Ask the World Food Programme's Executive Director

Select a link below to watch tthe Talking Point debate with James Morris, executive director of the World Food Programme.

  56k modems The World Food Programme was set up in 1963 to fight against global hunger.

In 2001, it fed 77 million people in 82 countries, including most of the world's refugees and internally displaced people.

It is currently fighting the famine in South Africa, and maintaining operations in Afghanistan, Guatemala and North Korea.

James T. Morris has been the executive director of the WFP since April this year.

This week he attended the United Nations World Food Summit in Rome, where world leaders renewed a pledge to cut world hunger in half by 2015.

Do you think we are doing enough to help fight world famine? Are government policy failures to blame? Should foreign aid donations be increased? And should starving nations accept GM crops?

James Morris will answer your questions in a live forum.

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Transcript:

Roger Hearing:
Our guest this week is James Morris, appointed the Executive Director of the World Food Programme just two months ago. James Morris, welcome to Talking Point. Before we go any further, can we isolate what it is that the World Food Programme exactly does? What is your mission?

James T Morris:
The World Food Programme is an agency programme of the United Nations - essentially the largest humanitarian programme in the world. Our job is to feed people who are in a crisis, people who are in emergencies - man-made or natural - people who are very much at risk.

Last year the World Food Programme fed about 80 million people in 80 different countries around the world. Many of these were in Afghanistan, or Korea or Southern Africa, or Central America. So essentially we are the way the world responds, along with many of our NGO partners, to very serious problems that people have.

Roger Hearing:
Where does the money come from for this?

James T Morris:
The money comes from voluntary contributions from governments. We receive some small amount from private individuals or companies but it's very small. Essentially there are 10 countries in the world that provide 90% of our support. There are 20 countries that provide 100% - the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, the European countries - the European community, Great Britain - these are places that are very generous to us.

Roger Hearing:
Eva , telephoning from Toronto, Canada. Eva, what's your point?

Eva:
How can you convince anyone that this time there is a solution and that money is it?

James T Morris:
There is a solution to hunger. My own belief is that the world is wealthy, it is technically competent - it knows how to produce enough food to feed itself - the world generally has a pretty good heart. The issue is distribution and the issue is causing places that are very, very much at risk to find a way to begin to get on their own feet.

There are about 80 million hungry people in the world, 40% of them children. I believe that the best place for the world to make a major intervention is to think about the 300 million hungry children, half of whom are not in school, two-thirds are stunted in their growth. Hungry children have all sorts of problems and I think working through school systems, we can find a way to find a way to feed many hungry hundreds of millions of children.

Roger Hearing:
This is providing food at schools in order to encourage the children to come to school?

James T Morris:
Right. For just a very few cents a day, we can feed a child at school or we can provide a take home ration for the child as an incentive to come to school to take home and help the family take the place of the work the child would have done had the parents not allowed him or her to come to school.

Roger Hearing:
Eva are you convinced about that? Do you the WFP is producing enough evidence that it can be effective with the money that's given to encourage people to really give?

Eva:
I think it has produced enough evidence that it is being successful, but there is the lack of political will throughout the world. It is really is a disgrace that people are starving at this level in today's world.

James T Morris:
Eva, you are exactly right. It is a disgrace. I think it is the single most import issue that the world ought to be preoccupied with. But when you look at the millennium development goals of doing a better job with children - preventing infant mortality, worrying about maternal health, HIV/Aids, gender equity or simply working on reducing poverty in a major way - food is the major ingredient in all of these issues. If the world was only slightly more generous that it is right now, we know how to solve these problems.

Focusing on children - an investment in feeding children through school is the single most effective way to immediately affect a huge number of people and ultimately feeding children causing them to be educated to be productive citizens, better parents etc. - it changes the whole dynamics of a country.

Roger Hearing:
Nick Maunder, Nairobi, Kenya. Nick, what's your question?

