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A world hungers for solution to food shortage

22 Nov 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The reading from the Book of Daniel this Sunday describes a vision of "one like a Son of man." United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened a worldwide "Hunger Summit" on Monday in Rome by calling for a "single global vision" to address the plight of the world's estimated 1 billion hungry people. Aid groups, however, are looking for actions, not words. The absence of many world leaders undermined the summit from the start, and its final declaration showed little progress was made in the fight against hunger, said critics. U.N. officials put on a brave face throughout the three-day meeting, saying it had won broad support for the need to focus on longer-term agricultural development--rather than emergency aid--to help poor countries feed themselves. "It's a half-full, half-empty glass," said Jacques Diouf, director general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), who had called the summit to keep attention high on the plight of the more than 1 billion people going hungry. "We made some progress to reverse the decline in agricultural investments . . . but it did not go as far as FAO would have wished to see," he told the final news conference. "It's a big disappointment that the leaders from the biggest and richest countries did not come," said Gawain Kripke of the aid agency Oxfam. "Without them it's hard to imagine how the world will attack these challenges of hunger and increasing agricultural productivity," he said, adding that the summit had thrown only "crumbs" to those who do not have enough to eat. The FAO had hoped the meeting would yield firm promises to boost farm aid to $44 billion a year, reversing nearly 30 years of neglect. Diouf also wanted leaders to commit to eradicating malnutrition by 2025. But the summit declaration merely pledged to eliminate hunger "at the earliest possible date" and set no targets nor a timeframe for more investments in agricultural development. Hunger is local as well as global. A hard-hitting report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) this week said that more than one in seven American households struggled to put enough food on the table in 2008, the highest rate since the USDA began tracking food security levels in 1995. That's about 49 million people, or 14.6 percent of U.S. households. The numbers are a significant increase from 2007 when 11.1 percent of U.S. households suffered from what USDA classifies as "food insecurity"--not having enough food for an active, healthy lifestyle. The report also showed an increasing number of children in the U.S. are suffering. In 2008 16.7 million children were classified as not having enough food, 4.3 million more than in 2007. "What should really shock us is that almost one in four children in our country lives on the brink of hunger," said David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. Source: Articles by Silvia Aloisi and Svetlana Kovalyova for Reuters, Joe Kapua for Voice of America News, Gina Doggett for Agence France Press, and Henry C. Jackson for the Associated Press

Children hunger summit rome development un food and agriculture organization agriculture gawain kripke us department of agriculture usda food insecurity david beckmann jacques diouf fao united states united nations ban ki-moon Hunger world summit on food security

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Climate change bugs crops

08 Sep 2013 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The psalmist’s prayer this Sunday, “Prosper the work of our hands for us!" is also the plea of many a farmer each year. But climate change, apparently, is getting in the way. A new study suggests it is helping pests and diseases that attack crops to spread around the world.Researchers from the Universities of Exeter and Oxford have found crop pests are moving at an average of two miles a year. They were heading towards the north and south poles, the team said, and were getting established in areas that were once too cold for them to live in. All signs point to global warming as the culprit, said the researchers.Currently it is estimated that between 10 percent and 16 percent of the world's crops are lost to disease outbreaks. The researchers warn that rising global temperatures could make the problem worse.Said Dr. Dan Bebber, the lead author of the study from the University of Exeter: "Global food security is one of the major challenges we are going to face over the next few decades. We really don't want to be losing any more of our crops than is absolutely necessary to pests and pathogens."Homily hint: Food security—knowing where the next meal is coming from—is something most of us in developed countries take for granted. Not so for much of the world’s population. By supporting moves to slow global warming we can contribute to the development of a safer, more stable food supply so that one day all can eat securely. Source: An article by Rebecca Morelle for BBC World Service

global warming climate change crops university of oxford pests dan bebber university of exeter food security

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When I was hungry?

