Sharing the loaves
McCarthy, Abigail
SHARING THE LOAVES CORPORATE RESPONSE TO FAMINE A N END TO HUNGER and starvation in the world. Within the foreseeable future. We can bring it about if we want to -- and without any...
...We may disagree with this premise or that -- this recommendation or that -- of the president's task force, but those interested in ending world hunger must hope that the president, and the Congress, will heed its words: "America's own long-term interests have always paralleled the real interests of the world's people, precisely because of the kind of people we are . . . . We grew rich not by being predatory but productive . . . . Rather than waste this country's most productive a s s e t . . , we must use our agricultural abundance to feed the hungry and malnourished multitudes today, and teach them to feed themselves tomorrow...
...Second, stored food deteriorates...
...These products could be made available to hungry nations by the three great producers of soy beans -- the United States, Brazil, and China -- via a world food bank...
...That's been borne out by almost two years of economic study done for the task force by the Economic Research Service of the Department of Agriculture and by the Congressional Budget Office...
...The task force report makes it clear in more technical language that "everybody's help" in part at least must come through government programs: In the short term, food aid can help meet emergency food requirements, particularly in lower income countries...
...We can open new markets, increase trade, create new jobs, spread hope, and build the sort of climate in which freedom can flourish in future generations," says the introduction to the report...
...in 1984 it donated enough of these foods to provide 18 million meals...
...He understands the passionate concern of church people and humanitarians for the famine-stricken...
...We can save money by giving our surplus food away...
...His company has provided this food source to Catholic Relief Services and to Mother Teresa who, he says happily, is "crazy about it...
...Another quick source of protein is soy milk which can also be provided in easily transported packets in powdered form...
...We can bring it about if we want to -- and without any great sacrifice, with only a sensible shift in our national priorities...
...Indeed, he sees the giving away of surplus United States food as in the country's self-interest...
...They envision a world in which food distribution -- especially the distribution of protein -- will have freed countries and their people to realize their potential...
...With economic aid we can gain stability in vital, but vulnerable, third-world countries...
...They must have protein...
...What is twenty billion...
...That's not moral...
...Andreas and the other members of the task force are interested in more than the economics of food, however...
...Last, moving the food creates jobs all along the way...
...Andreas himself has a vivid sense of the relation of food to a person's ability to live fully...
...Certainly in our interest...
...And closing our eyes to it won't make it go away...
...The restoration of strength and stamina is almost miraculous...
...Third, its existence depresses the market...
...Given the current costs of farm subsidy programs, the impact of this increase would be a net reduction in the federal budget...
...Rising standards of living are no guarantee of political stability, but they are an essential element of it...
...We spent fifteen to pay our farmers not to produce...
...This use of our food, according to the authors of the report, would have several beneficial side effects...
...First, because we lose paying slotage and interest...
...We have to get protein into the children -and we can do that...
...It would also ease the pressing foreign exchange needs of deficit and debtor hations such as those in Latin America...
...Development cannot occur "in areas where most of the farming and labor forces are in a starvation cycle...
...SHARING THE LOAVES CORPORATE RESPONSE TO FAMINE A N END TO HUNGER and starvation in the world...
...But food must come first...
...Almost nothing in the defense budget...
...But," says the ADM Company's television commercial celebrating such private giving, "there are many more bellies to f i l l . . . And for that we need everybody's help...
...Food provided to them would enable them to use their limited foreign exchange to meet other objectives and to lay a basis for their economic emergence...
...ABIGAIL McCARTHY...
...Concentrated cubes of soybean -- one-tenth the price of meat but equal in protein value -- can be added to whatever stew of native roots and vegetables relief workers can provide...
...The Archer Daniels Midland Company has encouraged private enterprise to lead the way...
...Perhaps the most compelling argument of all is this one: "In the third world, hungry nations are vulnerable nations...
...Dwayne O. Andreas, chairman and chief executive officer of Archer Daniels Midland, one of the country's giant grain dealers and food processing corporalions, would be the last to deny selfinterest in the movement of food worldwide...
...That is the opinion, not of a starry-eyed idealist, but of the hard-headed businessman who chaired President Reagan's Task Force on International Private Enterprise: "For twenty billion dollars we could end world starvation now...
...He is enthusiastic about the food technology which makes it possible...
...It is cheaper for us to feed the hungry than not to feed them," he says...
...The failure to use our great ability to grow food in a way that keeps farmers farming, feeds our own people, and makes it possible to feed the hungry of the world is a blight on our nation...
...Even if they do not die, their minds will be stunted...
...Because hunger is something that happens every single day...
...Soy milk furnished protein for millions of Chinese for centuries," says Andreas...
...In the light of serious credit constraints, heavy debt burdens, and potentially higher food prices, there is the strong possibility that the developing world will face a major food shortage within a decade -far greater than the present shortage in Africa...
...For many in Africa it is already too late...
...To help avert this crisis we should at least double our PL 480 program [Food for Peace],keying the actual increase to meeting need and averting starvation, while increasing the flexibility of program terms to meet the individual needs of recipient countries...
...He calls it the "jolt of protein...
Vol. 112 • April 1985 • No. 7
