New Crisis
The Global Hunger
H o w A merica can b e a p art o f the sol u tion
Konyayeva
b y A mbassador T on y Hall wit h J y l Hall S M I T H
In 1980 I visited Ethiopia as a US congressman and had my heart broken. In a little town two hours north of Addis Ababa, I saw 25 children die in a matter of minutes from hunger. I was not prepared for the sight and smell of death. Since that time I’ve travelled to 125 nations as chairman of the House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Hunger, then chairman of the Hunger Caucus, as well as US ambassador to the UN Food and Agriculture agencies in Rome. I had the chance to meet with Mother Teresa on a few occasions as a congressman. The first time was in Calcutta, where she took me downtown to see some of the people she was working with.The poverty was staggering, overwhelming. “How can one person make a difference with so many suffering people?” I asked her. She said, “Do the thing that is in front of you.” I soon realized I had to be as concerned about local issues as international ones. In fact, there was hunger right in our backyard. I began to learn that there were up to 33 million food-insecure individuals in our own country — a number that threatens to continue to rise drastically. In Dayton, Ohio, where I live, we started a gleaning program. Gleaning is going over a field or area that has just been harvested and gathering by hand any usable parts of the crop that remain. There are several biblical references to gleaning, including this passage from Leviticus: “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have
fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the Lord your God” (19:9-10). A number of the produce contributors in Dayton actually gave their “first fruits”— that is, they selected a portion of their crop for donation prior to the harvest. This is done as a way to give back to the community. We also staged a 40-hour fast in Dayton that raised over $300,000 for local food banks and for senior citizens in need. Nearly 5,000 volunteers took part in this and other activities, as the issue of hunger at home became known. The Scriptures say in Matthew 9 that the “harvest is plentiful but the workers are few” and that we should pray for workers.Workers are needed at both the private and the government level in order to turn the tide of the growing hunger crisis. Individuals have the opportunity to respond both in local scenarios, like food banks, as well as by leveraging their citizenship in order to encourage the government to respond globally. A government — spurred on by individuals — can turn this tide Since my trip to Ethiopia 29 years ago, the number of people who are hungry in the world has tripled. Corn, wheat, and rice are in severe shortage all over the world, and the death rate is rising. The current crisis is unlike any food emergency the world has faced in the past. It is caused by a web of interconnected forces involving energy costs, underinvestment in agriculture production, global production and trading systems
PRISM 2009
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