WORLD HUNGER: FEEDING THE UNFED:
McLaughlin, Martin M.
WORLD HUNGER FEEDING THE UNFED MARTIN M. McLAUGHLIN The urgency of establishing a world food...
...and we cannot pretend that it is right for ally civic-minded, who have begun to work together in 6 percent of the world's population to consume, even a broad coalition on this matter, without in any way partially waste, nearly half of the world's product every compromising their particular identities...
...He is purely a problem, the policy statement should, as a minimum, storybook character in a perverse kind of storybook also emphasize (a) that food aid is no substitute for world...
...Conference can advocate and support, a policy that will assure that the impetus that gave rise to the Conference will be stimulated, rather than dissipated, by it, a policy LE GRAND THEATRE de JEAN RENOIR that will permit all of us to see that we have reached, at most, another "end of the beginning" in the field of 00000000000000 international development...
...They leave in disgust and bickering without havand equal attention...
...are poor...
...Brown attributes this new and as a result whole regions are condemned to the and continuing food shortage not only to the rapid most distressing dependency...
...Since the annual increase There are crop-destroying floods and starvation in Pakis- in world grain production during the past three years tan and Bangladesh...
...As the Pope said in focus on hunger, involving, as it does, the recognition Populorum Progressio, "It is not just a matter of elimi- that the problems of development have not been solved, nating hunger, nor even of reducing poverty...
...American programs do not is a crisis of hunger...
...Moreover, the House of of the country...
...The Overseas DevelopIn this respect some of our representatives seem to ment Council survey cited above clearly indicated that be out of phase with the sentiments of the people, who the American people want to help because it is the right in a recent Overseas Development Council survey gave thing to do-not because of world markets, competition a 68 percent affirmative answer to the question of with Communism, or fear that our raw materials will whether the rich countries should help poor ones...
...The Congress is caught up in its investigation of 12 July 1974: 378 oil profiteering, skyrocketing prices, unemployment, im- sure of too rapid population growth on finite food suppending financial chaos, inflation, impeachment-as well plies...
...exert such leadership is needed...
...But that is the word Ambas- also our taste for food...
...and scribe to a Committee of the House of Representatives protein in this form takes many times the amount of what he fears for India next year...
...c) that the food shortage is not temporary, but about them, for Le Clochard's own experience repeats chronic and requires a worldwide system of food reserves in a curious way the experience of the bons vivants under international management or coordination...
...The cause- modities, rather than our former abundance...
...own to get rid of him, he and his wife are, though In addition to recognizing and acknowledging the starving, too moony with love to eat...
...The current tice, which is that of development...
...I hope that the Catholic organizations, in particular, will continue to work within THE SCREEN this coalition, since it is wholly consistent with the teachings of the gospels and the Popes, and that the Catholic bishops, meeting around the time of the World Food Le Petit Thedtre de Jean Renoir is an old-fashioned Conference, will include in their annual statement a variety theater...
...As he sees it, continents countless men and women are ravished by the food crisis is not a temporary phenomenon, part of hunger, countless children are undernourished, so that the cyclical operation of the laws of the weather and many of them die in infancy, while the physical growth of supply and demand, but an indication that food and mental development of many others are retarded scarcity is becoming chronic...
...A world food policy must include a food personal potential drastically limited...
...To the American (and development) policy for this country as well...
...be made more difficult by the soaring prices of grain It seems essential that the World Food Conference and oil-the latter because it is also a basic ingredient go beyond production and consider distribution (and of the chemical fertilizers that have made possible the rural development) as well, i.e., it must move beyond Green Revolution and the relative gains of the past few economics, to politics...
...It would be a tragic mistake, a real misRobert McNamara told the UNCTAD meeting in San- carriage of justice, for us to concentrate so earnestly on tiago, Chile, two years ago, the developing world is still the problems abroad that we ignore, or overlook, the one in which "hundreds of millions of people are not injustices in our midst...
...distracted by the President's personal problems-taxes, All this is not to accept the theses of critics from impeachment, Watergate, massive defections in the party either right or left...
...Over the longer run people have world...
