in july two thousand and eleven the horn of africa was struck by a wave of famine and. again our screens were flooded with images of a may see that africans. over thirteen million people in somalia kenya ethiopia eritrea and djibouti are once

again threatened by famine. the u.n. approaches the international community for immediate food aid. and. you know the only thing you notice are children from the most horrific that we've seen over the years that. we grew up learning about africa's hunger problems .

that the african people always suffer from hunger and the so-called developed world always stands food. is there perhaps something wrong with the food aid mechanism. if you're looking at all this money that has been pumped into the fifty's and you're still starving. then it means that something's not right incomes or the interest of those will put you to be assisted in kenya or any other african country gene pool difficult security plan hate. what i did will be pumped. and you can see

it in going to be many ways because it becomes almost like. a business. to do what. is given once you can put together speaking we're looking at a very wealthy continent which has been now sustained into public teat just before the aid in the street and and that's why we need to put two and. these approach like aids as i would you know changing the predicament. the african people.

yeah. yeah. yes. northern kenya was one of the regions affected during this recent famine wave. the land is arid and barren. that was. how i never. am carried here that was written i am the turkana are this region's inhabitants one of kenya's most traditional tribes that

were never. forgotten my. dad did that with. their nomadic pastoralists for centuries they have learned to survive on this harsh land depending on the rain periods. i. have never yet. i. but in recent years the ongoing droughts threaten their very existence. i give that yet we. are in northern kenya we had a year with basically no rain and told to qana region as seen. successive droughts of the past few years and what we're seeing is the stress of getting more and more frequent so the rain is becoming less less common. the travelers left many

of the enemy was very very weak so people didn't have to didn't have the usual income. of. money attrition levels really short are. not what the global acute malnutrition bricked fifteen percent in some areas of true country it was up to fifty percent that is more than double. the. yardwork i had to go to. i mean to go to not five and they all died. even then we couldn't eat them.

your little boy in my small field was of no help to seeds died before they could sprout. a year young it was a bad year without a train we couldn't plant anything. there was great hunger. even the wild fruit became rare. a little while my sister died last year during the long drought and she was old and as there was no food. she died and i came to take care of her children. while. there was no food over water because it was too dry and a lot of the. animal in the way. that you probably

know how bad it was last year on the way most animals died. you get this is a man's tomb and the other two are women. and they died of hunger. there was no food and the government didn't help. if hope would come sooner with these people have been saved a year old they guess they would be alive and these tombs wouldn't exist you've gone.

up she was complaining that she was hungry and thirsty for a while arguably. all of that she couldn't sustain herself. not but everybody knows we need food and water to live. it with it in. how long after her death did the food arrives. after five months. it is chilling to say the least to hear that the two thousand and one drought had

been predicted and that lives could have been saved if the system functioned differently the drug does not happen just like switching on and off electricity. drugs is something that comes with being a period of time. after ethiopia's famine in one thousand nine hundred fourteen one thousand nine hundred five which left one million victims the us created a forecast system for dangerous droughts in order to avoid similar tragedies in the future. in two thousand and ten this system had already warned of things to come.

yeah we saw it coming and we've been warning for months before you know people were paying attention death sometimes to problems you know the problem often with the world attention is that sometimes. people only play pay attention if you see the dying children. but our warning systems nowadays our knowledge is so sophisticated we know months in advance we've been warning about this since the for the before the crisis happened because we could see that the rains weren't good enough. but people were left to starve. they had to die before the international community was mobilized.

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more news today. these are the images. from the streets of canada. today.

the problem is that governments both national and international journalists and also the shroud of turin trinity. during its always acts as quickly as they can. and it takes unfortunately it takes you know those pitches on t.v. screens to really mobilize public opinion and get governments and politicians interested in the crisis. when it becomes of more interest to the international media then you tend to get a very strong public response which is extremely helpful which pushes the politicians into action because when the public cares about it then the politicians know they need to respond because. their public expects them to do so.

unfortunately you know action could have been taken at the start of two thousand and eleven or earlier in the year. vick should really have stopped it becoming such a big crisis but it's unfortunately. far too often the action isn't taken until it's too late and so people are already suffering. and it's not the first time that the turkana people receive help. international organizations and n.g.o.s have been visiting their area for the last fifteen years

. and it will always welcome them with joyous song. there's. a lot. of you that oh yes. ok. bob marley no no no no no. you mother me are not your mother no no no i didn't. i didn't know they provide them with food that accident the children and check them for signs of malnutrition.

