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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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Stamp out hunger?

10 Jan 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

"Like a shepherd" God "feeds his flock," the first reading option from Isaiah 40 says. For a growing number of people in the United States, food stamps and little else serve a similar purpose. According to an analysis done by the New York Times, about 6 million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income. The number of people who describe themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash assistance—no welfare, unemployment insurance, pensions, child support, or disability pay—was rising before the recession as tougher welfare laws made it harder for poor people to get cash aid, but it has soared over 50 percent the past two years. About one in 50 Americans now lives in a household with a reported income that consists of nothing but a food-stamp card. "The food-stamp program is being asked to do too much," said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, a Washington advocacy group. "People need income support." Even with food stamps, 14.6 percent of American households—49 million people—reported feeling "food insecure" at some point during 2008, according to a recent USDA study. "49 percent of all U.S. children will be in a household that uses food stamps at some point during their childhood," said Mark R. Rank, poverty expert at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. "Food stamp use is a clear sign of poverty and food insecurity, two of the most detrimental economic conditions affecting a child's health." Source: Articles by Jason Deparle and Robert M. Begeloff for the New York Times, Sandy Stonesifer for Slate.com, Jessica Martin for the Washington University in St. Louis News & Information Service, Judy Keen for USA TODAY, and Karen E. Cunnyngham, Laura Caster, and Allen L. Schirm for Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.

Children poverty food insecurity food stamps james weill food research and action center mark r rank

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Hungering for a solution to food insecurity

11 Nov 2012 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Hunger, thirst, and food shortages are upmost on the minds of the prophet Elijah and the widow he meets in the struggling town of Zarephath in this Sunday’s first reading. Much of southern Africa shares that concern these days, currently facing food shortages that have led to a sharp rise in food insecurity in the region.Lesotho, Malawi, and Zimbabwe are some of the countries where food insecurity is particularly high, according to a report from Food World News. Overall, more than 5.5 million people in the region have been affected."Southern Africa is facing a silent food-insecurity emergency," said Catherine Bragg, United Nations Deputy Humanitarian Chief, who visited Botswana, South Africa, and Zimbabwe recently. Bragg was in the region on a five-day visit to review the food situation to work with the governments there to come up with a feasible solution."In Lesotho, about a third of the population does not have enough food to eat or sell. In Zimbabwe, 1.6 million people are expected to be food insecure, and many families are selling their own livestock to cope with this dire situation," she said.The uptick in food insecurity is attributed to floods and droughts in key food-growing regions in Southern Africa. Moreover, while South Africa has enough to export to its neighbors, the fact that it grows genetically modified food crops makes its food exports unwelcome in several African countries. High prices of food commodities in the global market have also led to a drop in food imports.The United Nations estimates that by 2050 at least 77 million more people will be going hungry than are doing so today. Part of the problem is the dominance of agriculture for export—"cash crops"—that take away from people the richest yielding agricultural land in many parts of the world. The U.N. has urged nations to cooperate to balance market forces with the basic human need for food. Source: An article by Sharon Robinson for Food World News

zimbabwe cash crops genetically modified food food exports catherine bragg malawi lesotho southern africa food shortages food insecurity south africa food world news

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Homily stories

30 Oct 2011 - Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

One day it dawned on me that my eighth-grade teacher was a phony. He was a decent person, I suppose, but he was young and insecure in his first year of teaching. His insecurity led him to try to act tough, but he didn't have the courage to stand up to the wilder kids in the class (and there were some wild kids in our class!). Rather, he would try to exercise control over the kids who were likely to acquiesce and not really cause him problems. One day when his frustrations were mounting and his control of the class was ebbing, he picked on one girl who was meek and even fearful in class. Why? She happened to laugh at something some of the wilder guys in our class were doing. He knew he could control her and appear that he was in control of the class. I came home and complained about it at dinner to my parents. And I learned a lesson, perhaps the most important one in eighth grade. Dad said, "Do what he tells you but not what he does." The teacher was trying to run a decent class, and so it was right that I try to cooperate and also to learn whatever I could from him--even if the lesson was how not to treat others simply when I was afraid.

Authors Tom McGrath

insecurity Courage teachers

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