Cross posted on La Vida Locavore
So, how many people know that October 16th is World Food Day (WFD) and how many people know what WFD is and how many people care?
I'm guessing not many could answer yes to any of the above questions. WFD is observed on October 16th, the day the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations was founded in 1945. WFD is observed in hopes of raising awareness of the issues that cause poverty and hunger. "World Food Security: The Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy", has been chosen as this years theme. Thats a timely theme, and overall, WFD is a good idea, but I'm guessing more people are probably aware of Super Bowl Sunday than WFD. Which one is more important?.
What a sad commentary. First of all because we have to observe a day to think about the causes of poverty and hunger, I would much prefer a day to celebrate the anniversary of the end of poverty and hunger. That could be a joint celebration with the end of greed, wouldn't that be nice.
While Bill Maher will tell you that religion is the cause of more harm than good (I'd say that depends on who is doing the religious stuff and in what spirit are they doing it), my vote for more harm than good goes with greed. A line from the movie Wall Street "Greed is Good" was a pretty typical sentiment from what I remember of the 80's. Greed is not good, as noted in David Michael Green's Oct. 11 article on Common Dreams.
While there are many causes cited for the current food crisis and the constant and growing level of worldwide poverty I think greed is the cause and has been ever since our first ancestors started whacking each other on the head with clubs or bones (i.e. 2001 a Space Odyssey). True, global warming and the resulting erratic weather is certainly playing a role, but what is the cause of global warming? Greenhouse gases, the industrial revolution, fossil fuels. We wanted less manual labor, more luxuries and I can't argue with that, but as the individual got more, the ownership society got a lot more.
In recent weeks we have seen the result of that greed, the Wall Street free-fall, banks caught with their pants down so to speak. And who is to save them? Of course, the tax payers, many of whom are facing loss of their jobs because greed shipped our economy overseas. Here in Wisconsin we just learned that the Janesville GM plant is closing on December 23, happy Christmas!
Multi-national corporations pretty much own the world, they control industry and food and everything else. Oil is on the decline and we need energy, so lets have farmers grow it, screw the traditional indigenous food crops,--- there's your food crisis. Less food produced putting the prices out of reach of the poor. There is still plenty of food out there, but it is expensive due to speculation, weather, high energy costs, etc. but in the end, it's greed.
So, the theme of WFD 2008, Bioenergy, forget it, Bioenergy is not the answer farmers can produce food efficiently, not energy .
In the end we all need to think about greed, that of Wall Street and the corporate world who see bottom line profits as the only goal. We need to think about our own greed as well. We all want cheap food, but do ever think about the price of cheap food? If we can have our food grown by farmers in developing countries at the expense of their own food sovereignty, sure, we will have cheap food, but they won't have food at all. If, in the age of peak oil, we also want the world to grow energy crops for us, we will further impoverish and starve them. Its a vicious cycle, one that the western world has imposed on the rest of the world for generations. It was always something we wanted from them on the cheap, slaves, spices, gold, timber, oil and on it goes. It is greed, it is human nature.
Those that sought to distance themselves from greed and the worst aspects of human nature. Gandhi. Christ, the Dalai Lama an others, all were marginalized, ridiculed, killed. Rejecting greed is a dangerous business, not for the feint of heart.
On World Food Day this Thursday, lets think about greed and how our need for cheap food has helped make poverty and hunger a global reality. Not directly, perhaps, but, by supporting the corporate greed that lives on globalization and exploitation of the resources of the developing world we are all at fault for making WFD an observance of hunger rather than a celebration of equality, diversity, culture and fairness.