Reflecting on Hunger At Home And Abroad
While travelling last week, I picked up a book for some airplane reading titled Ending Hunger Now,
a book co-written by George McGovern, Bob Dole and Donald Messer.
McGovern and Dole, while on opposite sides of the political aisle in
many different ways have worked together for years to promote programs
to illeviate the scourge of chronic hunger domestically and
internationally.
In the
book, Dole and McGovern discuss the Millenium Development Goal of
cutting world hunger in half by the year 2015. They make the case
that the problems of hunger are not those limited by food production or
capacity – the problems are political in nature. (As we in Iowa
can see by driving past the mountains of corn piled next to elevators
all over the state.)
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported earlier this month that progress has been stalled.
22 November 2005, Rome – Hunger and malnutrition arekilling
nearly six million children each year – a figure that roughly equals
the entire pre-school population of a large country such as Japan, FAO
said in a new edition of its annual hunger report, The State of Food Insecurity in the World, published today.
Many of these children die from a handful of treatable infectious
diseases including diarrhoea, pneumonia, malaria and measles. They
would survive if their bodies and immune systems had not been weakened
by hunger and malnutrition.
In addition, the USDA released a report that states domestic hunger is on the rise.
Eighty-eight percent of American households were food secure throughout
the entire year in 2004, meaning that they had access, at all times, to
enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members. The
remaining households were food insecure at least some time during that
year. The prevalence of food insecurity rose from 11.2 percent of
households in 2003 to 11.9 percent in 2004 and the prevalence of food
insecurity with hunger rose from 3.5 percent to 3.9 percent.
Fighting hunger is one of those issues that is not “Republican”, “Democrat”, or even “American” – it is a Human issue.
Please
take time this Thanksgiving week to do a little bit to help fight
hunger at home and abroad through any one of many charities.
Bread For The World
is an organization that works to keep the focus on fighting
chronic hunger through political activism, relief and research.
They have also joined with other charities to create the One Campaign to fight global hunger and poverty.
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