Rising Hunger in the US and Around the World

Tomorrow (November 18, 2009) is the last day of the World Summit on Food Security held in Rome, Italy, and sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. Sign the petition at www.1billionhungry.org which says, “1 Billion People live in chronic hunger. In the time it takes to watch this video, two children will die of hunger.”  I confess that I did not watch the video, but I did sign the petition and read about this horrible state of affairs. Here are some highlights.

Rising hunger and malnutrition is not just a problem of poor countries as pointed out by Alfred Lubrano in, “USDA: Hunger Rises in U.S.”  (The Philadelphia Inquirer 11/17/2009). Lubrano reported that,

America is hungry and getting hungrier, with 49 million people – 17 million of them children – last year unable to consistently get enough food to eat, according to a report released yesterday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These figures represent 14.6 percent of all households, a 3.5-percentage-point jump over 2007, and they are the largest recorded since the agency began measuring hunger in 1995.

Of those 49 million, 12 million adults and 5.2 million children reported experiencing the country’s most severe hunger, possibly going days without eating. Among the children, nearly half a million in the developmentally critical years under age 6 were going hungry. That’s three times the number in 2006.

The study documented both “low food security,” which describes people unable to consistently get enough to eat, and “very low food security,” in which people reported being hungry various times over the year but were unable to eat because there wasn’t enough money for food.  The South reported the highest number of households in both categories, at 15.9 percent, followed by the West at 14.5 percent, the Midwest at 14 percent, and the Northeast at 12.8 percent.

Experts attributed the harsh statistics to the recent recession and to an American poverty that has persisted despite economic growth earlier in the decade. […]

In “At UN Food Summit, Ban Ki-Moon Warns of Rise in Child Hunger Deaths” (The Christian Science Monitor 11/16/2009), Nick Squires reported that,

At the start of a global food security summit in Rome on Monday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon urged donors to help the 1 billion people on the planet who do not have enough to eat. He particularly underscored the plight of children, saying that more than 17,000 children die of starvation every day. “One every five seconds. Six million children a year,” he said in his opening remarks to the conference. “This is no longer acceptable. We must act.”

Some aid groups dismissed the three-day gathering of international leaders as a failure before it had begun, arguing that it won’t generate more money to tackle hunger and malnutrition. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which is organizing the summit, had hoped wealthy countries would promise to increase their annual food aid from $7.9 billion to $44 billion, but a draft declaration leaked before the summit began was short on specifics. It makes no mention of a proposal to eliminate hunger by 2025 and leaders are expected to simply reaffirm their commitment to the UN’s Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of hungry people by 2015. […]

Campaigners condemned the fact that the summit is being attended by only one G-8 leader – Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who is hosting the gathering. The United States, the world’s biggest food aid donor, is sending the acting head of the US Agency for International Development, while Britain is represented by two junior ministers. […]

Aid groups said it was outrageous that malnutrition still exists on such a vast scale when the world produces a surplus of food. Cereal crops this year are expected to be the second-largest ever, after a record harvest in 2008. According to FAO, the number of hungry people rose this year to 1.02 billion people, as a result of the global economic crisis, high food and fuel prices, drought, and conflict. […]

The summit marked the third time in a decade that leaders had met to discuss food security, yet there are more hungry people today than in 2002 when the first gathering was held, said the London-based think tank International Policy Network. “Instead of making bland commitments, it is time for governments to take action to reduce the barriers to trade that currently inhibit investments in new agricultural technologies and economic diversification. Only then will they end hunger,” said executive director Julian Morris. […]

Why am I not surprised that Ban Ki-Moon’s call to real action went unanswered and did not make many headlines in US papers? The AP release “Food Summit Rejects U.N. Aid Plea” (tucked away in the innards of the Philadelphia Inquirer 11/17/2009) reported that,

Pope Benedict XVI decried the steadily worsening tragedy of world hunger yesterday after a global summit rebuffed a U.N. call to commit billions of dollars a year for a new strategy to help poor countries feed themselves. The meeting at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization did, however, unite nearly 200 countries behind a pledge to increase aid to farmers in poor countries to help the developing world lessen its dependence on foreign food aid. Only hours after the three-day summit began, some 60 heads of state and dozens of ministers rejected the United Nations’ call to commit $44 billion annually for agricultural development in these nations. The final declaration also omitted a pledge, sought by the United Nations, to eradicate hunger by 2025.

“Hunger is the most cruel and concrete sign of poverty,” Benedict told the delegates after the document was approved. “Opulence and waste are no longer acceptable when the tragedy of hunger is assuming ever greater proportions.” […] The last previous papal appearance at a food summit in Rome came in 1996, when Pope John Paul II delivered a speech. U.N. officials say roughly one billion people, one of every six people on the planet, do not get enough to eat. The food agency says the share of international aid allocated to agriculture has steadily declined in the last three decades. Helping the hungry has largely entailed rich countries sending food assistance rather than technology, irrigation help, fertilizer, or high-yield seed. Much of this food aid is purchased from the wealthy nations’ own farmers. While the summit agreed on the need to increase agriculture’s share of international aid, it did not allocate the $44 billion annually the FAO says is necessary to feed a population that is expected to grow to nine billion by 2050.

Vatican Radio called the lack of a firm money commitment “disturbing.” Greenpeace called the declaration “empty rhetoric,” while Oxfam said that the strategy it laid out was “honorable” but that nothing had been done to ensure funds and hold governments accountable for their promises. […]

While I rarely agree with anything the Pope says, I certainly have to give him this one. But I have to point out the connection between women’s lack of reproductive control, overpopulation, and hunger. Providing food aid, building fresh water supplies and agricultural self-sufficiency, and supporting viable family planning are the interlinked solutions to hunger.