"How to feed the hungry billion" -- the Christian Science Monitor

By the editorial board of the Christian Science Monitor.

Before the global economic crisis, there was the global food crisis. Last year, soaring prices for basic foods sparked riots in about 30 countries. In June, the UN held a summit to tackle it. In July, the G-8 pledged to act. But in the fall, the floor fell out from the financial markets. Now, like a mountain of maize, countries' economic worries threaten to bury their concerns about rising world hunger.

Food prices have eased on global markets, but they remain high in many countries. Price volatility, the credit crunch, and shrinking coffers (both private and government) are making it harder for farmers to get loans to invest and plant.

At a follow-up conference on hunger this week, the United Nations announced that 40 million people joined the ranks of the "undernourished" in 2008, bringing the number of hungry people to nearly 1 billion – or roughly 1 in 7. Yet donor nations have delivered only a trickle of the $22 billion they pledged last year.

Meanwhile, food production must double by 2050 to head off mass hunger amid a global population surge from 6.5 billion to 9 billion, the UN said.

The world can solve this problem. In the 1960s, a technological "green revolution" in grain yields, irrigation, and fertilizers greatly increased food production, especially in Asia. Allowing communal farmers to earn and trade privately went a long way to alleviate hunger in post-Mao China. And economic growth and social programs have helped in Latin America.

But Africa stands stubbornly off the track of agricultural progress, and hunger still plagues many countries in South Asia. Climate change is expected to exacerbate production problems in these places, and once the world economy begins to recover, expect food prices to rise again as demand increases and more food is diverted to bio-fuels.

Once again, the world knows how to respond, but will it?

Tackling climate change, ending wars, and reducing agricultural subsidies that clog trade channels are three overarching needs. But they are also difficult to achieve.

Relatively quick and substantial progress can be made if nations rededicate themselves to international aid for agriculture, which has dropped from 13 percent of all development aid in the early 1980s to only 3 percent now. They must also better coordinate among themselves and with nonprofits.

Simply improving food storage could increase production by 30 to 40 percent in many poor countries, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Building roads could get more goods to market. In sub-Saharan Africa, just 4 percent of arable land is irrigated, compared with 38 percent in Asia.

Research needs a boost, too, as adapting pests, for instance, erode yields over time.

The FAO estimates that only $30 billion per year, invested in farm infrastructure and production, could eradicate the root causes of world hunger by 2025. That compares with the $825 billion stimulus package that the US Congress is debating.

Last summer, political momentum was building behind a UN effort to increase agri-aid, focus on small farmers, and better coordinate antihunger efforts. The momentum must be maintained.

"Let Them Eat Cake..." -- by Elaine Thomas

It seems the biggest story coming out of this month's G-8 Summit on Hokkaido in Japan is the uproar over the 18-course banquet on the first night of the event and the 6-course lunch that preceded it. Sea urchin and tuna, milk-fed lamb and caviar, all accompanied by fine wines from around the world. And this at a summit at which the main topic is the world food shortage? You can’t make this stuff up.

Now there are those who say that it is perfectly alright for a host country to display its hospitality by preparing a feast and that it would be an insult to do otherwise. I suppose this is true. Didn’t Abraham prepare a fine young calf for the visitors at Mamre and wasn’t the prodigal son welcomed home with a fatted calf? And what does it matter what they eat when they’re making sure that they educate children with a nifty website devoted to the summit and the issues being addressed. Where else can you find information about the wonders of Hokkaido cuisine juxtaposed with a story on miracle rice to increase Africa’s rice yields? (Pardon my sarcasm.)

It seems to me that the real story is the dismal failure of the G-8 to live up to its promises to those in extreme poverty. At Gleneagles in 2005, they promised to double aid to Africa by 2010. To date, they’ve only hit 14% of that goal. Nicholas Kristof writes of the blatant disregard they’ve shown for the Darfur genocide. The Bush administration trumpets the accord reached on global warming even though the standards would not be as stringent as those under the Kyoto Protocol.

I’m all for people of good will gathering around a table to make decisions about monumental issues. It’s certainly better than not speaking to each other. But when, oh when, will it actually mean something for those in the world who stand to benefit most from the conversations? The wealth of the countries represented at the G-8 is sufficient to end extreme poverty in our time. Where is the will to use that wealth?

