A “Unity of Purpose” to fight global hunger

Feb 12th, 2010 12:15 PM UTC
By Chris Scott

On the Global Food for Thought blog, Roger Thurow has a column calling for a renewed energy in the fight against global hunger. The whole piece is worth a read, excerpt below:

The Global Food Security Act, which Sen. Lugar has co-authored with Senator Robert Casey, attempts to forge a unity of purpose, particularly between Congress and the White House, over ending chronic hunger in the world by reversing decades of neglect of agriculture development. It is a neglect that was prophesied by Borlaug in 1970 when he warned that the world mustn’t lose its unity of purpose in carrying the Green Revolution beyond Asia to Africa and other hungry parts of the world:

“Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of the famine, as he has so often done in the past. We will be guilty of criminal negligence, without extenuation, if we permit future famines. Humanity cannot tolerate that guilt.”

Certainly we have reached that point; the neglect can no longer be tolerated. Making agriculture development a top priority of governments around the world has become a moral imperative with more than one billion people now going to bed hungry every night. And it is a security imperative as population growth combined with rising prosperity and greater demand for food in countries once plagued by famine, like China and India, is driving projections that the world will need to double food production by 2050.

The food crisis of 2008, when rising prices and dwindling surpluses triggered rioting in dozens of countries, was “a wakeup call for the development community, for international donors and for policy makers worldwide,” Lugar reminded his audience.

We can see the unity of purpose emerging on various fronts. Business leaders, humanitarian agencies, international lenders and philanthropists are embracing the need to create the conditions for the small farmers of the developing world, particularly in Africa, to be as productive as possible so they can feed their families and their countries […}

TAGS: hunger