MISSION TO THE HUNGRY

...They are found in much of Asia, Africa, and Latin America...

...It would be difficult to discern that the peasant in many underdeveloped countries is today any better off than he was a hundred years ago...

...While the ultimate solution," said Dr...

...The local currency is deposited to a United States account in the host country, and much of it is loaned or granted back for social and economic use...

...One million metric tons of wheat bakes up into 1.6 billion loaves of bread weighing one and one-half pounds each...

...The office is designed to provide affirmative leadership, supervision, and coordination of those government and private agencies using our agricultural abundance to feed the hungry abroad...

...It is clear to everyone that some nations have surpluses in food-stuffs, particularly of farm products, while elsewhere large masses of people experience want and hunger...

...Relations among the Food for Peace agencies are remarkably amicable...

...Everyone knows that conditions such as these are not confined to a single country, or to part of a country...

...Two billion of the three billion people on earth are seriously undernourished, in both the quantity and the quality of their diets...

...Sixty to eighty per cent of the people of underdeveloped countries derive their livelihood from the land...

...The Food for Peace director is charged with settling interagency disputes...

...Perhaps wise management should even encompass the expenditure of additional funds for purchase of foodstuffs not in surplus so that we may make better progress against protein malnutrition, beriberi, rickets, and pellagra, which are widespread in the underdeveloped regions...

...Television cameramen had followed us from the city, and a few hours later, back in Recife, we watched the wretched family and ourselves on a television screen...

...The average annual export of food under Public Law 480, from July J, 1954, when it was signed into law by President Eisenhower, until the end of 1960, was twelve million tons...

...With a productivity far-outstripping our capacity to consume, we have shared our agricultural bounty with the underprivileged abroad to the magnitude of 112 million tons of food and fiber valued at $15.1 billion dollars since 1954...

...This could mean less wheat and corn, and more dry milk, animal and vegetable proteins, more fats and oils...

...A single ton of dry milk powder, reconstituted abroad, fills 45,000 eight-ounce glasses...

...We all share responsibility for the fact that populations are undernourished," said Pope John last year in an Encyclical Letter on Christianity and Social Progress...

...The capability of our farmers to produce more than we need for our own use is one of America's richest blessings...

...Their seven-year-old brother had died of smallpox the day before, and it was obvious that they too were ill—if not with smallpox, then of the crushing malnutrition that is endemic to that region of northeast Brazil...

...Details of proposed agreements are worked out in give-and-take sessions of an inter-agency staff committee in Washington...

...Sales for local currencies, for long-term dollar credits, or in exchange for strategic materials...

...Most often it is the government's various overseas missions that initiate and negotiate agreements for grants and sales of surplus commodities, with the State Department saying the final yes or no to any given contract with a foreign nation...

...Proof of the economic usefulness of local currency agreements may be found in the experience of Japan, Italy, Austria, and Portugal...

...On a low stone hearth in a corner, the evening meal already bubbled—dried beans boiling in water that was carried by bucket from a well, said to be polluted, more than a mile away...

...President Kennedy has appointed a number of outstanding citizens, including Adlai Stevenson, Mrs...

...With world population headed toward the four billion mark in 1975 and possibly six billion in 2000, we must be sure nothing is done to impair that capability...

...We have sold, for example, more than two billion bushels of wheat for "soft" foreign currencies...

...B. R. Sen, Director-General of the FAO, "to the problem of poverty must be sought in an integrated approach to balanced development of underdeveloped economies, it should be recognized that agriculture is the key sector in such development...

...Quietly he said to me: "She is the symbol of the underdeveloped country...

...A doctor told me he had to beg mothers about to deliver their babies to lie on a bed or table rather than upon their contaminated floors...

...Title IV was added to Public Law 480 in 1959 and used for the first time in 1961...

...In 1961, thirty-three million tons of commodities were programmed for shipment, including long-term deliveries to India and Pakistan...

...Now, justice and humanity require that these richer countries come to the aid of those in need...

...Secretary of Agriculture Or-ville L. Freeman's department handles the so-called Title I sales for foreign currencies, comprising more than half of all Public Law 480 transactions, and it is he who designates the commodities that are in surplus, and therefore available for distribution abroad under the terms of the law...

...But overriding the practical considerations—however desirable—of self-interest, is the compelling moral obligation to share our surpluses of food with the hungry and the poor, whoever they are, and wherever they may be...

...Farm-state Congressmen have no difficulty appreciating their value, and neither do such unlikely bedfellows as the advocates of foreign aid and those of financial austerity...

...Food for Peace is generating support for wholehearted United States' participation in a worldwide Freedom from Hunger Campaign sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations...

