We have all seen the pictures, the emaciated hunger-ravaged bodies, the hopeless empty-eyed death-stare of small children struggling to stay alive. We have heard the urgent pleas for us to help in some small way. Some of us do help. We send money to church sponsored relief agencies and we organize food drives. Last year, the U.S. delivered an estimated $2.1 billion in food aid, yet we seem to see more hunger every year.This year, the Bush administration reduced emergency food aid. In March, the U.S. Agency for International Development said that a 41% surge in prices for wheat, corn, rice and other cereals over the past six months has generated a $120 million budget shortfall that will force the agency to reduce emergency operations. Isn’t it funny how the simple wording of a phrase can help take the sting out of not helping. They use phrases like ‘emergency operations’ and ‘budget shortfall’. 15 million children die of starvation every year. That calculates to a daily death toll of over 40,000 children due to the lack of a simple bowl of rice. Our federal government considers an emergency as some periodic calamity. Since death by starvation occurs every day, this does not constitute an ‘emergency’.
Our federal government spends trillions of dollars to build weapons and killing machines to fund wars yet can’t find it in their hearts to increase budgetary spending to nurture lives.
For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years.
The assets of the world's three richest men are more than the combined GNP of all the least developed countries on the planet.
Relief organizations have always struggled to keep pace with world hunger numbers. The U.N.’s World Food Program is the world’s largest distributor of food aid and it is the most important barrier between hungry people and starvation. Its purchasing power has been slashed by the rising cost of grain. Merely to distribute the same amount of food as last year, the WFP needs an additional $700m.
Malnutrition is implicated in more than half of all child deaths worldwide - a proportion unmatched by any infectious disease since the Black Death.
Roughly a billion people (one sixth of the world population) get by on a $1 a day. The cost of their food has increased 20% to 50% (in some places, it has risen higher) within the past year. Families are cutting back on meat so they can afford vegetables. Others are cutting back on vegetables so they can afford rice. Those who can only afford rice are facing disaster. These numbers and images come to us from Africa. It is the first place we think of when we are reminded of starvation and malnutrition. These maladies have been a part of the African human landscape for hundreds of years.But hunger is not found only in Africa. It has become a part of everyday life across Asia, Europe, Central America, South America, and even North America.
In Haiti, at least five people have died in riots over 50% price hikes for rice, beans and fruit since last year. They ousted their Prime Minister because they felt he wasn’t doing enough to keep prices down. Rioters tore through three cities in the West African nation of Burkina Faso last month, burning government buildings and looting stores. Days later in Cameroon, a taxi drivers' strike over fuel prices mutated into a massive protest about food prices, leaving around 20 people dead. Similar protests exploded in Senegal and Mauritania late last year. And Indian protesters burned hundreds of food-ration stores in West Bengal last October, accusing the owners of selling government-subsidized food on the lucrative black market.
The steep rise in the price of basic foodstuffs has sparked demonstrations and riots in Egypt. Similar unrest has erupted in Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal. An additional six countries with "widespread lack of access" to food include Eritrea, Liberia, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and North Korea. This is a clear indication of the coming threat to the world’s political and social stability.
America is beginning to feel the pinch at warehouse chain grocery stores that stack goods to the ceiling and sell it cheap. Sam’s Club, a division of WalMart, has begun limiting the amount of bulk rice it will sell to one customer. Seattle-based CostCo Wholesale Corp. is seeing higher-than-usual demand for staple foods such as rice and flour as consumers appear to be stocking up. USA Rice Federation says there is no rice shortage in the U.S.
What triggered food price increases that led to the food riots of 2008?One reason is the increase in meat consumption which is diverting grains away from poor people and into livestock. Another reason is the spike in oil prices, which, just days ago reached $118 per barrel, has pushed up fertilizer and pesticide prices, as well as the cost of trucking food from farms to local markets and shipping it abroad. Climate change has seriously disrupted harvests by freak weather, including prolonged droughts in Australia and southern Africa, floods in West Africa, and this past winter's deep frost in China and record-breaking warmth in northern Europe. The push to produce biofuels as an alternative to hydrocarbons is further straining food supplies, especially in the U.S., where generous subsidies for ethanol have lured thousands of farmers away from growing crops for food.
Easing any one of these four factors could greatly reduce the pressure on our food supply and help heal our environment.
Meat Production = Environmental DestructionGlobal demand for meat has multiplied in recent years, encouraged by growing affluence and nourished by the proliferation of huge, confined animal feeding operations. These assembly-line meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world’s tropical rain forests.
