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To neglect the deprived and powerless …
By Catherine Gordon
“To neglect the deprived and powerless is to reject Christ, who encounters us in the hundreds of millions of the hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, imprisoned and alienated people of today’s world, all of whom make a rightful claim for just and compassionate responses. Their needs can be fully met only by justice achieved through political and economic institutions. The church must be a participant in this struggle for justice.” — Hope for a Global Future: Toward Just and Sustainable Human Development, approved by the 208th General Assembly (1996) Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
As food shortages continue and prices rise around the world, we are beginning to see the effects of what the World Food Program has called “the silent tsunami.” While hunger has traditionally had the face of mass starvation when famine and other disasters have hit, this food crisis has a different face: one of misery and malnutrition that has spawned riots around the globe in Mexico, Egypt, Indonesia, Yemen, the Philippines, Cambodia, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Guinea, Mauritania, Cameroon, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Peru, Bolivia and Haiti. This crisis is also hitting people who are not usually affected by famines.
According to Josette Sheeran, head of the U.N.’s World Food Program, the increased price of food for the middle class means, “cutting out medical care. For those living on $2 a day, it means cutting out meat and taking the children out of school. For those on $1 a day, it means cutting out meat and vegetable and eating only cereals. And for those on 50 cents a day, it means total disaster.” Currently just over one billion people live on $1 a day and 1.5 billion live on $1 to $2 a day. The World Bank estimates that this crisis could push at least 100 million people into poverty wiping out all the gains of the last decade.
What has caused this crisis? There are many contributing factors.
- Rising oil prices heighten the cost to transport and produce food including increase in the cost of fertilizers and industrial agriculture.
- An increase in the use of agriculture products for biofuels and the resulting market speculation is allowing energy buyers to outbid food buyers.
- As the populations in China and India grow increasingly wealthy, the demand for meat increases, which increases pressure on the food supply, as more meat means increased demand for feed, especially corn and soy, which contributes to higher prices.
- With the collapse in the housing market and the credit crunch, hedge funds are investing in food security, further driving up the price. It is estimated that investment funds now control 50 to 60 percent of the wheat traded on the world’s biggest commodity markets.
A major factor, however, that is not highlighted is the influence of current global trade and agricultural policy. Many experts now argue that current agricultural system’s policies have strayed from the most basic goal of feeding people.
One can look at the situation of Haiti to see the results. Haiti has lost its food sovereignty, which means it no longer has the resources to feed its own people, as the result of economic measures imposed by the international financial institutions and others. Dr. Paul Farmer, a long time Haiti advocate, says that this is a concrete example of "structural violence" — the long-term underdevelopment and inequalities in the world system.
Thirty years ago, Haiti produced almost all the rice it needed, but in 1986 the country desperately sought a loan from the International Monetary Fund after the dictator, Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, fled the country with funds from Haiti’s treasury. A precondition for getting the loan was that Haiti reduce tariff protections for its rice and other agricultural products and open up the markets to competition from other countries. Very cheap U.S. subsidized rice, some of it entering the market as food aid, began flooding Haiti’s market. In less than two years, Haitian farmers could no longer compete. Farmers lost their businesses and people started moving into the cities. U.S. rice subsidies totaled $11 billion from 1995 to 2006.
A similar situation is now occurring in the Philippines. Restructuring measures by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the mid-‘80s emphasized paying back loans, so debt servicing became the national priority, with few resources given to agricultural production. In the mid-‘90s, with membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the subsequently imposed trade liberalization, the Philippines once self-sufficient agricultural economy turned into an import dependent economy. A Filipino government negotiator during negotiations at the WTO stated that, "Our small producers are being slaughtered by the gross unfairness of the international trading environment."
What can we do?
