It's been 25 years since the great famine in Ethiopia shocked the conscience of the world and led to a global outpouring of aid for the suffering African nation. Once again, though, millions of Ethiopians face starvation. Why does this keep happening? Wall Street Journal reporter Roger Thurow, along with colleague Scott Kilman, examines that question in their recent book Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty. Thurow comes to Dallas on Thursday to speak about hunger as guest of the World Affairs Council of Dallas.

In the past couple of decades, the amount of agricultural spending by the developed world in the undeveloped world has basically fallen off the table, from say, $8 billion in the early 1980s to less than $3 billion earlier this decade. You have policies like the agricultural subsidies that we and Europe pay to our farmers while we tell African governments they had better not subsidize their farmers. That really has a big impact on the small farmers of Africa.

There are things like our policy in the United States that mandates that all the food [given for relief] be American-grown food shipped on American-flagged vessels, as opposed to a cash component that could be used by African countries to create a market incentive for farmers in to grow as much as they can.

You're saying that we are more complicit in their suffering than we realize?

Here's an example of our skewed priorities. In 2003, when 14 million people in Ethiopia stood on the edge of starvation and had to be fed by the international community, that year the United States sent more than $500 million in food aid to Ethiopia. That same year, the U.S. aid for agricultural development in Ethiopia was less than $5 million. The message was: We'll take care of you in a food emergency, but we won't help you figure out how to feed yourself. It's horrible to hear Ethiopians basically be more concerned with how the weather is in the American Midwest, where the food aid is coming from, than the weather in Ethiopia.

When Norman Borlaug died recently, people remembered him and his Green Revolution for ending famine in Asia. But the Green Revolution never made it to Africa. How come?

This new dimension of international development, involving the IMF and the World Bank imposing fiscal discipline, [resulted in] governments retreating from agriculture and leaving it to the private sector.

The trouble is, the private sector in those countries, especially African countries, was weak and underdeveloped. The whole agricultural sector fell into horrible disrepair. Plus, there was the huge drop-off in agricultural development spending. And small farmers, especially the small farmers of Africa, were seen as the problem.

Now they're seen as the solution. The World Bank is reversing course and putting in more agricultural development aid. Bill Gates even mentioned that the best way to reduce hunger in the developing world is through helping small farmers be as productive in growing as much food as possible.

The world population is going to boom in the coming decades, especially in famine-prone regions. But you seem to be hopeful about the future. Why?

This Q&A was conducted, condensed and edited by Dallas Morning News editorial columnist Rod Dreher. His e-mail address is rdreher@dallasnews.com. Roger Thurow's e-mail address is roger.thurow@wsj.com.