...campaign seeks to analyze and spotlight the causes of hunger, and, hopefully, to do away with that ancient scourge by helping every nation achieve better nutrition and food production...

...The rest of the people of the world, the underfed two-thirds, are marked by lack of energy, stunted growth, low resistance even to mild disease, and hopeless vulnerability to more lethal ailments such as tuberculosis and smallpox...

...Many centuries ago a Biblical sage said, "Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days...

...Hundreds of thousands of tons of feed grains were shipped to drought victims last year in North Africa and the Middle East, and to flood sufferers in Kenya, Somalia, and Viet Nam...

...The pan contained manioc, a starchy staple of the area, a powder ground from dried cassava root...

...A two-year agreement for delivery of 20,000 tons of dried milk, with the option of an additional 20,000 tons in two more years, was concluded in January...

...Picture the status of the family farm today if more than two billion bushels of wheat had not been exported under Public Law 480, or one and one-half million tons of dry milk, or half a billion dollars' worth of butter and cheese...

...Portugal recently negotiated a Title IV contract, under which it will pay in dollars over a period of a decade, for 190,000 tons of commodities...

...Food for Peace programs upder Public Law 480 provide two avenues of distributing surplus agricultural products abroad: f Outright donations...

...Freedom from Hunger committees in the developed nations accept contributions of money, assistance, counsel, and materials—such as seeds, tractors, and breeding stock-^to wage a global war of research and action on low production and poor nutrition...

...Under it, India will pay this country $1.3 billion in rupees, about eighty per cent of which will be made available to the Indian government for development projects...

...The rest of the family, including the father, a sugar cane-cutter who was seasonally unemployed in February, was eating the midday meal, caught up in handfuls from a flat pan on the floor...

...It may also be directed into payment of our obligations abroad, military construction and purchases, trade promotion and market development, or cultural exchange programs...

...Lying beside her on the hardened dirt, their heads in her lap, were two children, one and three years of age...

...In our own time, there is no doubt that our efforts to help our hungry brethren in foreign lands will win for us the friendship of both peoples and nations...

...Accordingly," concluded the Pope, "to destroy entirely or to waste goods necessary for the lives of men, runs counter to our obligations in justice and humanity...

...This program of distribution, unparalleled in world history, was launched with the passage, in that year, of the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act—more commonly known as Public Law 480...

...Under this law, the United States has acted unilaterally to scale down a major paradox of our time— hunger in the midst of plenty...

...Or it could mean more vigorous efforts to use our feed grains overseas in the production of protein foods such as poultry...

...These long-range multilateral objectives will supplement and broaden our own unilateral Food for Peace Program, which gives first priority to the relief of hunger and distress, while at the same time encouraging economic development programs based in part on an adequate food supply...

...AID administrator Fowler Hamilton, acting through his Office of Materials Resources, headed ty Herbert J. Waters, is responsible 6* Title II donations for school lunch programs, disaster relief, and food-for-wages projects...

...This means the recipient nation does not have to use its limited foreign exchange for food imports but can invest it in development programs...

...This increase is explained partially by President Kennedy's creation of a White House Food for Peace office which has focused attention on the diplomatic and humanitarian aspects of the program...

...So long as we produce more than we can use, we must do our utmost to manage the surplus wisely and humanely...

...The Agriculture Department and AID bear the operational responsibility for overseas distribution of food...

...Public Law 480 is divided into four sections, or "titles," which furnish legislative authority for the distribution programs...

...These two pacts, and a five-year delivery agreement with Venezuela under Title IV, have been hailed as praiseworthy movements in the direction of longer-term continuity of program...

...Their capacity to learn is dulled, and their life spans are drastically shortened...

...In one of the Brazilian villages on our Latin American itinerary, the infant mortality rate for the past two years was 100 per cent...

...U. S. Department of Agriculture experts are cooperating with private ingenuity to hunt out new sources of protein, in soy and cottonseed products, for example, and in bulgur wheat and other potential "new" foods...

...Reaching out to the world in this spirit will hasten the achievement of the ultimate goal of Food for Peace...

...They are held responsible for getting the food into the hands of the people for whom it is intended, and not allowing it to be diverted into the black market or the like...

...There were no schools, no adequate water supply, and no sanitary facilities...

...To do less would be to admit that our system does not measure up to its obligations...

...Their eyes were open, but there was no childish light in them...

...Imagine the crescendo of protest from taxpayers called upon to pay storage on those accumulations over and above the $1,400,000 they now pay daily to keep a roof over the multi-billion dollar stockpile of commodities owned by the government's Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC...

...Similar donations may go also to friendly peoples in distress without regard to the attitudes of their governments...

...Of all the wheat exported from the United States in 1961, sixty-five per cent was shipped under Food for Peace programs...