Editor's Note: To read an excellent, if somewhat depressing, summary of the G-8 summer in terms of the MDGs, go to "2008 G8 Japan Series" on the ONE Campaign Blog.

Elaine Thomas is a member of St. James in Lancaster, PA where she is a member of the Peace and Justice and Stewardship Committees. She is also the EGR and ERD Coordinator for the Diocese of Central Pennsylvania. Elaine works for Episcopal Community Services in Philadelphia, a social service agency whose mission is to help individuals and families with multiple needs overcome the impact of poverty.

"US farm bill "too little, too late" for developing world" -

NEW YORK , 1 July 2008 (IRIN) - New ground was broken in US attempts to break the link between foreign food aid and supporting its own farmers in a new farm bill, but for many, including the Bush-led administration, it was too little, too late.

(See IRIN in-depth on global food crisis:)

For the first time, the legislation freed some of the money to be used in cash for food purchases locally or regionally in recipient countries instead of in-kind produce shipped from the US, the world's largest food aid donor.

The farm bill governs food aid and is updated every five years.

But the amount - US$60 million over four years - was a fraction of the $300 million President George Bush had sought for one fiscal year and will be spent on a pilot programme.

Congress's decision was rued by Bush, who noted that the farm bill, "restricts our ability to redirect food aid dollars for emergency use at a time of great need globally . The bill does not include the requested authority to buy food in the developing world to save lives."

The bill authorises $1.2 billion for food aid. As this often amounts to $2 billion or more in the appropriations phase and Bush asked for 25 percent for cash payments, this could have reached $500 million.

The issue - and the lack of bolder Congressional action - goes to the very heart of the food price crisis and reforms that the UN, governments and NGOs say are needed to avoid plunging up to 130 million more people around the world into hunger, in addition to 850 million already suffering.

In the short term, local purchasing provides much more food for aid since it frees up money used on expensive freight and reduces delivery delays that can reach four months. In the longer term it could help stimulate agricultural production in the developing world as part of a global solution to the crisis.

Almost all food aid donated by the US is tied to domestic requirements for procurement, processing and shipping.

Mixed reactions

"We are happy to see at least a new precedent for some funding for local purchase. They never got anything in the past," David Kauck, senior policy analyst at CARE, told IRIN.

However, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier de Schutter, said: "I deplore the fact that the US have not learned the lessons from the past distortive impacts on local markets in recipient countries of food aid distributed in kind, especially in a context where, due to the increase in the prices of oil, the transport of food by US ships will significantly raise the costs of providing aid and thus the net benefits for the end beneficiaries."

Oxfam policy director Gawain Kripke agreed: "The farm bill itself doesn't demonstrate a lot of leadership or vision about how agriculture should operate and it's pretty much a validation of the status quo."

And International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) research fellow Marc Cohen said the US was still using approaches that were 50 years old. "Not only the European Union but also Canada and Australia have moved towards providing more of their food aid locally and
regionally," he told IRIN. "The US is lagging behind even though it's the leading source of food aid."

Costs of transporting food

The US Government Accounting Office (GAO), the Congressional investigative agency that examines the use of public funds and evaluates federal programmes, estimated last year that transportation costs totalled 65 percent of overall aid, with only 35 percent going
to actual food.

Since then, skyrocketing commodity prices that translate into fewer tonnes and higher transportation costs due to soaring oil prices, have further upset even the previous adverse ratio.

NGO officials are loath to put a figure on lives potentially saved or additional people helped if the money spent on transportation went to food instead, but one analyst said it could roughly double the number of beneficiaries based on the assumption that 70-80 million people now receive US food aid annually.

A supplemental appropriations bill for another $1.2 billion for the fiscal years 2008 and 2009 is winding its way through Congress, but that too would be subject to the in-kind strictures of the farm bill unless otherwise directed by the legislators. At present it would provide some $50 million more for cash purchases.

Subsidies

The huge subsidies for US agriculture are seen as putting farmers in poor and developing countries at a great disadvantage.