(Photo credit: NY Times Gary Kazanjian)
Because the stomachs of cattle are meant to digest grass, not grain, cattle raised industrially thrive only in the sense that they gain weight quickly. This diet made it possible to remove cattle from their natural environment and encourage the efficiency of mass confinement and slaughter. But it causes enough health problems that administration of antibiotics is routine, so much so that it can result in antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten the usefulness of medicines that treat people.
An estimated 30% of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation.
Agriculture in the United States — much of which now serves the demand for meat and is subsidized by the federal government — contributes to nearly three-quarters of all water-quality problems in the nation’s rivers and streams, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of meat. About two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption. Reducing the amount of meat in our diets by just 20% would have an immediate effect on the amount of grain available to more people throughout starving nations.
All very good reasons to cut down on the amount of meat we eat. It would help the environment as well as help feed more people. But it has become a big business where, once again, making money is more important than the survival of nameless faceless people.
Oil Prices
Quite simply, if we cut back on our fuel consumption then prices will fall. It is simple economics of supply and demand. We need to produce a more efficient internal combustion engine that does not use as much fuel. The current version is extremely inefficient. Physics has proven that less than 1% of the energy generated from burning gasoline actually moves the car forward and 90% is lost between the fuel tank and the wheels. Switching to biofuels will not improve this efficiency.
We can cut back on consumption in many ways, i.e., getting better gas mileage, improving your driving habits, making less frequent trips by consolidating them, carpooling, using mass transit. There are many websites that list a variety of ways to keep your vehicle in good running order. Search “tips to conserve fuel”.
Biofuel and Ethanol Production
We need to find alternatives to using food crops for these fossil fuel alternatives. We simply cannot produce enough corn to satisfy our driving habits. The small increase in energy gained from the processing of corn and sugar cellulosic biomass to create biofuel and ethanol simply does not warrant the related increased use of fertilizer and pollution runoff.
Weather and Climate
Not much we can do about this except to grow our crops in a climate-controlled environment. I don’t see that happening except on a very small scale. The concept of vertical farming is gaining popularity where food can be grown in cities to cut down on both the cost of transportation and the carbon foot print created by shipping food large distances. It also increases the availability of fresh food to our tables. Growing food in what amounts to climate controlled areas will help prevent crop loss due to drought and flooding.
The main problem with growing food in arid parts of the world is of course the lack of access to water. This results in a lot of potential farm land going unused. Therefore, nearly one billion people rely on the grain that rich nations send them. What they really need is to break out of this dependency cycle. Currently, it is easier to just send money or food but as we have seen this is not a reliable solution. I believe that a system of self-sustaining vertical farms is the answer. Through educational programs and financial assistance they can grow their own food and break this reliance on foreign aid once and for all.
With the way in which is higher food prices are affecting rich nations, we cannot be counted on for continued food aid. We have to feed ourselves first. Food reserves have reached their lowest point in 30 years according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Meanwhile, the global supply of wheat is lower than it's been in about 50 years — just five weeks' worth of world consumption is on hand, according to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization.
The food crisis is largely ignored in rich countries because fewer people starve there. But that is changing and will likely get worse if food riots begin to threaten the survival of governments. In many poor countries, the protests have been fueled by pent-up anger against authoritarian or corrupt officials, some of whom have earned fortunes from oil and minerals while locals are struggling to buy food.
America’s struggle with malnutrition comes to us in a different form. Rather than not getting enough food we tend to over-eat. We eat between meals, we consume copious amounts of sugary sodas and fruit juices, we eat out more than ever before and restaurants are serving much heftier portions than they did in the past, and we eat far too much red meat. Obesity, which affects millions of American’s of all ages, has risen at an epidemic rate during the past 20 years and has become the most common nutritional disorder in the developed world according to Dr. Jennifer Zebrack, Assistant Professor of Medicine (General Internal Medicine) at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
The next time you order meat from your favorite restaurant, replace the adulterated and exaggerated image of the perfect sandwich that advertisers would have us believe we will get with the images at the beginning of this post and think how many children would have survived if they had received the grain that went to artificially fatten up the animal you are about to eat.
Next time you stomp down on the accelerator of your car, sucking down a larger-than-necessary amount of gasoline, to get to nowhere faster, think of how much further you could have driven on the gas you could have saved had you gradually accelerated instead.
Each one of us has the responsibility to others whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. Let us consciously begin thinking outside our comforts and do something so that others may live.
As always, please leave your comments.
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