...Representatives, as recently as January 23, inexplicably In order to get a world food policy adopted by the refused to honor our painfully negotiated and agreed leaders of this country and pursued vigorously in the contribution to the International Development Agency World Food Conference and beyond, not only the or(IDA), the World Bank family member that serves the ganizational support of those already in the field, but poorest countries most directly...
...Department of Agriculture, has been preach- one can be ignorant any longer of the fact that in whole ing this gospel of scarcity for some years...
...tries...
...The price rises and the long waits to fill the away from catastrophe...
...An even clearer of world where all feelings from cruelty to tenderness rebuttal to that conclusion, however, would be a suc- take on exaggerated proportions...
...Leadership in helping the This country has been favored with an unprecedenthungry and poor in the rest of the world will not come edly high material standard of living...
...And to add to all this there is now absorbed either by population growth (22 million tons) a huge, unprecedented rise in the prices of wheat, petro- or by rising prices (8 million tons), there has been no leum and fertilizer (made from petroleum), which growth-in fact, there has been a reduction of the threatens the food supplies of the heavily populated world's food reserves to less than a one-month supply...
...There is drought and starvation in the Sahelian states the average American consumes a ton per year, nearly of Africa, on the rim of the encroaching Sahara desert...
...State Kissinger, in his initial address at the United Nations, both called for worldwide attention to this probMARTIN M. MCLAUGHLIN, a former AID official, is a Senior lem...
...Already two preparatory meetings have taken to remind the American people about this basic probplace-one at UN headquarters in New York City and lem of hunger and the responsibility of this rich nation the second in Geneva-and Egyptian Deputy Prime to take some leadership in an attack on it...
...There are earthquakes and starva- has averaged 30 million tons, all of which has been tion in Nicaragua...
...Several of these organizational representagenerally shied away from such proposals as a world tives and others met in Washington on February 27 food bank under international management, to which we and established the World Hunger Action Coalition...
...Somehow the word grain that direct consumption would require...
...They are poor because they live in less deAmong these private voluntary organizations and veloped countries or regions, because they do not or many individuals traditionally concerned with the food are not permitted to share in the fruits of development problem who have been conducting programs among wherever they live, and because there are too many of the poor overseas, the conviction has been growing in them...
...We have evidence that the small, making, consumption-oriented country we cannot and labor-intensive farm may be more efficient in both hu- should not try to help the developing countries through man and economic terms than the over-mechanized giant...
...Is he ready to pay a higher price for imported goods so that the producer may be more justly rewarded...
...The have to "vote their conscience" on foreign aid, because first act, for instance, has a rather artificial and formalthere is no constituency in the country for it...
...But the facts are there...
...A conference to study this question further and promote the policy was held in St...
...The production put on in it has three strong endorsement of the world food policy and the acts just as a legitimate play would, but they are more subsequent efforts to put it into effect...
...While we have had a foreign aid program sure has come a broad coalition of private organizations over the years that heavily emphasized agricultural de- and individuals to support a world food policy that this velopment and have used our food surpluses through country should advocate at the World Food Conference PL 480 to help the less developed countries, we have and elsewhere...
...Ironi- be cut off by the undernourished developing countries...
...e) that any program to relieve ing eaten...
...gas tank, now past at least for the time being, will cause A problem of this magnitude requires both immediate discomfort in the U.S...
...Their prin- istic tone to it...
...Now it has moved, appropriately to the American heartland...
...We have to be concerned about improving the Commonweal: 377 methods of food production and distribution in the of dollars have been wasted, "poured down a rat hole," developing countries and with getting as many people in unsound projects designed to help ungrateful people involved in the solution of their own problems as pos- who vote against us in the UN, expropriate our corsible...
...exclusively domestic issues...
...They, too, are foreign aid programs, however, it may come as some- poor because they are undeveloped, non-participating thing of a shock to find that, as World Bank President and numerous...
...the Congress and by the World Food Conference of a Then when the restaurateur gives him a meal of his world food policy they support...
...We should This leaves us-and perhaps properly-the religious not pretend that we are better than others, though we groups, the charitable organizations, and the internation- are luckier...
...Development, after all, takes place in people...