Nick Mauder:
I'm joining this debate as someone involved in the relief system in Africa. I would like to agree with the previous caller that it is a disgrace that we still witness famine at this point in time. But I'd also like to disagree that the solution lies in necessarily simply more resources.

I think there are two issues here: firstly, while a lot of time and money has been devoted to treating the symptoms, particularly through the large food relief programmes we've seen to prevent starvation, this hasn't been matched by meaningful action to tackle the root causes. The consequence we are seeing of that is while we may be limiting outright starvation, the number of people who are more impoverished and more vulnerable to famine in Africa is simply growing year by year.

Roger Hearing:
So what action do you want to see taken?

Nick Mauder:
I would like to see a better analysis of the causes that are taking place? I think we're simply still attributing it to natural disasters like drought, when we should be acknowledging that above all else the determining question is whether a country is well governed or not.

Roger Hearing:
That's a good point. Let me put that to James Morris. Is it government that's at the root of this? Is it environment - what is the basic cause and are you addressing it?

James T Morris:
The World Food Programme's responsibility is to feed people who are very hungry today. We obviously co-operate and work in partnership with all of the development programmes, NGOs and other development agencies. All of those things that Nick mentioned are very important - basic agricultural infrastructure, some basic knowledge on how to maximise the productivity of rich land - we know how to do that - governmental will is incredibly important. There is no country in the world that has had success without first having in place a successful agricultural economy and governments play a major role in causing that to happen.

Roger Hearing:
Let me bring an e-mail that I've just received from Anthony in Calgary in Canada: He says: This target of 2015 for reducing by half the number of people starving in the world - why do we have to wait until 2015 for the number of people who are starving to be cut in half?

James T Morris:
The last UN summit on food concluded that it would take that many years to generate the resources to cause governments to be generous enough to work on the problems as they saw it. I agree, that this is a human disgrace to think that there are hundreds of millions of people that are incredibly vulnerable - very hungry today - and we're only committed to solving half the problem thirteen years from now.

Roger Hearing:
It's a fairly limited objective isn't it?

James T Morris:
Well, it's an embarrassment. Humanity ought to be committed to solving this problem promptly. Whether you look at economically, politically or socially, this issue of hunger is a blight on all of us.

Roger Hearing:
Nick Mauder, are you encouraged by what you've heard?

Nick Mauder:
I still feel that we should be doing more. I agree with what Mr Morris said about the limited mandate of the WFP but I think we have incredible leverage through our relief programmes and I think there's a sense of disappointment. For example, in the current southern Africa crisis, that it isn't being more clearly linked to the governance question and instead we're still hearing the issue of drought being bandied about and large-scale relief advocated as solution. I would like to see us moving much more down the policy reform line.

Roger Hearing:
We go now to a call from Zambia. George Michalakis in Kitwe. George what's your question?

George Michalakis:
My question is more of a statement in fact from all that's been said up until now on the programme. We seem to be dealing more with the symptoms rather the causes of the state of affairs that exist. Aid benefits the country that is giving the aid more than the receiving country and in this connection I would say that it is the state of affairs that benefit the countries that are giving the aid. For example, the case of the United States increasing the subsidies to their farmers whereby it is in the United States' benefit in some respect for their to be a famine.

Roger Hearing:
There is a fair point that often the countries that do give aren't giving entirely without benefit to themselves and sometimes very considerable benefit to themselves, isn't that right?

James T Morris:
I suspect that most things that people do in any set of circumstances, they do for a variety of reasons. In my two-and-a-half months on the job I've been incredibly impressed with the generosity of the donor countries and the humanity, the human heart, the caring that is being expressed by the help their providing.

Roger Hearing:
But sometimes that help is actually helping their own farmers at home too isn't it?

James T Morris:
Well, I don't know.

Roger Hearing:
There's offloading of surplus food - surplus, wheat, surplus corn - isn't there?