on the way that you come from. from the tell of. how far is matelote. many hours away which means that i left for the sunrise. for decades to turkana have been living in a constant state of hunger. they belong to one billion people around the world who have no access to their daily nourishment while at the same time more food than ever is being produced on the planet. contrary to crisis periods this chronic hunger phenomenon rarely reaches the evening news. never the less it is deadly.

it kills over fifteen million people yearly. three times more than those killed during the gear of the second world war. approximately six and a half million of them are children eighteen thousand dollars every day. to fight hunger the international community decided to distribute food to those in need. however since its birth in one nine hundred fifty four and until today food aid has never been a matter of sheer humanitarianism it's been a matter of economic and political correlations with the u.s.

playing the leading role the simple reason everyone focuses on u.s. food aid policy is us accounts for more than half of all the world's food aid so as goes the united states so goes the global food aid regime you know the united states is providing fifty to sixty percent of the world's food aid any given year all of europe combined only provide fifteen to twenty percent. of the. we have given much to the impoverished peoples of europe one simple too bad i'm sorry. but as a countermeasure against the attempt by the soviet union come you know if you're up the american people sharpen the strategy for cooperating with the non communist countries in a comprehensive bipartisan european recovery program. after the success of the

marshall plan which delivered tons of food to western europe. in one thousand fifty four president eisenhower signed the famous public law four eighty one. the new laws the purpose was to distribute the u.s. agricultural surpluses serving at the same time as a tool for economic and foreign policy which would help promote the country's interests. according to the president's own words the new law lays the basis for expanding our exports of agricultural products with lasting benefits to ourselves and peoples of other lands. oh it's great growth and the deleterious on our football. team are going to break the bonds of their very we play our best effort to help them help them.

all whatever period is required not because the communists may be doing it not because we think they're both but we are getting it right in one thousand nine hundred eighty one president kennedy acknowledged public love for eighty as being a fundamental importance to the united states and renamed it food for peace. so the primary objective of food aid policy was surplus disposal but it had a secondary objectives the hope that it would also build future export markets for u.s. agricultural commodities and that it could achieve humanitarian objectives associated with reducing hunger and under-nutrition and that it could perhaps with some our allies abroad. with the same law kennedy founded usaid the u.s. organization responsible for international development which would administer

civilian foreign aid. is. the u.s. government for spread of many foreign policy through human and. systems. during the cold war large quantities of food were sent to countries of strategic importance to the united states like india indonesia and pakistan. likewise large cargoes were sent to eastern asia during the korean and vietnam wars. during the seventy's a large bulk of food aid went to the middle east. during the ninety's after the fall of the berlin wall today it was directed to countries the former eastern bloc the same pattern was repeated in afghanistan and iraq during the war on terror.

if you have took aboard diplomacy it's a very subtle way of pushing a national agenda. to another country you know because if you if you've seen even in a more circus training elephants for their training even cheap and since they use food in there if you don't train much on such a dance like a human being you keep rewarding it with a little biscuit or something so next day and vindictive you jump up american people saying jump up you jump up see what i mean. from very early on africa became the focus of attention as the u.s. and soviet union were trying to gain zones of influence countries like somalia

ethiopia and kenya received help. there's a little peace is good as it would be easy to prove to them or the police doesn't mean that the united states is doing business to actually be providing you know the time. there's no politics behind going in there we're trying to do things in a way that is most effective way to save lives so i don't think that criticism really holds true. i'm honored to work for this organization i think we do fabulous were partners in the united nations and it's really inspiring.

when there's bugger arrives with an american plug on needs from the american people . if they're the first thing is this the appreciation of the american people because if somebody helps you then you have to appreciate the. country that assists your people in this tough in the approach you to bring in the invest. you see the be very much willing to tell them good them come and if you're not just doing the the funding been in the hole in last year. the child needs to study what their wisdom comes with the chinese also for the first time brought their food aid completely to trucks there was almost as much as that wait a minute this food aid thing is not just the tusk another the soap the approach in terms of winning over

a country to dominate over to push their value such across the globe. apart from helping foreign policy food aid also had other benefits and help with internal affairs and we had a large american agribusiness and shipping companies. but there are other important beneficiaries lurking in the shadows one are agribusinesses and i emphasize agribusinesses rather than for. farmers because very little food aid is sold by farmers directly that sold by large firms the great hidden beneficiary for u.s. food aid and this is distinct from any other food aid program in the world are the shippers.

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i'm sam saxon for tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. what do republicans in the house really care about figuring out what actually happened at the i.r.s. or trying to destroy it that and more into night's big picture politics panel also in an age of corporate greed and rampant political corruption is liberalism still have what it takes to ensure social safety and economic justice for all americans and it's time for obama to take a page from f.d.r.'s book and tell the american people the truth about the republican party i will tell you why in tonight's daily take.