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Hunger in the News
[The following news stories are provided as a free service and for information purposes only. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Bread for the World/Bread for the World Institute. BFW/BFWI is not responsible for the accuracy of this information.]
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The Food On Our Tables
The flaws of U.S. agricultural policy
source: America Magazine
19 Jan 2009
By Bob Peace
Most of us are happy with the food available in our markets, which to a large extent offer products of United States agriculture. As taxpayers we help to support agriculture through direct payments, or crop subsidies, paid to farmers. Many indirect subsidies, like government-sponsored research, crop insurance and import quotas on crops like sugar, also benefit our farmers. Such subsidies, however, have an unintended social consequence; they allow American farmers to grow an abundant crop and to sell it at prices often below world food prices—an advantage for us, a disadvantage for others.
To see the effect of the policy on a neighboring nation, consider Mexico, where the main crop of family farmers is corn. Mexican farmers have no comparable subsidies, and without them they cannot compete with U.S. farmers whose corn is exported to Mexico. As a result, many Mexican farm laborers cannot find work in their home country. Many of these come to the United States looking for work. Studies show that poverty fuels migration.
Nationwide, direct payments to U.S. farmers in 2008 will total about $5 billion. In 2007, North Carolina farmers received some $66 million in direct subsidies, which placed the state 23rd among the 50 states. Not all farms and farmers receive direct payment subsidies; two-thirds of U.S. farmers do not grow subsidy program crops. And there is an income limit in the 2008 Farm Bill; a person or a legal entity, like a corporate farm, with an adjusted gross income over $750,000 averaged over the previous three years, is not eligible for a direct subsidy.
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The Advisors Obama Is Missing
source: Foreign Policy
14 Jan 2009
By Raymond C. Offenheiser
The incoming U.S. president has made some impressive appointments, but he needs to start backing his words about fighting poverty and disease around the world with deeds.
With the United States facing immense global challenges, President-elect Barack Obama has named foreign policy advisors that will bring deep experience, intellectual heft, and fresh thinking to the task of restoring America's global reputation and leadership. This group will be in the spotlight this week when the confirmation process begins for Secretary of State-designate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.N. Ambassador-designate Susan Rice.
Unfortunately, Obama's foreign policy A-team is missing a couple of pivotal players. Despite his public commitments to elevate and strengthen U.S. global development efforts -- those that alleviate poverty, fight disease, and create opportunity in developing nations while bolstering our security and prosperity at home -- as a critical component of his foreign policy, he has yet to name even one senior official to be put in charge of bringing these critical changes to life. These "players to be named later" could make the difference between success and failure in the Obama administration's ability to usher in a new era of U.S. foreign policy.
What is at stake? For one, America's ability to address this country's biggest foreign policy challenges. As Defense Secretary Gates and other leaders have highlighted over and over again, sustainable success in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Horn of Africa, and other sensitive places will depend on how well the new team integrates global development into its efforts. There are plenty of positive examples from America's past work supporting global development -- including the Green Revolution in agriculture and HIV/AIDS treatment programs in Africa -- that show how successful we can be at increasing stability and restoring hope for those who need it most.
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Africa: Obama, Africa, and Peace
source: All Africa
13 Jan 2009
John Prendergast and John Norris
13 January 2009
The Obama administration has an opportunity to fundamentally remake U.S. relations with Africa during its tenure, and a cornerstone of that effort needs to be a much greater emphasis on the most cost-effective element of our foreign policy tools: peacemaking. An investment in ending some of the world’s deadliest, most destructive, and costliest wars would yield great results in those countries and the positive repercussions from such engagement would rebound across the continent.
As the first president of the United States with immediate African roots, President Obama not only has an important reservoir of goodwill on the continent, he also has the ability to move beyond the tendentious “North-South” debate between developed and less developed countries that has made more transformational policies difficult to attain. Efforts by the dying generation of Africa’s strong men who believe they should rule for life, such as Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, to portray President Obama as a former colonial master will have little resonance in Africa or elsewhere. President Obama will represent a fresh start, but the problems facing Africa and how best to address them will be no less acute.