James T Morris:
But they don't have to make it available for humanitarian purposes, they chose to do that. The World Food Programme's mandate is to feed very hungry people who are severely at risk who have no resources to participate in the market generally on their own and we need to step up and feed them and help them get on their feet so they become productive people.

Roger Hearing:
An e-mail from Keith Culper, Denver, United States: Keith says: World hunger cannot be defeated as long as rich nations aren't caring. Western governments are too busy bothering themselves with their paranoid security concerns to open their eyes and realise millions of people in the world are starving - our priorities need to be re-examined.

Roger Hearing:
I think what Keith is saying there is that motives for all of this aren't really what they should be and indeed the direction of policy isn't what it should be.

James T Morris:
I think what Keith is saying is that there are mixed motives. Clearly all countries have an interest in their security and more peace around the world - more well fed people leads to more productive people and more productive people have a bigger stake in their economies. But my sense is, from having had dozens of conversations, that there's a great commitment around the world, especially to children. President Bush has made this commitment that he'll leave no child behind and I'm impressed with that. I believe that most of the western world feels that way.

Roger Hearing:
A call now from Chris Whitehead, Arizona.

Chris Whitehead:
I come to this perspective as a former Zimbabwean and I now live in the United States. What I am tired of seeing and I've heard a number of callers say that the food is being handed out to people without any political reform in these countries. I think hunger is a horrendous thing - I'm also a geography teacher and I know sometimes that people position in the world - their location - causes there to be frequent droughts and people will starve and so we need to deal with that.

But there are also countries like Zimbabwe where you have political leaders who are absolutely dictatorial and who have ruined what was once an agricultural paradise that produced food and exported food within Africa and then they go and claim at the World Health Organisation that they have drought and that we need to help them. The food will then go into a country like Zimbabwe and we it will be used by the political leaders there to their benefit.

Roger Hearing:
Jim, I believe you have had talks with President Mugabe in the last few days in Rome.

James T Morris:
I visited him twice this week. Clearly there are very serious political issues in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe has had the worst drought in 20 years - it's a catastrophe from a Mother Nature point of view. You compound this with restrictions on how a normal market would operate and confusing political situations - you further compound it with a huge percentage of the population being infected with HIV/Aids and you end up with more than 6 million people severely at risk.

Now the six million people who are at risk right now have not caused the problem - they have not contributed to the political mismanagement or they haven't contributed to the dramatic decrease in production from the commercial section - in fact nearly a million of them have been harmed by that because they've lost their jobs working in the commercial farms. So what does the world do? Does the world turn its back on 6 million people who by next year could be at risk of death - I think not. I think the world in a humanitarian sense has to come forward and provide the resources but all the time encouraging the government and insisting that the government do the things that it needs to do to see that this is not a problem that goes on for ever.

Roger Hearing:
An e-mail received from Harare, Zimbabwe from Oliver Maradzike: The reasons for famine are too complex to blame merely inappropriate government policies. Southern Africa is prone to incessant droughts and fragile soil.

Jim, that is true because lots of countries - Malawi, Zambia, Botswana even - are also suffering aren't they?

James T Morris:
That's true. There are six countries that are severely at risk right now - Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi, Swaziland and Lesotho. There are separate centre problems in Angola related to the war there and Namibia has problems. The six that we're focused on, clearly four of the six are all related to natural causes and this has been building up for several years.

Roger Hearing:
But two of them aren't.

James T Morris:
But two of them aren't. Malawi has had a serious natural problems but has also depleted their grain reserves and it's a very complicated problem when a country doesn't have reserves to help feed people when the country is in a crisis or to help manage the price of the commodity.

Roger Hearing:
Let me bring in Simon Harragin from Paris. Simon what do you think about this situation in southern Africa?