26 Jun 2016 - Preaching the News for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

The psalmist offers a blessing for the counsel of the Lord, confident that “You will show me the path to life.” Meanwhile, in the second reading, we are reminded of the supreme law, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” and warned that, “if you go on biting and devouring one another, beware that you are not consumed by one another.” Finally, Jesus makes it clear in this Sunday’s gospel that he is not interested in retribution—and that neither should his followers be. Yet, based on the priority given to arms sales compared to food aid around the world, Pope Francis warned we have our priorities all wrong. Pope Francis told workers and diplomats Monday at the U.N. agency that delivers food to crisis areas it is "a strange paradox" that food often cannot get through to those suffering due to war but weapons can. Francis' visit to the World Food Program (WFP) was the first by a pope to the Rome-based agency that provides emergency food aid for 80 million people in some 80 countries in the world. The pope has repeatedly drawn attention to global indifference toward refugees, the poor, and the hungry, and has made food security one of the cornerstones of his papacy, previously visiting WFP's sister organization, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Francis said that while aid is often obstructed, weapons are trafficked freely. "As a result, wars are fed, not persons. In some cases hunger itself is used as a weapon of war," he said. "The death count multiplies because the number of people dying of hunger and thirst is added to that of battlefield casualties and the civilian victims of conflicts and attacks. We are fully aware of this, yet we allow our conscience to be anesthetized. We become desensitized." “It makes no difference where arms come from; they circulate with brazen and virtually absolute freedom in many parts of the world," Pope Francis told the WFP. “As a result, wars are fed, not persons." The arms trade was a special focus of the pontiff’s diagnosis. Weapons, he said, “have gained unprecedented importance,” sidelining other ways of resolving the "present instability of the world situation. . . . Whereas forms of aid and development projects are obstructed by . . . incomprehensible political decisions, skewed ideological visions, and impenetrable customs barriers, weaponry is not,” Francis said. Lessons drawn from the readings This Sunday’s second reading reminds us that “For freedom Christ set us free . . . For you were called for freedom, brothers and sisters.” People who lack something as basic as food are not free, and when some of us are not free, none of us is truly free, at least not in the Christian vision of one body. And if we take seriously the mandate to love our neighbor as ourselves, our task is clear. We must make food aid a higher priority than the weapons trade. Final thought in light of the news Pope Francis is calling our leaders to a radical reordering of priorities. “National security” has been the watchword used by governments worldwide to justify spending vast amounts buying, selling, and developing the latest in weaponry—machines designed, lest we forget, to kill and control. What would a world without weaponry look like? Probably a lot like a world without hunger. Your neighbor is hungry—how will you respond?

Hunger Pope Francis arms sales food aid weapons food security

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Poverty and hunger loom in global warming’s wake

23 Oct 2016 - Preaching the News for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

“The Lord hears the cry of the poor” is the psalmist’s plaintive and memorable refrain this Sunday. The question is will we here on earth hear their cry in time to drastically slow the pace of global warming? If not, up to 122 million more people worldwide could be living in extreme poverty by 2030 as a result of climate change and its impacts on small-scale farmers’ incomes, a major UN report warned on Monday. Climate change is a "major and growing threat to global food security,” said the report, warning that it could increase the global population living in extreme poverty dramatically, with farming communities in sub-Saharan Africa among the hardest hit. The 2016 State of Food and Agriculture report, published by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), calls for “deep transformations in agriculture and food systems” and for the world’s half-billion small-scale farms to receive particular support. The report warns that without “widespread adoption of sustainable land, water, fisheries and forestry practices, global poverty cannot be eradicated.” It adds that action must also be taken to reduce farming’s own contributions to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Because a majority of the world's poorest citizens are sustenance farmers and herders, climate change and its agricultural consequences pose a unique threat to the livelihoods of some of the most vulnerable populations. The majority of the world's small-scale farmers are found in rural regions of the developing world. Some of these regions will be especially susceptible to heat waves, droughts, and rising sea levels. “In some particularly vulnerable places, such as small islands or in areas affected by large-scale extreme weather and climate events, the impact could be catastrophic,” the report's authors point out. “There is no doubt climate change affects food security,” FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said in a news release. “What climate change does is to bring back uncertainties from the time we were all hunter gatherers. We cannot assure any more that we will have the harvest we have planted.” Higher temperatures and more extreme weather events will affect the ability of small-scale farmers to provide for their families. But climate change won't just threaten the world's poor. It will also affect the ability of all types of farmers to grow food for the rest of the world. A more volatile climate will result in unpredictable agricultural yields. “Everybody is paying for that, not only those suffering from droughts,” Graziano da Silva added. October 14 was World Food Day, and this year’s theme was “Climate is changing, food and agriculture must too.” Events held that day at the Rome headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations focused on the need for countries to address food and agriculture in their climate action plans and take action to strengthen the resilience of smallholder farmers to guarantee food security. World Food Day has been held annually since 1945. Lessons drawn from the readings “The prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds; it does not rest till it reaches its goal, nor will it withdraw till the Most High responds,” the first reading assures us. We here on earth also have to respond to the cry of the most vulnerable among us. We can start by pressuring our political leaders to take concrete, significant steps to curb global warming, as well as examining our own lifestyles to see where we can be more “carbon neutral” and eco-friendly. The personal is the political! Final thought in light of the news Though the potential impact of climate change paints a bleak picture, present day progress in tackling extreme poverty worldwide is more encouraging. In fact, the number of people living in extreme poverty during the past decade continued to fall, despite the 2008-09 financial crisis and slowing global economic growth, according to a World Bank study released Sunday. In the report, “Poverty and Shared Prosperity,” the World Bank says the progress proves that eliminating extreme poverty is an achievable goal. The study found that in 2013, fewer than 800 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day. That's less than 11 percent of the global population. As recently as 1990, about 35 percent of all people lived in such extreme poverty. That means about 1.1 billion people rose out of extreme poverty in the past quarter century. So there is hope. But we must act now on climate change to continue moving in the right direction.

food security climate change global warming poverty small scale farmers sustenance farming world food day

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