...John A. Hannah, on Hunger may be dead, but the problem he addressed former AID administrator, as one of his deputies...
...audience this forcible recognition of relative failure does What we are facing in the developing countries, then, not come across gracefully...
...it should also be a cuts the poor governments off from the main source of warning to legislators and administrators, and a shot in the public funds they use to support projects of private the arm to churchmen and others who are engaged in American and other voluntary agencies in their coun- development education and charitable work...
...like vaudeville acts, each one being distinct from the Men of good will on Capitol Hill often say that they others in its billing, performers, content and style...
...of the U.S.-of whom there is a distressingly large numit is they who are its participants and its subjects, as ber-are at one with the poor everywhere, even though well as its beneficiaries...
...The gion, or nationality, can live a fully human life, freed from servitude imposed on him by other men or natural forces over which he has not sufficient control...
...bilateral programs that essentially export the American and we have indications that the population growth rate way of life, with all its problems...
...Fortunately, the Senate the moral force of those who have a responsibility to vote on May 29 was just the opposite...
...It is not a matter of charity, but of organizational know-how to orchestrate such a campaign justice, for, as everyone knows, peace is the fruit of and to draw up an agreed statement of world food justice...
...should be summarily dismissed, the latter set has some Thus the problem of hunger is urging upon us not validity and should prompt us to reexamine our policies, only the basic duty of charity, the corporal work of our goals, and our methods with objectivity and humilmercy, to feed the hungry, but the requirement of jus- ity-that unpopular, but realistic virtue...
...What Pope Paul VI said in Populorum of the International Agricultural Development Service Progressio in 1967 is no less true in 1974: "Today no of the U.S...
...all of it as meat, eggs, or milk...
...From the right we hear that billions ranks...
...President Minister Sayed Marei has been designated Secretary Lyndon Johnson's eight-year-old initiative for a War General of the Conference, with Dr...
...His enactment of their that hunger and malnutrition in the developed world are fantasy at the restaurant window proves too much for an integral part of the problem, requiring simultaneous them...
...Although their fantasies have always been an Commonweal: 379...
...They have the year...
...and other regional conferences are planned for other sections would contribute a large share...
...From the left we are agriculture that best fits the culture and stage of develop- told that because the United States is a capitalist, profitment of the country...
...It is a question, rather, of building a There is a further aspect of this question that should world where every man, no matter what his race, reli- not be ignored in our focus on world hunger...
...This demands great generosity, much sacrifice and unceasing effort on the part of the rich man...
...does not have a national policy on Out of this ferment and the meetings and the presworld food...
...That is what the World Food Conference should policy that the U.S...
...The offers us an excellent opportunity to review, renew and struggle against destitution, though urgent and necessary, rededicate...
...After more than 25 years of in dollar terms they don't appear to be...
...As a reseems appropriate not only for India, but for other sult, he notes, the average Indian consumes about 400 parts of the world as well...
...it began to take form at a conference in Hershey, Pennsylvania, last December 6 and 7, sponsored by some of the private organizations and convened by the Secretary of Agriculture of the State' of Pennsylvania...
...ference, at the government-minister level, in Rome in 12 July 1974: 376 November, 1974, to address the question of food sup- recent months that there needs to be a broad campaign plies...
...international economic development pale before the Lester Brown, Senior Fellow at the Overseas Develop- stark, clear fact that hungry people have to eat before ment Council in Washington and former Administrator they can develop...
...Paul on June 6-7, with strong organizational and bipartisan endorsement and participation...
...An- remains...
...and in the rest of the developed and long-range action...
...is not enough...
...pounds of grain per year, getting his protein directly...
...And in a fashion contrary yet parallel, the world hunger must protect the farmer's right to a just fantasies that Le Clochard and his wife have of a former return on his labor and his investment...
...WORLD HUNGER FEEDING THE UNFED MARTIN M. McLAUGHLIN The urgency of establishing a world food policy Famine is often thought of as an old-fashioned, overly Affluence enriches not only our bank accounts, but dramatic, "scare" word...
...The answer is not increasing mechanization of porations in their countries, and revile us as economic farming in the poor countries, but more labor-intensive imperialists and neo-colonialists...