The current food crisis must be addressed both in the short term and long term. In the long term, we must deal with our dependence on oil as well as attend to the inequalities in distribution within the world system. We must also, as Christians, look at our own participation in the current economic system. The General Assembly of 1996 approved a document entitled “Hope for a Global Future,” an excellent educational resource for congregations, with an attached study guide. The Assembly reminded all Presbyterians “of the historic support of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), for measures to overcome poverty, not primarily by extension of relief … but by economic arrangements that make universally available the opportunity to work for a secure livelihood … the church must be involved in the study and understanding of what causes poverty and what creates suffering for all.”
In the short term, passage of The Jubilee Act (HR 2634/S 2166) would expand debt cancellation to impoverished countries and free up much needed resources that can be used to fight poverty and the emerging food crisis. The Jubilee Act has passed the house but has still not been voted on in the Senate. Please contact your Senator and urge them to cosponsor the bill, S 2166.
The perfect storm
The biofuel contribution to the global food crisis
By Leslie G. Woods
Recently, I’ve been watching the BBC’s Planet Earth series. Amidst breathtaking views of majestic mountains, Siberian plains, ancient trees — the tallest of which is dubbed “General Sherman” — and glimpses of wildlife I’ve never even imagined, the narrator’s slow, steady voice recites the wonders of creation. Of course, it has its sad moments and its thrilling ones. At times, I find myself struggling with the raw depiction of the natural food chain at work, hoping the prey will evade the predator, just this one time.
But mostly as I watch, I am struck by the order of things — the amazing way that animals know how to survive, where to migrate, how far, when and how to find the water or the right source of energy for their bodies for the right season — food. More than once, the narrator noted that, for all creatures on earth, the sun is their ultimate source of energy.
All creatures except one species — humans.
It strikes me that humans alone have outgrown or out-developed our ability to live in harmony with our natural surroundings. Rather than harvesting sources of energy sustainably, both food sources and other energy sources, at a rate that can be replaced by natural processes and the sun, we have outstripped the earth’s ability to keep up with our insatiable thirst for energy.
This thirst has led us to mine for energy sources deep below the earth’s crust, where the earth has been hard at work for hundreds of millions of years creating substances that are so energy-rich that they cannot possibly be replaced at the rate at which we spend them, but which are much more energy-rich than those that are part of the annual ebb and flow of the sun’s life-giving energy on the earth. Our use of fossil fuels has clearly been unsustainable, leaving detrimental impacts on God’s people and God’s creation — from mining and drilling to climate change, which results from continued burning of fossil fuels.
Further, even as we are faced with the prospect of catastrophic climate change, we have used fossil fuels for so long that we are daunted by the prospect of transitioning our economy and infrastructure to something new that would no longer be dependent on these rapidly depleting and poisonous sources.
Recently, our thirst for energy and the added pressure of socio-political energy independence from nations that do possess large deposits of oil and gas has led to a desire to develop fuels from home-grown sources, and the race to develop fuel from biomass has gained speed. In particular, corn is the bio-fuel baby, and it has gotten a lot of attention in Congress as the magic bullet for solving the U.S. energy crisis.
Currently, there is a 51 cent per-gallon federal subsidy to produce corn-based ethanol. In 2006, the United States produced 4 billion gallons using about 14 percent of the U.S. corn crop while displacing about 3.5 percent of U.S. gas consumption. In 2008, production will more than double that figure. At the end of 2007, Congress passed an Energy bill which more than quadrupled the mandate for corn-based ethanol production by 2022. According to the USDA, Congressional mandates to produce corn-based ethanol are diverting greater percentages of U.S. corn crop to fuel production, and will result in 30 percent of the 2009 crop being made into fuel, rising to 40 percent in 2015.
Corn-based ethanol is creating an economic boom in rural communities across the American Midwest that have not seen economic growth in generations. Farm income has increased; communities are attracting new jobs and investment; decline in rural communities is reversing. But lands that were taken out of food production years ago, either because they are fragile or for wildlife protection, are in danger of being put back into production, mainly because their owners cannot afford not to farm them anymore. These two conflicting aspects —economic security for farm families and environmentally fragile land being endangered — show just how complicated this issue is.