Simon Harragin:
Like one of your previous callers, I've also been involved in several famine relief programmes. But I'd like to make a different point from him - it's on this point of implying that governments rather than droughts are uniquely responsible for famine. Does that not actually mean that whenever there's a good harvest, it's the same governments who should take the credit? If that happens should we not be realistic and admit that there are roles to be played by farmers themselves as well as governments and international agencies and in a famine aid agencies should exercise their humanitarian imperatives and save lives and leave the politics to politicians.

Roger Hearing:
Thanks for that Simon. Before you answer that Jim, can I bring in Marie Phirie calling us Malawi?

Marie Phiri:
I feel very strongly about the situation in the Malawi because we have had quite good crops and our reserves have been quite substantial. But people through greed and corruption have sold our reserve and have bought them back at fantastic prices which 95% of our people cannot afford to buy. But these profits go to the greedy dealers and to leaders.

Roger Hearing:
We had a couple of important points there to do with the political and economic control of these things. In Malawi particularly there has been this concern about the reserves, even suggesting at one point that the IMF had encouraged the country to sell off these reserves. What do you feel about this?

James T Morris:
I am going to leave that discussion to the IMF and the World Bank and the leaders in Malawi. The fact that the reserves are no long there is a devastating problem for the country going through what it's going through. Malawi has had serious weather problems and going back to the earlier caller, the humanitarian imperative is that the world come together to see that a good many millions of people are not at risk of death - especially children and especially the most vulnerable people in a population - children, the elderly, the disabled, pregnant mothers. There are a huge number where a shortage of food affects their life in a very dramatic way.

Roger Hearing:
But I think the point some of the callers were making was that why should money be given from the outside world to countries where the governments are themselves corrupt possibly and certainly in some areas incompetent and therefore won't use it properly anyway.

James T Morris:
Money or commodities are not given to governments, they're given to the World Food Programme and we then go into a country and working with non-governmental partners or on our own find ways to distribute the food throughout the country. So our crops, our commodities, our resources are not turned over to governments and so there is no potential for a corrupt government to play a role in mismanaging our resources - we do ourselves with a very, very able NGO partners.

Roger Hearing:
An e-mail from Eric Birrell in South Africa: Hunger will never disappear from Africa. Many leaders are too quick to reach for the beginning bowl because they know that the West will always come to their aid. If that continues, then they will never bother to grow crops.

So that carries on from what you were saying - in a sense they're saying you are almost rescuing governments that perhaps shouldn't be rescued sometimes.

James T Morris:
We are rescuing people and it's unacceptable in this world today for whatever the reason for 12.8 million people in these six countries to be at risk of their lives. A few weeks ago I was a part of a conversation the UN held on the future of children and there were 50 or 60 children from Africa on one side of the table meeting with African leaders on the other side.

It was an extraordinary conversation and the children said to the African leaders - we want things to be different in our countries. We're tired of war, we're tired of mismanagement, greed and corruption - we know that Africa is resource-rich. As children, we have high aspirations and expectations for our region, for our country, for our continent and we're going to see that things are different. I must say that this conversation gave me about as much encouragement for the future of that part of the world as anything I've ever heard or seen. I think in the long run children with this kind of idealism as they grow into adults will cause things to be different and it further points out the very important fact of the world making an investment in feeding children so they can go to school and learn.

Roger Hearing:
Graham Harris, a South African calling us from the UK. Graham what is your point to Mr Morris?

Graham Harris:
I'd like to raise one area where we talking a lot about accountability of governments and how they deal with their grain reserves. Obviously the World Food Programme relies on a principle amount of donations from governments in order to meet the shortfall. Governments also, like the British, have a got a number of their charities that they support - in terms of a dollar donated by a government, what percentage actually goes on supplying food into those delivered markets?

James T Morris:
I would make the case that every penny that's donated to us makes it possible for us to feed hungry people. Without some administrative support, without the resources for transportation and shipping and distribution and without resources for accountability, our donors would not respond positively. I would say that less than 9% of the resources contributed go to manage our corporate operation.

Roger Hearing:
So 91% would go into food.