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Sec. Schafer: U.S. Agriculture Can Be Force for Peace
source: American Farm Bureau
13 Jan 2009
In what may be his last public speech before leaving office Jan. 20, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said one of the lessons he learned during his year in office is how interconnected the world is – and how agriculture can be a force for peace.
Speaking at the American Farm Bureau Federation’s 90th annual meeting, Schafer said that although America has long played the lead role in providing emergency food aid to the world’s hungry, it’s now time to take another step. The greatest challenge, Schafer said, is to feed the 70 million additional people who join the world’s population every year.
“We must help (other countries) put their agriculture on a more stable footing,” he said, adding that he “has no doubt” that improving agriculture across the globe “can bring peace to this world.”
During a news conference held just before his speech, Schafer discussed some of the issues USDA is coping with in the closing days of the Bush administration, including the controversy over the soybean checkoff program, the implementation of country-of-origin labeling, and biofuels.
USDA has asked the Office of the Inspector General to investigate allegations of mismanagement of checkoff funds, personnel issues within the National Soybean Checkoff Program and mismanagement in the USDA’s role in monitoring the checkoff program. The allegations are serious, Schafer said, and need a serious outside investigation, but he added that the situation “challenges us as to whether this is an effort to eliminate the soybean checkoff.”
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How Latin America Copes with Global Economic Slowdown
source: Christian Science Monitor
13 Jan 2009
By Tyler Bridges
CARACAS, Venezuela — The deteriorating global economy will end five boom years in Latin America in 2009, analysts now believe.
Latin American companies are shedding workers and having trouble getting loans to finance exports. Governments are likely to run budget deficits after producing surpluses, immigrants to the US and Europe are expected to send less money home and millions of people will be forced back into poverty, even as the strongest countries spend billions to lessen the pain.
“It will be a difficult year,” Alfredo Coutino, a senior economist for Latin America at Moody’s Economy.com, said Monday.
The good news is that most Latin American countries saved money, found new export markets and kept inflation low during the good years. This has left them better prepared for the downturn. Peru, Chile, Panama and Brazil seem best positioned to ride out the economic storm, analysts said. Countries led by free-spending populist leaders could face a particularly difficult 2009.
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Food Production Chaos Looms in Africa as Soil Quality Worsens
source: Bloomberg
13 Jan 2009
By Jeremy van Loon
African farmers and climate change are combining to damage soil at a rate that may plunge the continent, home to about 1 billion people, into chaos as food production declines. “The situation is very severe and soil fertility is declining rapidly,” Jeroen Huising, a scientist who studies soils at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, or CIAT, said today in an interview. “Many countries like Kenya already don’t have enough food to feed their population and soil degradation is worsening an already critical situation.”
Africa, where half the agricultural soil has lost nutrients necessary to grow plants, is hampered by a lack of information about soil conditions, Huising said. About 236 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, or one in three there, are chronically hungry, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
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Doctors Group Says Zimbabwe Health Crisis a Crime
source: Voice of America
13 Jan 2009
By Peta Thornycroft
The health crisis in Zimbabwe should be the investigated by the International Criminal Court, campaign group Physicians for Human Rights says. The physicians group also says that without a political solution, the health care system, water and sanitation should be taken over by the United Nations.
The death toll from Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic has climbed over 2,000, as an international doctors' group accuses the government of President Robert Mugabe of crimes against humanity. In a new 45-page report, the group says Zimbabwe's health crisis is a direct outcome of human rights violations by Mr. Mugabe's ZANU-PF party.
It calls on the U.N. Security Council to refer the crisis to the International Criminal Court, for investigation of crimes against humanity. At a news conference in Johannesburg, Frank Donaghue of the Physicians for Human Rights says that while the cholera epidemic is very serious, it is only a symptom of a bigger problem in Zimbabwe.