...This movement springs from the grass roots...
...longer-range development assistance, especially for the As the film's scriptwriter-director, Renoir therefore small farmer...
...d) who hire him at the beginning...
...and it is worsened by problems fail...
...b) that quantity of food has to be bal- makes everything in that world contrived...
...There are groups are articulate and effective, but they stress almost no more surpluses, but there must be reserves...
...f) that equal life of wealth also prove more powerful than their attention has to be paid to measures to relieve the pres- hunger...
...All the complexities of much more grim, perhaps fatal...
...At this juncture in history, how- years in the poor countries...
...delegation to the World Food proclaim, and that is what we should do...
...Development," said Pope Paul VI, "is the new expertise and the experience, the moral stature and name for peace...
...Even the anced by considerations of quality of diet (i.e., nutri- episodes of the plot have a specially constructed quality tion...
...In the city ghettos, in the rural only poor in statistical terms, but are faced with day- slums, on the dusty roads of Appalachia, in the small to-day deprivations that degrade human dignity to levels bare rooms where some of the elderly live out their which no statistics can adequately describe . . . a devel- remaining years, we have the same kind of grinding oping world . . . in which death and disease are ramp- poverty and crushing inhumanity as in the favelas and ant, education and employment scarce, squalor and stag- barrios of Latin America and the rat-infested hovels nation common, and opportunity and the realization of of Calcutta...
...There are more hungry people in the developother preparatory meeting is scheduled for Rome in ing world now than ever before, and their plight will October...
...While the first set tends to drop as a result of general economic develop- of criticisms is entirely negative and anti-Christian and ment, rather than as a requisite of it...
...People are hungry because they goods and services...
...Food aid must, in short, be a component of a more generalized development program, based more on improving the quality of life for the individual than on the macro-economic considerations so loved by many of our United States is part of the world, and the poor people planners...
...to a considerable from any of these-for a variety of understandable, if extent it has been earned by hard work, but to a large not altogether commendable reasons...
...Immediately, however, it is Northeast and some parts of Africa the results will be necessary to feed the hungry...
...and (g) that we now have to share scarce comas the extra dimension of an election year...
...The main character is an old tramp, Le ciple is to be commended, but the survey cited earlier Clochard (Nino Formicola), who lives in a crazy sort would seem to belie their conclusion...
...but for a large number of the billion people of to be enabled both to feed themselves and to eat better India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Brazilian (i.e., improve nutrition...
...Though Secretary Kissinger called of what we have done and what we propose to do in for the World Food Conference, the White House is the international development field...
...Senator Percy of Illinois and Governor Shapp of Pennsylvania are Co-chairmen of its Advisory Commission...
...degree it has also resulted from good fortune...
...Is he prepared to support out of his own pocket works and undertakings organized in favor of the most destitute...
...Yet these organizations' projects are the charitable A world food policy that addresses itself to the probworks for which the nay-voting Congressmen's constit- lem of hunger is vitally and immediately necessary, but uents are earnestly raising money and contributing by itself is not enough...
...First some swells going cessful grassroots campaign, led by the World Hunger out for Christmas dinner hire Le Clochard to stare Action Coalition and the organizations in which con- hungrily through the restaurant window, in order that cerned Americans are active, to secure acceptance by his misery might increase their pleasure while eating...
...lesser-developed countries even more than do the natural We may be, literally, one harvest, or one monsoon, disasters...
...We need a reassessment of leadership at home...
...cally, the rejection of IDA replenishment by the House This seems a very encouraging sign...
...Brown points out that we want sador Daniel P. Moynihan used on January 29 to de- our protein now in the form of meat, not cereal...
...As a result the UN will convene a World Food ConFellow at the Overseas Development Council in Washington...
...growth of developing-country populations, which still Even before the energy crisis aggravated it, the food generates most of the increased demand, but also to problem was seen to be so severe that the nonaligned rising affluence in both the developed and some develop- nations, meeting last year in Algiers, and Secretary of ing countries...
...ever, the U.S...
Vol. 100 • July 1974 • No. 16