James T Morris:
That's correct. Essentially, 90% of our employees are all over the world - we have a very small operation in Rome where the headquarters are operated. But the strongest possible commitment we have is to see that every single penny gets to a hungry person.

Roger Hearing:
Graham are you reassured?

Graham Harris:
I was in Harare recently and figures were given to me showing 22% of the Harare operation went on overheads and that's why I thought 22% was quite a large amount bearing in mind, if a tender is held and the tender is awarded at $200 delivered to Harare, for example, a further $44 a ton would be added onto the administrative cost and that would be debited to the donor nation.

Roger Hearing:
There are some figures that Graham's heard on the ground - does that make any sense to you?

James T Morris:
I can't relate to Graham's figures - I trust him, I'm sure he knows what he is talking about. The fact of the matter is that we have a 7.8% indirect support cost that people contribute to the operation of the world food programme for the value of the commodities they contribute. Beyond that we ask them to pay the shipping and the transportation and the internal distribution. There is no other way to do it. Then we use NGOs to further distribute the commodities throughout the country - we pay the NGOs for their services. So this is a bare bones operation and with the number of hungry people in the world, you can't imagine the strong commitment the World Food Programme has to get every penny to a hungry person.

Roger Hearing:
On that point, we've had this e-mail from Corinne in Malta: I would prefer having a tax imposed with all the money going to needy countries rather than leaving it up to governments who might only give petty amounts according to their whims.

Is there a better way of getting this money through to yourselves and indeed to the needy countries?

James T Morris:
It's an interesting question. I'm not sure what the answer is. As it works now we rely on voluntary commitments from a good number of western countries essentially around the world who either make a commitment of resources for us to use multilaterally or they bilaterally direct resources to a specific problem.

Roger Hearing:
So they can have control of policy to some extent? They can say this money has to go to this country under these circumstances.

James T Morris:
Yes, they have that option.

Roger Hearing:
Is that satisfactory do you think?

James T Morris:
Obviously it is more efficient when a multilateral commitment is made and we have the discretion to quickly respond to a problem and aren't worried about political considerations. It takes much less time to manage multilateral funds than it does bilateral funds. But countries have special interests for historical reasons or trade purposes or relationship purposes with special places around the world and it's understandable that the other scenario works.

Roger Hearing:
Do western governments give enough at the moment?

James T Morris:
Some countries have come together and said that there should be a commitment to give seven-tenths of 1% of GDP for development purposes - a country like Sweden gives more than 1%. A good many of the Nordic countries are in the middle range.

Roger Hearing:
What about the United States, Britain, France?

James T Morris:
The United States is our single largest supporter. Last year they provided $1.2 billion, nearly 60% of our entire budget.

Roger Hearing:
But what percentage of their GDP?

James T Morris:
I can't answer that - I don't know. But the United States is a very generous partner for the World Food Programme in every place we do business, as is the UK. The UK has been very generous and the UK has been very helpful in making resources available to help us improve the way we do our work - a very sophisticated support the UK has given us to help the World Food Programme do its work better.

Roger Hearing:
Let me bring in another caller, Bhekie Matsebula has called from Swaziland. Bhekie, what's your point to Mr Morris?

Bhekie Matsebula:
I am very, very concerned about the food shortages in Swaziland. The situation here is terrible - people now are forced to sleep without any food at all. But most interestingly, our king or even the government itself is not spending enough. However, they are spending enough on foreign trips etc.

Roger Hearing:
Let me put that to Mr Morris - to see what the WFP is doing in Swaziland. What is the programme at the moment?

James T Morris:
We have an emergency operation in Swaziland that is providing emergency food to people who are very hungry. Going forward to the rest of the year, there are about 150,000 people in Swaziland that will be seriously at risk and we will have an office there that will, with our NGO partners, be distributing food.

Roger Hearing:
And you are getting co-operation from the government?

James T Morris:
Yes we are. I met with the King of Swaziland on Tuesday of this week, with several of his ministers and we had a good conversation about the needs of Swaziland.