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In Foreign Policy, a New Trio at the Top
With Hearing Today, Clinton, Kerry and Obama Begin to Realign Their Roles
source: Washington Post
13 Jan 2009
By Anne E. Kornblut and Glenn Kessler
When Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) gavels the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to order today and welcomes Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) to her confirmation hearing as President-elect Barack Obama's nominee to be secretary of state, he will mark the ascendance of a new triumvirate dominating the foreign policy arena. The hearing will also call attention to a particularly awkward tangle of relationships.
Kerry, who first put Obama in the national spotlight by inviting him to give the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, endorsed Obama over Clinton early in the 2008 presidential primaries, much to the irritation of the Clinton campaign. But Obama chose his defeated nemesis for the top diplomatic position -- a job that Kerry openly sought with the backing of many prominent Obama supporters. Instead of joining the Obama Cabinet, Kerry became chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, with the goal of leading it back to its former prominence.
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Agriculture Secretary Pick to Push Food for Poor
source: AP
14 Jan 2009
By Mary Clare Jalonick
WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama's pick for secretary of agriculture says that if he is confirmed he will work to boost the economies of farm communities, promote nutritious foods and help poor families put meals on the table.
The man Obama wants running the Agriculture Department, former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, is scheduled to appear Wednesday for a Senate confirmation hearing. In testimony prepared for the hearing, Vilsack says the Agriculture Department faces "historic challenges," mostly brought on by economic woes.
If confirmed, Vilsack will oversee the nation's nutrition programs, including food stamps, a large part of the department's budget. Nutrition programs are facing increased need in recent months as the economy has stumbled.
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College Affordability: The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
source: Inside Higher Education
12 Jan 2009
By Anthony P. Carnevale
The honorable political pledge to “make college affordable” becomes a wolf in sheep’s clothing during a recession. And the wolf is at the door. This recession already promises dramatic cuts in state subsides for public colleges and will result in widely condemned tuition increases. Mandates to hold down rising tuitions will surely follow, wrapped in the mantle of greater college affordability and access, but ultimately resulting in less of both. The urge to encourage greater access and affordability by curbing tuitions misses the mark because rising tuition rates are the effects — not the causes — of the college funding problem.
In tough times like these, the tragic flaw in policies to “make college affordable” is that they tend to focus disproportionately on reducing tuition rates rather than increasing public investments. At best, the current focus on tuition brings cosmetic changes in college sticker prices and fleeting improvements in access. At worst, it is a self-defeating tactic that provides a temporary refuge from public frustration over access and affordability. But the public frustration eventually returns because suppressing tuition only conceals the deeper gap between public investment in — and public demand for — postsecondary education and training. If our postsecondary goals are individual access, choice, quality improvement and increased graduation rates, then suppressing public tuition rates is ultimately self-defeating. Unless the lost tuition revenues are replaced with new public subsidies, the net effect is disinvestment in all our progressive college goals, especially as they affect the vast majority of working families and the least advantaged students who concentrate in public institutions.
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Public Opinion Snapshot: The Public Supports a Major Effort to Fight Poverty
source: Center for American Progress
12 Jan 2009
By Ruy Teixeira
One might assume that taking action to help the poorest among us wouldn’t draw much support these days with so many Americans worried about their own economic situation. But that’s not the case. A Gerstein/Agne poll conducted right after the election showed overwhelming support for setting a national goal to cut poverty in half within 10 years—a goal laid out by the Center for American Progress’ Poverty Task Force in its report, “From Poverty to Prosperity: A National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half,” and now supported by the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Half in Ten campaign. Over three-quarters—76 percent—of respondents in the poll supported such a goal, while just 13 percent opposed it.
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When a Wealth of Food Options Dwindles to Two: Eat or Go Hungry
source: New York Times
11 Jan 2009
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
With specialty food stores and every kind of restaurant, New York is an eater’s paradise for the well-to-do. But as the economy slows, more of the city’s residents are struggling to pay for rent, utilities and other necessities without scrimping on food. Inexpensive foods are often calorie-dense but nutritionally deficient, and such a diet can contribute to health problems, including diabetes, which is increasing among the poor more than among the wealthy.