There is no doubt that this economic boom is a boon of the biofuel industry that must be preserved as we move to make it more sustainable — but sustainability is the key for both sides of this equation. Using prime farm land to grow a food crop to put into gas tanks is not good for the food supply, food prices, the economy or the environment.
The scramble for corn-based ethanol is by no means the only factor responsible for the food crisis. In fact, ethanol is one small piece of what the U.N.’s World Food Program’s Executive Director Josette Sheeran calls "a perfect storm" hitting the world's hungry. High gas prices, a rising population, increased standard of living among an enlarged global middle class, a weak U.S. dollar, extreme weather events and a string of poor harvests are all contributing to high prices and resulting food riots, as well as increasingly tighter purse strings in the United States.
But U.S. exports supply about 60 percent of the international corn trade. Add to this “perfect storm” the reduction in U.S. corn exports as more crop is diverted to ethanol plants and the additional conversion of prime U.S. farm land from other food crops to higher priced corn. The result is a smaller food supply that is sold as food.
Corn-based ethanol is no way to reduce the U.S. oil dependence, or even to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions (although that is a subject for another article), especially if the result is more hungry people around the world.
Biofuels can and no doubt will be a part of the answer to the challenges we face. Biofuels made from algae, waste wood, switch grass, or human waste, grown on marginal lands, not prime farmland, and produced in ecologically sustainable ways could replace a significant fraction of U.S. petroleum consumption.
Unfortunately, there is no legislative vehicle to answer this aspect of the current crisis right now. Rushing to reduce the mandates on renewable fuels, as some have argued, without proper planning would devastate those farm communities that have already invested so much in producing corn-based ethanol. Phasing down corn-based biofuel and phasing in something more sustainable and efficient (for which we do not yet have technology) must be done carefully. Congress should put more funding into research and development of bio-fuels that can be grown, harvested and converted to ethanol sustainably and efficiently.
As Josette Sheeran says, it is a “perfect storm.” From the food crisis to global climate change, there are so many problems we have to solve. Putting corn in our gas tanks will not solve any of them. At some point, humans are going to have to clue into the fact that we alone among our fellow creatures spend energy faster than the sun delivers it to the earth and we are going to have to reconcile our behavior, both with the way we get our energy from the earth and with the ways we choose to spend it.
Hunger among women and children
By Mary Anderson Cooper, Consultant
The U.N. Development Program reports that, among the nearly 7 billion people in the world, over 5 billion are in developing nations where people have access to fewer goods and services than people in countries with higher incomes. This understated language masks the real urgency of the poverty and hunger facing millions of people worldwide, primarily women and children who lack even the basics.
Daily there are reports of starvation and severe malnutrition resulting from civil wars, famines, droughts, or torrential, crop-destroying rains and floods. The recent tragedies in Myanmar and China are only the latest examples of unanticipated events that result in drastic shortages of food through disruption of distribution systems, loss of employment and destruction of the very land that grows the food.
In March 2007 the World Bank reported that nearly 1 billion people worldwide earn less than $1 per day. Nearly all of them are undernourished, consuming less than the minimum of calories needed to sustain adequate health and growth. Chief among the victims of this situation are children, pregnant women and nursing mothers and their infants.
In 2005, over 10 million children worldwide died before age five, nearly all in developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Poor nutrition made them vulnerable to preventable ailments such as malaria and respiratory infection. UNICEF reports that, among children in the developing world, 27 percent of those under five are moderately to severely underweight, with 31 percent seriously below the normal height for their ages.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic in the developing world has depleted the number of young men who can harvest food crops, further disrupting distribution processes already interrupted by numerous conflicts. Thus, per capita economic growth is falling by over 1 percent each year in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Now soaring fuel prices and diversion of food crops into biofuel production further complicate the situation, making food scarcer, more expensive and harder to bring to market. The United Nation’s World Food Program reports that food costs take about 30 percent of the family budget in a country like China, while that figure may rise to 60 to 80 percent in the desperately poor areas of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Asia, providing grossly inadequate nutrition.