Roger Hearing:
An e-mail now from Betty Huntley in Melbourne, Australia. She says: When hearing of how such a lot of the food aid ends up in the wrong hands, I wonder if some sort of rationing system akin to the way we survived in the UK during World War II could be implemented.

James T Morris:
A lot of our work is done is using the model of rationing in the UK or the US. Families that are in need of food are given ration books and they on a quarterly or monthly basis would bring in the book and it would be stamped and the food would be provided. So that is a model that we use.

We're also very focused on monitoring - we know what comes in and we know who the beneficiaries are and we keep track - we follow the food. There's not as much disappearance, pilfering or slippage as the world might think.

Roger Hearing:
A call now from Abdoulie Danso in the Gambia. Abdoulie what is your question?

Abdoulie Danso:
I would like the World Food Programme to tell the developed countries to consider the prices of the commodities for the developing countries. That is, let them determine the prices of their commodities in the world market.

Roger Hearing:
Let them organise their own prices is what your saying. Let me put that to Mr Morris. Does that make sense in terms of evening out things in the world economy?

James T Morris:
My job is to encourage countries to provide resources to feed very hungry people - people who are dramatically at risk and clearly world market factors affect all of this. My job is to persuade countries to be generous, to provide cash in commodities to help us feed these 800 million hungry people around the world especially children and the most vulnerable. So how countries help us is a decision they will make - we'll have suggestions and we are asking all the time. But I'll leave these issues of macro economics to the politicians and as a humanitarian agency, I'm grateful for what everybody does for us.

Roger Hearing:
We have an e-mail from Olubukola Oreofe in Nigeria: The World Food Programme would do better in achieving its objectives if it switched from being a feeding exercise to creating pro-active strategies to prevent famine around the world.

Is it not possible to try and make sure that there is enough food to start with in these places?

James T Morris:
Our job is to be concerned about people who are hungry today. There are many hundreds of millions of people in the world today who don't have enough food to eat to be happy, to be productive, to live a normal life. Clearly the world needs to be focused on development on strategies that are proactive, that will ultimately help countries be self-sufficient. But the people that I'm concerned about - these 300 million children who are not well fed today, they can't wait for development, they have to be fed today and that's the preoccupation of the World Food Programme.

We work in many ways to support the development process - we provide food as an incentive to help and to be the bridge for people who are in the early stages of their own agricultural development. We provide resources in all sorts of ways. The Food and Agricultural Organisation of the UN has more the responsibility of the major development portfolio. But the point he makes is right on target, but we can't forget about these incredibly large number of people who are hungry this very hour.

Roger Hearing:
Jean Edwardes joins us on the line from Hampshire. Jean what's your point to Mr Morris ?

Jean Edwardes:
Some of my fellow Soroptimists have recently returned from a fact-finding mission to the FAO in Rome. So I'd like to ask Mr Morris, what part do GM crops play in planning food sufficiency across the globe?

Roger Hearing:
This is genetically modified crops as a possible way of providing more food for the world.

Jean Edwardes:
Especially as so many of the multinationals describe them as a great hope for tomorrow's food crop management.

James T Morris:
First let me that thank the lady and thank Soroptimist - they are terrific people. They're an international organisation that focus on human rights and on the needs of people that are at risk around the world - they do great work.

The World Food Programme doesn't have a position on GM foods. FAO and the World Health Organisation have produced a document which established the standards and they've concluded that genetically modified foods are not harmful and properly offered can be very useful as a contribution.

Roger Hearing:
So the WFP might indeed produce them for people in famine conditions? For example, I gather Zimbabwe actually rejected this.

James T Morris:
We don't produce anything. We receive contributions from donor countries and we ask the donor country to certify that the food they're providing meets the health and safety standards of their own government - their own country, for their own people - and asked that they certify that they meet the standards of the WHO, FAO code. Once they've certified what they're offering is safe and meets the standards, we then make it available to a recipient country and we make all of the information available.