"When commodity prices are at record highs, it is irresponsible to increase government subsidy rates for 15 crops, subsidise additional crops, and provide payments that further distort markets," Bush said in his veto message.

Kauck of CARE said African farmers had to compete with American and European farmers on very disadvantageous terms but stressed that if subsidies were to be dramatically reduced or eliminated, agricultural prices would go up.

"This would provide development opportunities for farmers and traders in many places, so it could provide a stimulus for development in many developing countries, but it would at the same time put poor people who are net purchasers of food and food deficit countries at an even greater disadvantage," he told IRIN. "So it would essentially contribute to the kind of price rise that you are seeing now."

Challenges

In a report in April 2007, the GAO noted that multiple challenges hindered the efficiency of US food aid programmes by reducing the amount, timeliness, and quality of food provided.

"Specific factors that cause inefficiencies include (1) funding and planning processes that increase delivery costs and lengthen time frames; (2) ocean transportation and contracting practices that create high levels of risk for ocean carriers, resulting in increased rates; (3) legal requirements that result in awarding of food aid contracts to more expensive service providers; and (4) inadequate coordination between US agencies and food aid stakeholders to track and respond to
food and delivery problems."

Indeed, Concern Worldwide chief executive Tom Arnold told IRIN: "[The farm bill] is not going to help the situation on food aid nor will it help to make any deal in the World Trade Organization talks more likely. Overall, from a development viewpoint, it would have to be seen as a setback."

"Hunger, Poverty and Economic Change" -- by John Hammock with the Rev. Gary Cartwright

Hunger riots, the cost of food soaring, soup kitchen lines getting longer--even in the United States. What is one to do? As Christians we know that if someone is hungry we need to give her food. We know that Jesus himself calls us to feed the hungry—as if we were feeding Jesus himself. But we also know that pure charity is not enough. People do not want to be dependent on charity over time. They want to be free to grow their own food, to start their own businesses—to have the opportunities to make it on their own with their families and communities. As Christians we give food gladly but we also must help people and communities as they move beyond charity. We can invest in micro credit and agricultural development programs; we can contribute to programs that fall within the goals of the Millennium Development Goals—from safe water to children’s education, from maternal health to community and environmental sustainable development in which local people own the process of local change.

I remember speaking to Fatima in Ethiopia. She had lost two of her small children to famine. Food had saved her other two young ones. When I spoke to her, she was clear that she did not want to be dependent on food aid. She wanted to move back to her own land again—to get on with her own life and make it in her own community. We need to be ready to help in a timely way in both these stages of her journey.

These two pillars are crucial—feeding people in need and assisting in the process of change leading to sustained development. But they are not enough. To solve the perennial problem of hunger, it is important to step back and look at the broader picture of poverty and economics.

Very simply, our current economic system is based on the assumption that if the national economy grows then the economy is doing well. Clearly the growth-based strategy makes some very wealthy; it unleashes invention and entrepreneurship. But the benefits do not trickle down to the majority of the poor. This growth-based strategy also produces more inequality and poverty over time. The very economic system that focuses on growth often exacerbates or leads to increased hunger. Unless we do something about our economic fixation on growth and income, we will not deal with hunger or with poverty. What can we do?

We must educate ourselves as to a new economics that accepts growth but moves beyond it to include what people value and have reason to value. Perhaps this is illustrated by the following equation: Freedom = growth +.

What does this mean?

Economics is not just about income and growth; it is about the freedom of each individual to do what he values or has reason to value. We all know that we value more than money. It means putting value on education, health, personal security, dignity and more. The wellbeing of its citizens becomes essential. It means putting a value on individual freedom. It means investing in the development and then promotion of a new approach to economics. This in turn means having a solid theoretical framework and good evidence based research to sustain such an approach.

This is not an argument against growth. Rather it is a plea in favor of broadening the dimensions that are essential to economics and development. It means that growth becomes a means to a goal, not an end in itself. It means that education, nutrition, health, empowerment, personal safety, employment and potentially other dimensions are given value and fall within the models and frameworks of national economics.