The implications of all of this for women and children abroad are devastating. Women in the developing world devote nearly all of their energy and income to caring for their families. Because they often lack education, they need help with the most basic aspects of nutrition and sanitation. Thus, international programs aimed at teaching women to grow food, plan menus, and prepare healthy ingredients are crucial, as are economic development programs that help women in impoverished societies learn to increase their incomes to provide for their families.
The lack of safe water is also a major problem for women and children. Breast-feeding requires availability of clean water for the mother to continue to produce nutrition for her child. Having no local water supply also means that mothers have to leave their villages, often passing through dangerous areas of conflict or criminality, in order to secure water for drinking, cooking and bathing their children.
The situation in the United States is less dire than in developing nations, but it is nonetheless quite serious. Starvation is rare here, but malnourishment is not. In 2006, according to the Food Research and Action Center, 35.5 million people in the U.S. — 12 percent of all residents and 17 percent of all children — were “food insecure”, meaning they did not have food enough to meet basic needs at all times because of lack of funds.
The United States Census Bureau, which conducts periodic surveys of food insecurity, reports that the people at greatest risk of being hungry or food insecure live in households that are Hispanic or African-American, are headed by a single woman, or have incomes below the official poverty line. The food insecurity rate for families with children is double that for adults. Hungry Americans are more likely to be in cities and live in the Midwest and South.
In 2006, just over half of food-insecure households received help from at least one of the three major Federal food programs — Food Stamps, the National School Lunch Program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). In addition, 3.3 percent of all U.S. households (3.8 million) received help from a food pantry or food bank at least once that year. Some of these programs were reauthorized with slightly increased funding in the Farm Bill recently approved by Congress, after overriding President Bush’s veto. Spending for government nutrition programs has for decades lagged far behind the need, and Congress generally responds to increased demand by tightening the eligibility for assistance.
Food banks are a treasured source of aid for millions of needy Americans, but they increasingly face shortfalls in supplies and in their ability to help. As fuel costs increase, food stores stock less inventory to reduce shipping costs, thus making less available to contribute to food banks. Food producers are also cutting inventory, with like results; and government surplus programs make far less food available than they did in years past.
Sadly, this results in the nation’s food banks having less with which to carry on the charitable work of combating hunger, even as the demand for their help increases. America’s Second Harvest, a major food bank organization reports that, as food prices soar, up to 35% of food bank clientele are in families that include people with jobs.
While work on the Farm Bill, which authorizes many domestic and international anti-hunger programs, is finished, there are other legislative opportunities for addressing hunger, primarily in the United States. Child Nutrition Programs, including the school breakfast and lunch programs and WIC, expire soon and must be reauthorized in 2009. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is holding regional listening sessions to get public comments on reauthorization. The PC(USA) Washington Office begins work on this legislation in Fall 2008 and will inform Presbyterians about action steps.
Introducing Presbyterian legislators
With this issue, we are initiating a new feature to introduce readers to Presbyterians serving in Congress.
Representative Frank Wolf (R-Va.)
Congressman Frank Wolf represents the 10th District of Virginia, stretching from McLean to Winchester. He sits on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, and he is the senior Republican on the State and Foreign Operations subcommittee. He serves on the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development subcommittee.
Rep. Wolf is one of the House's leading crusaders for human rights. He co-chairs the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, a bipartisan organization of over 200 House members that identifies and works to alleviate human rights abuses worldwide. Mr. Wolf believes Members of Congress have an obligation to speak out for those who are persecuted around the world. He has traveled to Ethiopia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and other countries in Africa to see firsthand the tremendous suffering of the people at the hands of corrupt governments, war, AIDS and famine. He led the first congressional delegation to Darfur in western Sudan to bring attention to the crisis there, later officially declared by the U.S. government as genocide. He also called attention to human rights abuses and religious persecution in the People's Republic of China, Tibet, Romania, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor and the Middle East.
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