Roger Hearing:
In recent times, Zimbabwe has questioned a particular delivery.

James T Morris:
Just to finish my point - and then the government has the option of saying yes, we'll accept I or no, we won't accept it. We've had very few situations over the years where they haven't been accepted. One of the problems with genetically modified foods is that they are put in the same silos as the traditionally grown crop and you don't know what is what. There was a ship headed to Africa - a shipload from the United States that had 33,000 metric tonnes that was headed for Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique. The piece of the shipment that was allocated for Zimbabwe - Zimbabwe did not have the paperwork done in a timely fashion. They did not reject it because of a GM consideration.

The Zimbabwe position is that they would like for the foods that have some GM content to be milled before they arrive or for the government to take control and do the milling, or for the World Food Programme to do the milling. They want to be sure that they can't be used for seeds or for animal feed.

Roger Hearing:
So you're saying that in this instance it was simply a lack of paperwork?

James T Morris:
It was a bureaucratic slip up.

Roger Hearing:
An email from Sophie in Manchester, UK: What the world's poorest countries need least is for bio-tec companies to be selling them crops which produce sterile seeds which cannot be replanted the following year, forcing the same poor people to come back, cash in hand year after year to buy new ones.

James T Morris:
What poor countries need best is a growing sense of sophistication within the basic system of agriculture. They need healthy people to do the farming, they need access to good technology and good seeds, good fertilisers and good herbicides and they need markets and they needs systems of distribution and transport. As I said previously, there's never been a successful country in the history of the world that didn't first have a strong agricultural economy. Agricultural economies are built with thousands of very strong, small farmers.

Roger Hearing:
A call now from Lena Shamash calling from London, UK. Lena what's your question to James Morris?

Lena Shamash:
Firstly I agree that starvation, alongside western prosperity and the massive food surpluses that we have is nothing less than an obscenity. I take the point that you are dealing with emergencies as they occur. But there is a real risk that with the best intentions in the world, food aid could be feeding the problem unless you have concurrent birth control programme being vigorously pursued.

I'd like to give you an example. Fifty years ago, the UN started a massive welfare programme and a few hundred refugees are now several million - I'm talking of course about the Palestinian problem. There the families - the average is eight and many families are thirteen.

Roger Hearing:
There is a point here that if the world population keeps going up and particularly in countries that are already in trouble with poverty, that is going to create more food problems. Is there a population exercise that we could talk about here?

James T Morris:
My own view of this is that the best way to help a country have a reasonable population is for more children to be well educated and more children will be well educated if they're well fed. Numbers show that school feeding programmes that encourage young women to come to school, to stay in school to get educated - they have children much later in life, they have a more responsible number of children and they're better parents. So the investment that the world makes in making it possible for a young girl to come to school to learn that this is the single best commitment that the world can make to addressing this issue.

Roger Hearing:
An e-mail now from Craig Harry, in the UK: All this prattle about population control is a red herring. We in the West use hundreds of times the resources consumed by the Earth's poorest people. Perhaps we should control our consumption before we lecture others.

James T Morris:
I think that the world knows how to produce enough food, enough resources, enough commodities to feed everyone. We have the technology and we have wherewithal - both the agricultural technology and the information technology to make these notions of how people can begin to take care of themselves and make them available everywhere. I don't think he's going to win the argument on reducing the size of the pie - the pie has to get bigger and we know how to do that.

Roger Hearing:
But is it a question of the West reducing its intake, I think is his point?

James T Morris:
I don't think so. I think it might be a good scholarly argument but I think the notion that some are going to consume less is probably not likely to prevail.

We have huge surpluses, we know how to grow more surpluses and we have the technology that can enable these forty or fifty very poor countries to become more productive on their own.

Roger Hearing:
I'd like to bring in Marcus Zerbini from Melbourne, Australia. Marcus what is your question to James Morris?