For example, if poverty is defined not just by income but rather includes some range of the types of things that people value given above, then our programs to deal with hunger and poverty will be shaped by this way of thinking rather than from the perspective of pure growth.

Governments and corporations can and must play a crucial role in putting people’s well being, not growth, at the top of their priorities. But we cannot leave this only to governments and corporations. Individuals have a crucial role. [See What One Person Can Do by Sabina Alkire and Edward Newell] And the church can mobilize people for this role. The Rev. Gary Cartwright, deacon in the Diocese of Southwest Florida, stated it this way:

Can we start a conversation that would grow and include others that is solution-orientated (not just hand-wringing)?…The intent would be to find solutions that would engage many others at the grass-roots level that could eventually change the political will of US and foreign world leaders.

Gary says (and I agree) that one place where that conversation could start is here at EGR. The earliest of Christians certainly focused on the role of economics. Gary writes:

When we look at the original group of Christians (as told in the Acts of the Apostles) it was a society where every new person joining turned over all their goods to the apostles who then distributed them according to the needs of the community. We don’t know what happened to that economic system, but it seems to have died pretty soon after. So, in my mind there is a direct connection between living as a disciple of Jesus Christ, and the participation in a fair and just economic system.

Gary ends by saying that he is not proposing the early apostles' economic system. Rather,

We do need a new economic system that is more than profit/bottom line oriented, and includes personal dignity, health, education, personal security and the like.. However, it needs to encourage personal initiative, a community understanding of our inter-connectedness, without establishing a world-wide government that imposes on personal liberties.

To deal with the current hunger crisis, charity and development aid are important. But equally relevant is rethinking our economics so that people’s wellbeing is at its center. Christians need to be involved at all three levels. Gary calls us to start a solution-based conversation on the need for a new economic system. It is a role for EGR.

For more information on this type of economic thinking please see
www.ophi.org.uk and www.hd-ca.org

Dr. John Hammock is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy & The Fletcher School, Tufts University. He is currently on leave until September, 2008 and working Sabina Alkire as a senior research associate at the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative, John was Executive Director at Oxfam America from 1984-1995 and Executive Director at ACCION International from 1973-1980. He is the EGR board president.

"Making a Killing From the Food Crisis" -- by GRAIN

The Rev. Martha Korienek, EGR diocesan contact from Los Angeles, forwards this report from GRAIN: an international non-governmental organisation which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge.

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The world food crisis is hurting a lot of people, but global agribusiness firms, traders and speculators are raking in huge profits.

Much of the news coverage of the world food crisis has focussed on riots in low-income countries, where workers and others cannot cope with skyrocketing costs of staple foods. But there is another side to the story: the big profits that are being made by huge food corporations and investors. Cargill, the world’s biggest grain trader, achieved an 86% increase in profits from commodity trading in the first quarter of this year. Bunge, another huge food trader, had a 77% increase in profits during the last quarter of last year. ADM, the second largest grain trader in the world, registered a 67% per cent increase in profits in 2007.

Nor are retail giants taking the strain: profits at Tesco, the UK supermarket giant, rose by a record 11.8% last year. Other major retailers, such as France’s Carrefour and Wal-Mart of the US, say that food sales are the main sector sustaining their profit increases. Investment funds, running away from sliding stock markets and the credit crunch, are having a heyday on the commodity markets, driving prices out of reach for food importers like Bangladesh and the Philippines.

These profits are no freak windfalls. Over the last 30 years, the IMF and the World Bank have pushed so-called developing countries to dismantle all forms of protection for their local farmers and to open up their markets to global agribusiness, speculators and subsidised food from rich countries. This has transformed most developing countries from being exporters of food into importers. Today about 70 per cent of developing countries are net importers of food. On top of this, finance liberalisation has made it easier for investors to take control of markets for their own private benefit.

Agricultural policy has lost touch with its most basic goal: that of feeding people. Rather than rethink their own disastrous policies, governments and think tanks are blaming production problems, the growing demand for food in China and India, and biofuels. While these have played a role, the fundamental cause of today's food crisis is neoliberal globalisation itself, which has transformed food from a source of livelihood security into a mere commodity to be gambled away, even at the cost of widespread hunger among the world’s poorest people.

