I've got a pile of emails in my box about the "world food crisis." I've got another pile about the stimulus package. And I've got a great quote from a friend, jgoodman
"I can understand someone from Iowa promoting corn and soy, but we are not feeding the world, we are feeding animals and soft drink companies."
How does one make sense of it all?
Hunger 101
There's a myth in this country (and the world) that hunger comes from growing or producing too little food. That's not true. We've got enough for everyone and then some. We've got enough to make everyone obese (and hell - about a third of us ARE obese, and another third are overweight).
Hunger happens because we'd rather throw food away or feed it to animals or make plastic or fuel out of it than give it to people who can't pay for it. And then when we DO give it to people who can't pay for it, we don't want to be too generous. They don't get organic, locally grown whole foods. They get crap. Our justification? Well, it's better than starving.
In other words - anyone who tells you we need to produce more corn and soy is full of it. We're doing a fine job producing enough food to feed ourselves and the world. We're doing a shitty job distributing it is all.
Here's a bit more about hunger if you're interested. Otherwise, moving on...
The World Food Crisis
The Guardian sums it up pretty well:
The basic problem now is not even one of absolute shortage so much as the inability to pay for food, and this problem will get worse for many developing countries and their poorer citizens.
The article goes on to attribute this crisis to 3 reasons:
- Lack of investment in agriculture
- Low wages
- Concentration of agribusiness firms
The article may be about the "third world" but these same 3 factors apply to the U.S. too. Furthermore, identifying 3 problems also gives us 3 no-brainer solutions: invest in agriculture, increase wages, and break up the enormous anti-competitive agribiz companies. Re: the latter - we've already even got the right law on the books - the Packers & Stockyards Act. We just have to enforce it.
(For example, the four largest beefpackers went from owning over 80% of the market to over 90% of the market in the past year due to about 2 mergers... JBS merged with Swift, and then with Smithfield, and they tried to buy National Beef as well but the Bush admin actually blocked that one. Had they done that, then only 3 companies would have controlled over 90% of the beef market.)
From the Jan 9 National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition newsletter, here's a blurb about the state of hunger in the U.S. right now:
By the beginning of this fiscal year, the number of participants in the food stamp program has increased by 4 million, to 31 million, with further increases on the horizon as unemployment continues to rise. On Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office released new cost projections for government programs, and predicted the food stamp program would rise from $39 billion last year to an even $50 billion this year, a 27 percent increase.
So About That Stimulus...
I'm partial to the Campaign for America's Future plan for the stimulus, which I wrote up here. The long story short as I read it is: we need jobs and living wages. According to Thom Hartmann and his economic guru Ravi Batra, historically wages (demand) always tracked productivity (supply). In recent years wages did not increase as productivity did. We made up the difference by buying things on debt. Any wonder why we have a problem?
From my diary, Campaign for America's Future calls for:
The elements that Campaign for America's Future calls for are:
- Government investment in public education
- Government investment in R&D of new technology
- Updating our nation's infrastructure
- Raising the minimum wage
- "Reviving" the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively (after decades of anti-union policy)
- Access to comprehensive and affordable health care for all Americans (yes!!!)
- A progressive tax system that can pay for the things the American public needs its government to provide.
- "To place the financial system in its proper role as servant to the real economy" (I like this)
- Reducing trade imbalances and ensuring that global trade does not create a race to the bottom that hurts workers
Using the Stimulus to Alleviate Hunger
I wrote up a diary about helping the hungry with the stimulus a few days ago. At the time, it could be summed up as: several interest groups are asking for money for a number of government nutrition programs, and it looks like they will get at least something (if not exactly what they are asking for). Since then, I got an email with new information from the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
The stimulus package started in the House, and it's already gone through appropriations. The House bill includes money that will double the money for the Local Food Enterprise Guaranteed Loan Program... I'm not terriby certain what that is but NSAC's comment is that it is "an important opportunity for rebuilding local and regional food system infrastructure."
In the appropriations committee, NSAC hoped that they would amend the bill to give money to WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) but they did not. That's the bad news. The good news is that they DID add $150 million to help re-stock food bank shelves (thank you Rep. Rosa DeLauro!).
About WIC - unlike food stamps (now known as SNAP), WIC is NOT an entitlement. For food stamps, the government will spend however much money is required to give out the benefits Americans qualify for. For WIC, there's a budget and when the money runs out, it's gone. Obviously, in a time of increased need, the money's gonna run out faster and either we need to spend more or some people who qualify won't be helped.
So now the bill goes off to the Senate. Here's what NSAC had to say:
We continue to hold out hope that three issues ignored in the massive House bill - funding for the WIC shortfall, stimulus funding for the Value-Added Producers Program and Rural Microentpreneur Assistance Program, and emergency funding for Farm Service Agency direct and guaranteed loans - will be included in whole or in part in the Senate bill.
Some leading anti-hunger and school food groups are pressing the Senate to put major funding into school dinner programs (for aftercare programs) and they remain silent or nearly silent on WIC funding. From their internal strategic standpoint, they assume the shortfall for WIC will be made up in the regular FY 2009 agricultural appropriations bill and that if the offset for that extra money is cuts to farm bill programs for conservation, specialty crops, organic, beginning farmers, renewable energy and the like, that is our problem, not their problem. Broad progressive public interest alliances on food, farm, hunger, rural development, and conservation issues, once upon a time alive and well, appear to remain dormant. [emphasis mine]
Both House and Senate Democratic leaders continue to say they will get the bill finished and on the President's desk before leaving town for the President's Week recess in February.
All I want to say here is that I HATE the short-sightedness of interest groups that are willing to push for their single issue at the expense of the overall progressive cause.
Action
This week is a good time to email your Senators about this. Here's what to ask for in the stimulus bill:
- Funding for WIC
- Funding for the Value-Added Producers Grants program
- Funding for the Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program
(The latter 2 stimulate jobs in rural areas... that makes them a natural fit to fund in the stimulus package)