Former President Bill Clinton has it right: “Food is not a commodity like others,” Clinton said addressing a high-level event at the UN marking Oct. 16′s World Food Day. “We should go back to a policy of maximum food self-sufficiency. It is crazy for us to think we can develop countries around the world without increasing their ability to feed themselves.”
That was a gratifying thing to read today in the Organic Consumers Organization “Organic Bytes.” Clinton underscored what this website and many other NGO’s and organizations I’ve learned from have been teaching, preaching and supporting for a long time: “While the international community is focused on turmoil in the global economy, I am extremely concerned that not enough is being done to help those who are suffering most: the poorest of the poor,” Clinton said.
Clinton seems to be catching up with what those on the ground have been saying for many years about what exacerbates the exploding levels of poverty and hunger: policy making and not problem solving by the World Bank, the International Monetary fund and others backed by the US; dropping subsidies to small farmers for fertilizer, improved seeds and other inputs; the refusal to allow more aid in cash to be spent where needed rather than enforcing aid in the form of grains; the expanding of ethanol production from corn, a food crop, and; the failure of the wealthy countries to live up to their promised $22 billion in emergency agricultural aid.
Why do I think Clinton is apparently more aware of these failures and even of his own? (In this same address he said “We all blew it including me as president.”) By being there! Clinton has visited several times over the past 10 years, speaking directly with the people most affected, getting out of a steel and glass tower filled with men in suits and walking along the dirt paths, alleyways and dusty farms of our neighbors in Africa, seeing where progress is occurring and what else needs to be done. When we begin to trust the vision of those who WORK and LIVE and RAISE families in a certain area to know what they require, not what we want for them, real change can take place. With Clinton’s influence, I’m hoping that the knowledge and compassion and skill that has been available through the many organizations you will learn about here, will finally be called to the table alongside the community leaders where they have worked. When all those actors blend together, the poor and the hungry will acquire a clear and just voice that rises above the usual din of ineffective policy babble.
President Clinton in Monrovia, Liberia August, 2008 (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images For The Clinton Foundation)
(See also: “Food First Policy Brief No.12: Ten Reasons Why the Rockefeller and the Bill and Melinda Gates’ Foundations’ Alliance for Another Green Revolution Will Not Solve theProblems of Poverty and Hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa,” October 2006: Eric Holt-Gimenez, Ph.D., Miguel A. Altieri, Ph.D., and Peter Rosset, Ph.D.)
[Update 11/17/08: And if you want to find all the issues about global food insecurity wrapped up into one blogpost (it's long but well worth the read if you've got a couple of hours) check out "The Road to the Horizon" blog, written by a man who's been there, done that, seen it all, and continues to hope and work for change. Thanks, Peter.]
[UPDATED: 11/28/08 - article by Mark Winne.
"The risk is that the multibillion-dollar system of food banking has become such a pervasive force in the anti-hunger world, and so tied to its donors and its volunteers, that it cannot step back and ask if this is the best way to end hunger, food insecurity and their root cause, poverty." You can catch more of Mark's wisdom from more than 25 years as a crusader and writer and activist at his website: www.markwinne.com]