Marcus Zerbini:
I'd like to mention a couple of things. First, the positive. Micro credit can play a major role in achieving the millennium goals.

Roger Hearing:
This is the system of small loans.

Marcus Zerbini:
That's right and micro finance that goes with it although that hasn't been fully developed, it's still early days for that but that's going to be a major player in dealing with poverty. Poverty has a root cause and that's inequality of opportunity. It's the collective selfishness of advanced countries, demonstrated by things like tied-aid and IMF World Bank policies that perpetuate this poverty.

I'd just like to broaden the debate a little - our collective selfishness is also the ultimate cause underlying climate change and global warming. It's not impossible that in the near future we'll all be in the same boat.

Roger Hearing:
Let me bring in Pamela Meggitt from Swaziland. Pamela, what's your question to Mr Morris?

Pamela Meggitt:
How can we make aid more effective and get down to the basic subsistence farmers. Most government aid goes into big things because they're showy and they're easy to manage. For instance, if you're lacking water, you get major dams - major dams help major players, they don't get down to the poorest of the poor.

One of your previous speakers said that the passport to success is a strong agricultural economy and I agree with that totally. Most of Africa relies on subsistence farming. If we could get just a small improvement in subsistence farming, we would go a long way to eliminating hunger.

Roger Hearing:
Thanks Pamela. Let me read an e-mail we've received from Saba in Ethopia: The problems of drought and famine cannot be solved unless developed countries extend a helping hands. The problem of famine has never been addressed properly. The West must understand that poverty is the main cause of many global problems and not just in the Third World.

Roger Hearing:
The thing there seems to be poverty and the necessity - whether through micro loans or working at the micro economic level - of trying to overcome things in that way. Can the WFP help in that?

James T Morris:
Sure. I come back to my basic premise that the best way for poverty to be moderated is for more people to be educated and to be prepared to compete and be productive and lead more enlightened lives. I think the opportunity to feed children through school is the best way to get at this.

But the last two callers and their comments about the value of very small farmers and the need for micro credit etc. is right on target. We need to do a better job of sharing information around the world. How we do that - well agricultural extension systems need to be in place around the world to serve very small farmers and I agree with the points that were made.

But I can't overstate the importance of the investment in education. An educated child is substantially more productive - be it in agriculture or whatever the sector of the economy is - than a child that's not educated.

Roger Hearing:
Pamela Meggitt are you impressed by what you hear there? On the ground where you are in Swaziland, is it possible to do the kind of things you want to do?

Pamela Meggitt:
Yes, it's possible but regrettably most governments want to put their money into big projects. If you put your money into a multi-million dollar thing that's much easier to manage than say a hundred, thirty or forty thousand dollar ones. That's the problem.

Roger Hearing:
So it's a matter of small things being actually better but not as attractive.

Pamela Meggitt:
Yes that's correct. On the problem of education, I totally agree with that. But the problem is that famine also increases the lack of education because in those countries, there is at least a small school fee payable and of course if there is any money it's got to go first into feeding and what hasn't been mentioned is the impact of HIV/Aids.

Roger Hearing:
HIV/Aids is a big factor in all this. It is not perhaps unrelated that this drought is happening in southern Africa which is already weakened by HIV.

James T Morris:
Southern Africa has had maybe 40 million who have contracted Aids and half that many people have died. A huge number - many millions of children are infected with Aids. There are some places where Aids has wiped out parents and the number of children that have come into extended families have just put huge burdens on the system. Where we used to provide a normal package of food for a family of five - it's now a family of seven. The impact of HIV/Aids on these economies is enormous.

Roger Hearing:
And something that's very hard to do much about at this stage?

James T Morris:
Well obviously if people are hungry and starving, their more prone to contract Aids, or cholera or malaria.

Roger Hearing:
Well that's it for today. My thanks to James Morris and thanks indeed to everyone who called in today.