One in eight people in the United States struggles with hunger.
Struggles with poverty are getting harder in our dwindling economy. Americans are losing their jobs, their homes, and their ability to care for their families at an alarming rate. Feeding America secures food and provides it to food banks all over the country. They also advocate for the hungry and act to distribute food in times of natural disaster. If you have the means, please donate today. Use the link provided at the end, and Kraft will match your donation.
Food banks, soup kitchens, and emergency distribution centers deliver critical aid and save lives, but they can only serve as a stop-gap so long as our economic policies write Americans into abject poverty.
FDR's timeless words above were never more relevant than today.
A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
In 1971, Francis Moore Lappe published Diet for a Small Planet, where she advocated a bottom-up approach to solving root cause problems of world hunger. She pointed out that although we have the ability to produce enough food to feed every person on the planet, millions of people go hungry over the world each day. Sustainability was at the core of her ideas, and while she advocated strongly for eating a diet that minimized the impact on the planet, she saw that hungry people had a more diabolical enemy than problems with food production: the politics of food distribution. Moore Lappe observed that attempts to distribute food in a top down manner often failed. Countries that received famine relief commonly failed to feed their hungry. Sometimes the aid was hoarded, and sometimes it was left to rot. Maybe it was used for other purposes. It wasn't the lack of food but politics that caused the aid distribution to fail. Moore Lappe suggested that the problem of human hunger is not a supply crisis -- it is a democracy crisis.
Fast forward to today. The politics of food distribution are more complex, and the emerging global economy makes the business of food more top down then ever before. Our food supply, to a large degree, is in the hands of multinational agribusiness. Our soil is entrusted to the free market. Over the last few decades we've watched our farmlands become re-zoned for real estate, and our family farms crumble to be replaced by powerful companies -- corporations whose decisions are based on the "bottom line" -- businesses that produce and sell food any way that is most profitable.
An industrial meat factory cannot produce a pound of bacon or a pork chop cheaper than a family farmer without breaking the law.
-Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Crimes Against Nature.
While the American small farmers are not extinct, they are definitely endangered in this era of factory farming. Let me suggest that our local communities must be able to exert a significant measure of control over our farms and fields before we can address the root causes of hunger in America; to do this we must start from the bottom up and rebuild the small farms brick by brick. Agribusinesses will tend toward specialization and globalization -- practices that could leave us without adequate food in times of crisis. We must be able to depend on a domestic food supply. This first step toward change is necessary, but not sufficient to protect Americans from being hungry in the future, though. And even with the Obama administration in place, this change will be easier said than done. But it is a hunger issue, and it is security issue. We must take back control of our food.
Moore Lappe advocates for Living Democracy. Democracy must be more than what we do in a voting booth. It is determined by how we live, how we think, and what we do in this world daily. In her newest book, Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity, & Courage in a World Gone Mad, she focuses on questioning the assumptions we make about the obstacles we face in the world today. She suggests that we reframe reality to create the solutions that we want -- and she gives us practical ways to shake the fears and despair that keep us from tackling root causes of hunger, dangers to the environment, economic and social unfairness -- so we can create the change we want.
They say -- whoever the "they" are -- that as we age, we mellow. I don't think so. I'm getting less and less patient.
Why? Because I realize that humanity has no excuses anymore. In the span of my own lifetime, both historical evidence and breakthroughs in knowledge have wiped out all our excuses. We know how to end this needless suffering, and we have all the resources to do it. From sociology and anthropology to economics, from education and ecology to systems analysis...the evidence is in. We know what works.
"Soft" psychology as well as "hard" neuroscience also confirm that we humans come equipped with a moral compass -- with deep needs and sensibilities that make us yearn to end the suffering. Yet we deny these feelings every single day at huge cost to our society and to our world.
No physical obstacle is stopping us. Nothing. The barrier is in our heads. We are creating this world gone mad, not because we're compelled to by some deep flaws in our nature and not because Nature itself is stingy and unforgiving, but because of ideas we hold. Ideas?
Yes. This is one of the most startling discoveries -- awakenings -- of the last century: Human beings are in fact creatures of the mind. Our ideas about reality determine what we see, what we believe is possible, and therefore what we become. And we also now know that human beings can change our core, lifeshaping ideas, even our ideas of democracy, of power, of fear, and -- yes -- of evil itself.
As we do, we no longer have to settle for grasping at straws -- wild acts of protest, or tearful acts of charity, or any other short-term, feel-less-bad steps. We become open to the possibility of real change, and, when you think about it, how could we ever believe "the world" can change unless we experience ourselves changing?
--Francis Moore Lappe, in Getting a Grip
What can you do today?
***Please donate to Feeding America today. Even $1 will help.***
* If you do not have money but have time and desire, Feeding America can help you find ways to volunteer to help the hungry in your community. Note: there is a food bank locator tool in the margin along the right hand side of the page, in case you want to find a bank nearby.
* If you missed it, OrangeClouds115 wrote an excellent diary about Obama's shortlist for the Ag Department. There are links in the introduction -- one about Obama's proposed food/farming policy, another about USDA secretary, and a third about what she wants in an Ag secretary. Read them. The diary and the links are well worth your time. And if you haven't yet, go the change.gov and weigh in as she suggests. Note: She posted a related diary with clarification here today. Please check that one, as well.
* As much as possible, try to support your local farmer. If there are no local farmers left, then try to buy food produced by small business farms rather than by agribusiness. If you can buy locally and have the means, join a coop, or participate in community supported agriculture.
* noweasels and boatsie wrote excellent diaries today about how urgently Americans need help. If you haven't read them yet, please have a look. And if you do nothing else, please read and recommend the upcoming Feeding America diaries so that we can raise funds this weekend:
Saturday (ALL TIMES EASTERN)
8 p.m.: JellyBearDemMom
10 p.m.: srkp23
OVERNIGHT: Kula2316
Sunday (ALL TIMES EASTERN)
10 or 11 a.m.: blue jersey mom
2 p.m.: DeviousPie
5 p.m.: Timroff
8 p.m.: Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse
10 p.m.: blue jersey dad
Good news update: Feeding America's website has been busy today. If you have traffic problems on their site, keep trying and you'll be able to get that matching donation from Kraft. Thanks so much, Kossacks!
Please read and rec Feeding America diary #4 by JellyBearDemMom -- here.