More than 1.2 million New Yorkers receive food stamps, a 23 percent increase in five years. And with food prices rising, more people, including working families and retirees, are turning to food banks and food pantries. According to the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, emergency food providers reported serving 28 percent more people in 2008 than in 2007. But according to the coalition, nearly 69 percent of food pantries and food banks in 2008 reported not having enough food to meet demand, up from 59 percent in 2007.
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Social Workers Embrace Goal to Help Clients Build Financial Safety Nets
Against the backdrop of the economic meltdown, a movement is building within the ranks of America's social workers to make their profession more adept at helping clients overcome financial woes.
source: Seattle Times
11 Jan 2009
By David Crary
NEW YORK — Against the backdrop of the economic meltdown, a movement is building within the ranks of America's social workers to make their profession more adept at helping clients overcome financial woes.
Since they emerged on the scene in the late 19th century, social workers traditionally have sought to improve the lot of the poor. But in an era of rampant foreclosures, credit-card debt, and ever-evolving scams that prey on the economically vulnerable, few social-work schools offer specialized financial training, leaving their students collectively unprepared.
Change is under way, however.
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Families Seeking Insurance For Kids
Downturn Forcing Parents to Get Aid
source: Washington Post
14 Jan 2008
By Chris L. Jenkins
Rising unemployment and the sinking economy are driving sharp increases in the number of Washington area families seeking state health insurance for their children, and more of these families are qualifying for coverage, records show.
The increases are particularly pronounced in the region's largest and wealthiest jurisdictions as employers cut benefits and eliminate jobs. In Fairfax County, for instance, requests for the state's insurance program for children, Family Access to Medical Insurance Security (FAMIS), were up 16 percent between November 2007 and November 2008. In Alexandria, caseloads increased 20 percent, and in Loudoun, they were up 16.5 percent.
Overall, caseloads in Northern Virginia shot up 18 percent during that period, from 19,299 to 22,692, compared with 7 percent for the rest of the state. In Maryland's Washington suburbs, caseloads for the state's insurance plan for children have increased about 4 percent, from about 45,000 to 47,000.
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HAITI: New Peasant Alliance Demands Action on Food Crisis
source: IPS
14 Jan 2009
By Charles Arthur*
Haiti's peasant farmers are organising and taking action to try and bring an end to the country's dependence on food imports, and to avert the prospect of looming famine.
In recent months, meetings and demonstrations held by peasant farmer groups and supported by a number of non-governmental organisations have been taking place across Haiti. The mobilisation is part of a fledgling political campaign to end the marginalisation of the rural population and to revamp the nation's neglected agricultural sector.
The new alliance is threatening to shake up the political scene in Haiti, and may even put up candidates for parliamentary elections scheduled for April. The movement flexed its political muscle on the national stage for the first time on Dec. 12 when thousands of peasant farmers descended on the capital, Port-au-Prince, for a demonstration calling on the government to intervene to help them revive national agricultural production.
Prospéry Raymond, the Haiti country representative of the British development NGO Christian Aid, told IPS that the demonstration was "a very good way to show the authorities that the peasant organisations must be taken seriously". Still, he doubts that the peasant alliance will put up candidates for forthcoming elections. "Although some peasant leaders have aspirations to elected office, many of the organisations are determined to preserve their autonomy and want to keep their distance from party politics," Raymond said.
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Why Global Warming Portends a Food Crisis
source: TIME
13 Jan 2009
By Bryan Walsh
It can be difficult in the middle of winter — especially if you live in the frigid Northeastern U.S., as I do — to remain convinced that global warming will be such a bad thing. Beyond the fact that people prefer warmth to cold, there's a reason the world's population is clustered in the Tropics and subtropics: warmer climates usually mean longer and richer growing seasons. So it's easy to imagine that on a warmer globe, the damage inflicted by more frequent and severe heat waves would be balanced by the agricultural benefits of warmer temperatures.
