WORLD HUNGER: THE FOOD CRISIS:
Simom, Arthur
WORLD HUNGER TAE FOOD CRISIS ARTHUR SIMON The long pull will require substantial commitments...
...yet monsoons, which had adversely affected Asians, too, may by early April (the latest report available at writing) indicate a new and enduring weather pattern...
...We are more concerned about the long pull...
...ARTHUR SIMON, associate pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Most recently a Senate-approved measure would add New York, is Acting Director of Bread for the World...
...A southward migration of the The importance of these items is at once apparent...
...Farm and nomad families have been driven Shipment arrivals have been slow, a bigger problem than from land that no longer nourishes them...
...Even if the House should reversion was less generous than the Senate-approved bill, verse itself (nobody takes that for granted), a U.S...
...Some of it came later than necessary and after a lot of prodding...
...Now the desert is advancing "southward at rates 5 million-World Health Organization that range from three to 30 miles a year...
...The seven years to restore pastures, and maybe twice that World Food Program of the UN appealed last year for a long for some land...
...of mobilizing support for the kind of long-term assistance Commonweal: 375...
...assistance...
...But the September 20...
...House is again appearing on alternate weeks during the of Representatives rejected by a 248 to 155 vote in summer months...
...And will we do land and people into social burdens...
...Forthcoming issues will be dated January...
...A spokesman for Catholic keeping with this nation's ideals...
...Who is to finance this patently commendable project...
...and members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee mindset that can barely salvage support for programs are the ones to contact, if the measure has not yet been like IDA cannot sustain assistance over the long run to resolved...
...If the monsoon does where burials are everyday occurrences...
...It has greatly exceeded Waldheim, returned from the Sahel and said that thous- that of any other country, as well it should...
...While some come by early July-everyone's wish-dirt roads will die from starvation, more succumb to measles and in- wash out...
...hunger...
...It was a vision of interdependence in people on the scene often are...
...That's national response...
...Nomads cannot simply return to important especially to infants and pregnant or nursing their land after the first good rain...
...plague...
...nibbles compared to the 19-million-ton purchase of Africans south of the Sahara need help now...
...According to the UN, the main shortfalls now are Aside from death, the toll in dislocated lives is im- of milk powder, lipids and high-protein blended foods, possible to calculate...
...No one knows (for medicine, etc...
...meager $30 million dollars, to be used as follows: One UN spokesman said that the increasing human $3 million-seeds and animal populations "probably had reached a carry- 4 million-trucks ing capacity before the drought...
...the total population in the Sahel...
...River blindness is a ulation groups such as infants, nursing mothers and the disease that affects perhaps 10 million people who live elderly...
...Whether or not it is enough remains to be seen...
...The foregoing speaks to the immediate crisis, which A vision that could pave the way for such a change preoccupies us, but may not direct us to the greater, was embodied in Kissinger's address before the UN Genless dramatic task ahead: long-range development...
...The U.S...
...whether the advance can be halted or reversed, though 4 million-animal health care the answer hinges primarily on whether or not the 6 million-animal feed drought is permanent...
...a disease and to pave the way for economic development...
...work projects and food assistance for vulnerable popTake the case of river blindness...
...Food for Peace program by prosperous nations, commitments that cannot, let us has been drastically cut back, primarily because of rishope, depend for sustenance upon our feasting visually ing food costs, and about 40 percent of what remains upon an ever-new generation of starving African chil- goes to South Vietnam...
...50 million in emergency aid to the Sahel, plus $10 12 July 1974: 374 million to Ethiopia and $25 million to other African that the Sahelian countries need...
...dren...
...Summer Schedule The International Development Association-the division of the World Bank that lends to the poorest coun- In keeping with the usual practice, Commonweal tries at no interest-funding for which the U.S...
...River blindness turns productive billion poorest rural dwellers on earth...