"Stop the Hunger Crisis" -- by the ONE Campaign

In just three years, the price of staple foods like wheat, corn and rice has almost doubled, and this week, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said that if left unchecked, global food shortages could set the world back seven years in the fight against extreme poverty and global disease. We must urge our leaders to take action.

Click here to sign the ONE Campaign's petition to President Bush. Here's the text:

President Bush,

The soaring cost of staple foods and the resulting hunger crisis has caused riots from Haiti to Bangladesh, threatens hundreds of thousands of people with starvation and could push one hundred million more people deeper into poverty. Please build on your recent commitment by taking immediate action to:

1. Prioritize issues of global poverty, including the world hunger crisis, on the agenda of the G8 Summit this July in Japan.

2. At the summit, secure commitments for additional resources for all types
of food assistance and increased agricultural productivity in developing countries.

Bread for the World president David Beckmann on Bill Moyers

Yesterday, PBS aired a wonderful Bill Moyers interview with the Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World about the challenges of combating hunger.

Beckmann is an amazing guy. He's been president of Bread for 15 years, leading large-scale and successful campaigning to strengthen U.S. political commitment to overcoming hunger and poverty. Before that, he served at the World Bank for 15 years, overseeing large projects and driving innovations to make the Bank more effective in reducing poverty.

Beckmann is also president of Bread for the World Institute, which does research and education on hunger-related issues, including agriculture and trade policy. He founded and serves as president of the Alliance to End Hunger, which engages diverse U.S. institutions – Muslim and Jewish groups, corporations, unions and universities – in building political will to end hunger.

The conversation is worth a watch, listen or read.

Watch it streaming on your desktop here.

Listen to the podcast here.

Read the transcript here.

Pharoah's dream and hungers physical & spiritual

The Rev. Dr. Sabina Alkire kicks off the re-launch of the EGR blog with a reflection on the story of Joseph interpreting Pharaoh's dream in Genesis 41 and God's mission of global reconciliation.

It was diplomacy from the soul and diplomacy at its best. By a single encounter Joseph comforted a troubled Pharoah, averted a national famine, and provoked his stellar professional rise. Yet it was all, somehow, so inadvertent. Almost accidental. Particular to that occasion amongst those people. What of God – or of a holy response to hunger – can we glean?

The story involves Joseph – Joseph of the coat of many colours, whose brothers sell him into slavery because he is their father’s favourite, who rises to head his slavemaster Potiphar’s household only to be imprisoned when Potiphar’s wife tries unsuccessfully to seduce him. It might be worth mentioning that Joseph alone of Old Testament males is described as having the double accolades of a “fine figure and a handsome face.”

In the story, Pharoah has a troubling dream. His butler hears of it, remembers Joseph, and fetches him from prison. Joseph has time only to shave his beard and change his outer clothes before rushing to the Pharoah, who mentions Joseph’s reputation for interpreting dreams. With considerable insensitivity, Joseph’s first words are to correct the Supreme Ruler of Egypt, protesting that God alone interprets dreams. Such effrontery is overlooked, and the discussion proceeds.

Having interpreted the dreams as predicting seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of drought, Joseph then suggests a constructive response. In the sentence that follows today’s reading, Pharoah appoints Joseph to oversee famine prevention throughout Egypt because of his wisdom and discernment. Thus Joseph’s fate changes from prisoner to prime minister. He is given a signet ring, dressed in fine linen, paraded through the streets in a chariot, and given the daughter of an Egyptian priest as his wife – all within three verses, and at the age of thirty. Just a tiny bit surreal.

But two aspects of this story are real and relevant to us – one is the issue of physical hunger. The other is the need for us to become so attuned to God that God can summon us suddenly - at a whim or whisper - to do holy work.

