out of a pop- accruing for months. An irresistible quest to extract something more
ulation of 9 million, almost 5 million urge took hold, and I launched into from Bill Gates, who ignored the
Rwandans are at risk of going hungry. the tale of Dionysodorus the Athenian noise. And still Tanzania’s chief ex-
After his short speech, Kagame yield- grain merchant, Roman mobs rushing ecutive would not stop. Jakaya Kik-
ed the floor to Uganda’s president, the the Palatine, and medieval markets wete wanted his money and his mar-
elder statesman of the little group. for human flesh and living children. I kets, and he would keep reciting
“High food prices are very good for us,” cited Xenokles and Archestratos, the until he got them.
said Yoweri Museveni, who had been Bemba and the Bushmen and the Eventually, the African president
criticized for arresting opposition lead- Tikopians of the South Pacific. The tired of his speech. The aides and sec-
ers, clamping down on the press, and history of the world was the history of retaries cleared the room, along with
working to destroy some of the last hungry people, I explained. Money, the World Food Program crowd and
remnants of Uganda’s rain forest in or- politics, war—none had ever been the Bill Gates Delegation. And for a
der to reward politically connected enough to stop starvation. And so on moment, Conference Room 4 stood
plantation owners for whom high food and so forth. Josette Sheeran sat frozen empty. Then Indonesia’s minister for
prices were indeed a very good thing. behind the dais and Bill Gates scowled. foreign affairs took a seat at the dais,
In the northeast of Uganda more than “You should track what the food alongside the prime minister of Den-
700,000 people did not have enough output has been,” he said, and this mark, the president of Poland, and
food. And in the provincial capital of time he remembered to turn on his U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Moroto, three-quarters of the popula- microphone. “The amount of food be- A new press person announced a new
tion were starving to death. Here, es- ing produced in the world today is press conference.
calating prices for maize, sorghum, and much greater than millennia ago.” His Hunger was over. It was time to dis-
pulses would not be good news. face had grown florid as he gazed down cuss climate change. ■

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