A comforting thought, except for one thing: it's not true. A study published in the Jan. 9 issue of Science shows that far from compensating for the damages associated with climate change (heavier and more frequent storms, increasing desertification, sea-level rise), hotter temperatures will seriously diminish the world's ability to feed itself. David Battisti, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, and Rosamond Naylor, director of the Program for Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University, analyzed data from 23 climate models and found a more than 90% chance that by the end of the century, average growing-season temperatures would be hotter than the most extreme levels recorded in the past. (See the top 10 green stories of 2008.)
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Yemen Under Threat From World Food Crisis
source: International Herald Tribune
11 Jan 2009
SAN'A, Yemen: The ancient civilization that thrived in the mountain valleys of Yemen was famed for cultivating bountiful crops with a system of cisterns and aqueducts, but today the country is threatened with a major food crisis that experts fear could destabilize the poor neighbor of the Middle East's oil and banking giants.
In remote villages, families are regularly skipping meals and spending over two-thirds of their income on food due to high international prices, forcing some to pull children out of school because they cannot afford it, according to a recent assessment by the World Food Program.
"All they've got in some villages is bread and tea and that's all they're feeding their children," said Adam Taylor-Awni, a consultant involved in the WFP study. And noting that a majority of Yemenis live in remote rural villages, he added: "There aren't mechanisms in place to get food to people."
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Kenyan Government Warns of Famine After Harvests Fail
source: International Herald Tribune
09 Jan 2009
NAIROBI, Kenya: Ten million people risk going hungry in Kenya after harvests failed because of drought, the government said Friday.
The government declared a national emergency and will lift the import duty on maize until the next major harvest, which will not be for a year in many areas.
The emergency declaration allows the government to divert money from development projects to food aid and to use disaster funds that are held in reserve, said government spokesman Alfred Mutua.
"It also opens ways for intervention from others," said Mutua. "Our disaster emergency fund is getting depleted."
Kenya's finances are under strain because of the cost of sheltering and reintegrating 600,000 people displaced by violence following Dec. 2007 elections. More than 1,000 people were killed and many farmers were too frightened to return home and plant crops.
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The Crisis and the Policy Response
source: Forbes
13 Jan 2009
Ben S. Bernanke
Full text of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke's Stamp Lecture given to the London School of Economics, London, England, January 13, 2009
For almost a year and a half the global financial system has been under extraordinary stress--stress that has now decisively spilled over to the global economy more broadly. The proximate cause of the crisis was the turn of the housing cycle in the United States and the associated rise in delinquencies on subprime mortgages, which imposed substantial losses on many financial institutions and shook investor confidence in credit markets. However, although the subprime debacle triggered the crisis, the developments in the U.S. mortgage market were only one aspect of a much larger and more encompassing credit boom whose impact transcended the mortgage market to affect many other forms of credit. Aspects of this broader credit boom included widespread declines in underwriting standards, breakdowns in lending oversight by investors and rating agencies, increased reliance on complex and opaque credit instruments that proved fragile under stress, and unusually low compensation for risk-taking.
The abrupt end of the credit boom has had widespread financial and economic ramifications. Financial institutions have seen their capital depleted by losses and writedowns and their balance sheets clogged by complex credit products and other illiquid assets of uncertain value. Rising credit risks and intense risk aversion have pushed credit spreads to unprecedented levels, and markets for securitized assets, except for mortgage securities with government guarantees, have shut down. Heightened systemic risks, falling asset values, and tightening credit have in turn taken a heavy toll on business and consumer confidence and precipitated a sharp slowing in global economic activity. The damage, in terms of lost output, lost jobs, and lost wealth, is already substantial.
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Global Outlook For 2009
source: Forbes
12 Jan 2009
Two words: more pain.
After a year of financial shock and sharp economic loss, 2009 is likely to be extremely difficult for the global economy, with investors, business leaders and policymakers struggling to find signs of recovery, according to Wharton faculty and academic partners around the world.
"It's all pretty negative," says Wharton finance professor Franklin Allen. "The economy is going into a recession and my own view is that it will be deep and quite long-lasting. There doesn't seem to be anything on the horizon that is a bright spot."
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