...These were all "soft" currency countries when they first purchased farm goods from the United States under Title I agreements...

...A young Brazilian economist accompanying our touring Food for Peace mission saw me staring at the young-old mother of seven...

...Mission to the Hungry by GEORGE McGOVERN Asad-eyed mother, her face bearing unmistakable signs of hunger and neglect, her body shapeless at the age of twenty-five, sat on the mud floor of a cramped, two-room thatched hut in a cluster of such dwellings near Recife, Brazil, a year ago...

...GEORGE McGOVERN is director of the Food for Peace program on special assignment with the White House...

...The United States finds itself to a considerable extent on the side of justice and humanity on this issue...

...The largest Title I transaction, a four-year delivery contract, was concluded with India in 1960...

...AID representatives have been alerted to the attractiveness of such proposals, since the agriculture committees in Congress look warmly upon the Title IV promise of dollar returns...

...This Title II grant is a direct outgrowth of our Food for Peace mission to that country in early 1961...

...We have donated one and one-half million metric tons of non-fat dry milk to UNICEF and to American voluntary relief agencies, such as CARE and church-sponsored groups, for distribution overseas to school children, disaster victims, and political refugees...

...A second sixth barely achieves minimum diet standards...

...Nine government agencies are involved in Food for Peace operations—chiefly the Departments of Agriculture and State, and the Agency for International Develop ment (AID)—but until last year there was no single guiding hand or focus for the program...

...Eleanor Roosevelt, and General Omar Bradley, to be trustees of a Freedom from Hunger Foundation, with former President Harry S. Truman as honorary chairman...

...A single ironic conclusion was inescapable: Man seemingly knows no limits to his marvelous technology, but he has as yet failed abysmally to solve the basic, age-old problem of hunger...

...This five-year U.N...

...The voluntary agencies, which have food programs operating in 106 countries, bear the cost of administration of the donated food...

...Eleven developing nations have taken advantage of food-for-wages programs under this section...

...Now their financial structures are so strengthened that they buy for dollars through regular channels of trade...

...Babies succumbed to diarrhea and fevers almost before they caught hold of life...

...Recently, they have shown increasing interest in the social and economic development type of program which operates under Title II, and we are pushing toward early acceptance of several of their proposals...

...The distribution programs, which possess undeniable attractions for hungry people abroad, also have built-in charms commending them to Capitol Hill...

...Agriculture must provide food for the people and the margin to start a process of capital formation...

...The latter note approvingly that the government has already paid for CCC-owned commodities through the price support system, and it makes more sense to use them overseas than to store them at home...

...The voluntary agencies have assumed a substantial share of our food program abroad, and are given every encouragement to expand and accelerate their programs...

...Only one-sixth of the world population—mostly that part living in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand— can be said to be well-fed...

...The program has been of great benefit not only to millions of hungry people overseas, but to our own American farmers...

...Under Title I, the United States sells surplus food and fiber to needy nations...

...Title III is a broad section of the law that permits donations of food to almost every type of charitable and non-profit institution or agency, here at home, and to voluntary agencies, such as CARE, UNICEF, Catholic Relief Services and the like, for distribution to needy people overseas...

...The 1954-61 dollar value of farm exports under the program amounted to twenty-seven per cent of this country's total farm exports, public and private...

...It may be necessary to hold our food production in check for a few years, but we can never afford to forget that the day will come when we shall need a farm plant producing to capacity...

...Pakistan was a signatory in 1961 on the second largest contract, also for four years...

...We accept the other government's own currency which, because it has little international market value, is not freely convertible into dollars...

...It provides for delivery of agricultural commodities to friendly nations for periods of one to ten years, with credit extended to as long as twenty years...

...AID is studying the feasibility of establishing cooperatives in Latin America for the conversion of feed grains into high protein chickens, eggs, hogs, and cattle...

...The nations that enjoy a sufficiency and abundance of everything may not overlook the plight of other nations whose citizens experience such domestic problems that they are all but overcome by poverty and hunger, and are not able to enjoy basic human rights...

...As I write this, I have on my desk a bi-weekly report to the President which, under famine relief alone, lists approval of shipment of 100,000 tons of corn to Egypt, 16,000 tons of cereals and 110 tons of edible oils to Somalia, and recommends granting a request for 30,000 tons of corn to Tanganyika...

...All of them have been spectacularly successful...

...Under Title II, donations may be made to friendly governments for relief of famine or other disaster, for child-feeding under projects like the school lunch program in a drought-striken area of Peru, or for relief of refugees, such as the Tibetans who fled to Nepal...

...Under these programs, the United States donates wheat or other grains, which are used to pay part of the wages of thousands of nationals working on local improvement projects such as roads, bridges, irrigation, schools, and clinics...