...cans on the edge of starvation in the Sahel concentrates Appeals to the international community have so far our minds on the need for immediate relief, long-range brought pledges of more than 568,000 tons of grain, development efforts there are far more important-and which, together with food in the 1973 pipeline that ara more difficult task around which to mobilize an inter- rived this year, totals more than 700,000 tons...
...More important, will we as a nation help subThe flies swarm near the rivers and force people to stantially to raise the food-producing capacity of the abandon fertile land...
...Will transmitted by a fly, that multiplies inside the human the United States take part in a world food reserve probody, where the worm's larvae may invade many organs...
...The FAO calls the program "the most this year's shipment of food to Africa, will measure the detailed and far-reaching plan ever prepared to control future for many in the Sahel...
...WORLD HUNGER TAE FOOD CRISIS ARTHUR SIMON The long pull will require substantial commitments by prosperous nations Although the specter of more than six million Afri- ands were dying and "the worst is definitely not over...
...Again, higher food prices and political realities along the Volta River basin-and a third or more of so dictated, despite a manifest increase of hunger...
...the Sahel, much less extend it to other countries where hunger and poverty are also the norm...
...The disease is caused by a worm, cessional sale to countries with acute shortages...
...nations, when development assistance is measured as a The long pull will require substantial commitments percentage of GNP...
...By early in absolute poverty, it seems clear that substantial asJune the measure was waiting action by a Senate-House sistance for the Sahel (and elsewhere) is at stake in conference that had not yet been appointed...
...But the biggest problem is getting the huddle around the cities in shanties and relief camps, food from ports to remote areas...
...From then on we will resume our difficulty that IDA encountered illustrates the problem normal weekly publishing schedule...
...Al- eral Assembly's Special Session on Raw Materials and though the public is not generally alert to this need, Development...
...But whether it was a Relief Services, which engages in food distribution in gut commitment, or a part of the Watergate syndromethe Sahel, said, "Our main emphasis is on long-range promise full cooperation, but give as little as possible development projects-well-digging, road construction, -remains to be seen...
...In March a shaken UN Secretary General, Kurt What about U.S...
...The United Na- this as part of an overall commitment to a truly just tions, including the World Health Organization, has world community...
...less than $14 million of this amount had been pledged...
...In any case some airlifting of food appears fluenza, which often prove fatal to those weakened by certain, a costly part of the operation...
...That attitude The Long Pull could change, of course, given either visionary leadership or sufficient citizen mobilization...
...The head of FAO mothers...
...grain exand eventually death...
...The commitment will only come-in this country, The UN World Food Program has also been forced certainly-if the trend of declining development aid is to cut back rather than expand its extensive food-forreversed...
...In addition, cash contributions by governments livestock policy and planning says that it might take have lagged far behind commodity contributions...
...lion of them directly by causing debilitation, blindness Will Congress legislate a "tithe" of U.S...
...The House the way the House votes...
...Now they that of quantity...
...drawn up a 20-year, $120 million program to wipe The answers to these questions, rather than the size of out this disease...
...gram...
...Because IDA's main countries outside the Sahel-a reminder that famine is emphasis will be rural development for families living not confined to that region alone in Africa...
...The Senate revived the measure on May 29 July 26, August 9, August 23, September 6 and and it will go to the House for another try...
...and it drives the population away ports so that 10 percent is set aside for grants or confrom fertile valleys...
...It afflicts maybe a mil- These are things that need to be turned around...
...Mal- U.S...
...grain by the Russians in 1972, but a lot by the nutrition, familiar to the citizens of these impoverished experience of these poor and sparsely populated counlands in the best of times, spreads like an uncontrolled tries...
...small dams-projects that run in the five-to-ten year The United States now ranks 14th among 16 donor period...
...The drought sharply 2 million-storage facilities reduced that carrying capacity, but overgrazing played 6 million-UNICEF (for children and a part, too, in the delicate ecological balance of this mothers of infants) region...
Vol. 100 • July 1974 • No. 16
