One in seven people goes hungry each day

By Suzia van Swol, University of New Mexico-Talk Radio News Service

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on “Alleviating Global Hunger: Challenges and Opportunities for U.S. Leadership, Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) said, “It’s quite astounding that in 2009, there are over 850 million hungry people in the world. One in seven people on earth goes hungry every day, and when we talk about going hungry every day, we are talking about real pain and anguish and sufferingthat goes with that hunger.” Kerry went on to explain that “While other threats force themselves into the front burner and command our attention, hunger and malnutrition remain the number one risk to health world wide.”

The first millennium development goal is to cut the proportion of people in the developing world who suffer from hunger in half by 2015. Kerry said that, “Last year’s food riots were a worrisome sign of how a crisis in food security can quickly become a national security issue. The global financial crisis also poses an urgent and an immediate threat. The World Bank estimates that as a result of this crisis, an additional 65 million people will fall below the $2 per day poverty line this year, and an additional 53 million will fall below the absolute poverty level of $1.25 per day.” Kerry went on to say that if food prices spike in the next month, we risk a double calamity in which farmers in poor countries can’t afford to plant and buyers can’t afford to purchase food.

Kerry said that, “We can’t tackle hunger alone. We have to engage a multi-lateral approach, we have to work in coordination with international institutions, including the world food program, international aid organizations, and the World Bank.” He also said that we must demonstrate our commitment by fully funding the President’s international affairs budget and initiating a foreign aid reform process.

Catherine Bertini, executive director of the World Food Program, said that “If we are to be leaders in this area, then we can see many benefits for the United States. We can see national security benefits because we see that hunger and poverty have become political flash points; that many countries have had food riots, and that those have helped unseat at least two governments in this world in the last year.” She went on to explain that it is a moral responsibility for Americans to help our sisters and brothers from around the world who are hungry and that it will restore American standing and leadership in the world.

Daniel Glickman, former United States Secretary of Agriculture, stated that “By acting decisively and in our own national interest, our country can play a central role in saving millions if not tens of millions of lives in the poorest nations of the world, as we did during the Green Revolution.” Glickman used an analogy from the movie Schindler’s list and stating that, “If you save one life, you save the entire world.” He went on to state that there is a prescription to make people self reliant so that they can become productive citizens and get themselves out of poverty and out of malnutrition.

Ranking member Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Senator Robert Casey (D-Pa.) have introduced the Global Food Security Act of 2009, which aims to serve as a practical starting point for improving United States and global efforts that food security should play a much larger role in our national security strategy. Lugar said that, “Overcoming hunger should be one of the starting points for United States foreign policy.”