Biblical concern for hunger was real. In the drought-prone geography out of which our faiths came, food insecurity was part of people’s stories and lived experience. The Iraqi father of our faith, Abraham, had voluntarily moved from Iraq to Canaan, but it was famine that drove Abram and Sarah on into Egypt. Wide-ranging hunger appears in the biblical stories of Isaac, David, Ruth’s father-in-law, Elijah and Elisha. Poor Jeremiah was thrown into a cistern when there was no bread in Jerusalem, shortly before the city fell. In Jesus’ parables, it was famine that drove the prodigal son back to work when he had used up his inheritance. Given people’s experience, it was natural that addressing physical hunger was part of faithfulness, part of loving your neighbours. Indeed not only did Jesus feed the hungry, and the early Church send food aid, but from the earliest Christian writers – Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria – to the present, the Church addresses destitution.

It may be a bit odd that at present spiritual people and the Church are not engaging this task with the even a fraction of the enthusiasm with which we swarm to other topics. A good number of our brothers and sisters across the Anglican communion are deeply affected by hunger and destitution, yet it is not this that we discuss with them. In 2004, we have 6 billion of God’s children on our planet. Around 842 million of us – one in seven – are hungry today and every day. If we temporarily suspended ourselves from the British isles and invited hungry people into our homes and hotel rooms, they would fill Britain thirteen times over. Put differently, the hungry outnumber three Europes. In fact, if you combine all the high income countries in the world our total population is 830 million. The population of those who hunger – 842 million – is greater. Although ten million of the hungry live in high income countries. And, what many people do not realize is that although some countries have dramatically improved nutrition, world hunger has been rising since 1995.

However ancient hunger’s history, it still aches. Ethiopians call the ones who are always hungry, Wuha Anfari – those who cook water. If you sit by kitchen fires in India, which alone has more hungry people than the continent of Africa, you will notice women and girls carefully spooning minute portions onto their plates so that their husbands and sons have a bit more to eat. And hunger entails tragic choices. In Zambia, a widow and mother of two entered the sex trade in order to feed her children. When interviewed, she observed a sobering truth, “I find hunger more deadly than AIDS. AIDS kills in years. But hunger kills within days."

We cannot hear these stories and watch these cold numerical trends, as food-secure Christians, without being somewhat unsettled. Perhaps that is apt. For even the soft spoken Nobel laureate in economics, Amartya Sen wrote that he wished that informed people like us would be less “coolly accustomed” to hunger, and would “rage and holler” a little bit more, because reducing hunger, though complex, is not rocket science. It requires a basic set of capabilities in agriculture, school, health care, social protection, and political stability. In fact the United Nations, the US, the UK, indeed 189 governments have pledged to achieve eight millennium development goals to reduce poverty and halve hunger by 2015. Why? Because, perhaps for the first time in history, we actually could.

As many outside the Church now recognise, if a few million persons of good will did our bit as individuals and citizens – and what we will do be different for each of us but we can each do something – then in this age where we are globally connected and democratically empowered, our momentum would make a real, unprecedented impact on poverty and hunger.

But will we? Martin Luther King Jr. preached, “Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of … individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God.”
The story of Joseph and Pharoah has a further theme, which is attentiveness to God.

Joseph’s first words to Pharoah were: “It is not I; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer.” Joseph’s actions were not at all beyond reproach – just as ours will not be beyond reproach to future generation. Nor did he act singlehandedly – one presumes hundreds of women and men were involved. But the moment of diplomacy in this story did set in motion a chain of events, such as we need today in Darfur, or in our corporate world, or indeed in the WTO. How can we become so attuned to God that God can summon us at a whim or whisper to do holy work?

The Welch poet R.S. Thomas refers to, “the empty silence within” - where God dwells. And when we act from that place, our actions are mingled with God’s action, our fragile love with God’s love.

Oddly, or perhaps aptly, a common metaphor for this empty silence, this holy listening, is hunger. And such spiritual hunger is greatly to be cherished. As John of the Cross wrote, “if the person is seeking God, much more is her believed seeking her.” In the Psalms, God yearns for his people to be hungry and to open their mouths.“Prove your love…in actual deeds”. But we cannot neglect the interior hunger either. For eventually, gradually, we may be transformed into people God can use in ways we do not now anticipate.
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The Rev. Dr. Sabina Alkire is an Anglican priest, development economist, EGR board member, founder of the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative and co-author of What Can One Person Do: Faith to Heal a Broken World. Her writing appears on this blog on the first of each month.

Tomorrow: Abbie Coburn.