We must "bend the arc of history toward nourishment and dignity for all," said Mashal Husain, president of the World Food Prize Foundation, because "hunger is not inevitable." Husain was in New York City this morning as part of a delegation presenting the annual World Food Prize to this year's laureate.
Let's face it. There is plenty of food in the world to feed everyone. Hunger has not been a supply problem in the modern era. It's always been a question of distribution, economics, and politics. Food insecurity is especially acute these days, however, because of wars of choice, climate change, and the politics of brutality inflicted on people, in part, by a cabal of authoritarians momentarily in power.
Humankind has never been very good at long-term, systemic thinking. That is one among many reasons why some people refuse to understand the very obvious and scientifically proven causal relationships that lead from climate change to hunger and famine to migration to otherization and victimization and, ultimately to war. "This link is as old as humanity itself," Sharon Burke of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center told us this morning. And yet as Husain soberly reminded us, “We gather at a moment that tests us, where supply chains fracture under pressure and millions of families are searching for their next meal.” What a crying shame.
The richest nation in the world is a horrifying case in point. The United States suffers massive food insecurity. It chooses, however, to cut funding for hunger-relief programs that cost a very small fraction of the billions of dollars it squanders on a poorly conceived war of choice that has killed thousands of people and put in place a far worse and angrier regime in Iran.
And without a willingness or ability to think systemically and long term, dumb-ass politicians from one U.S. political party fail to understand that hunger reduces educational and employment attainment. In doing so, hunger leads directly to poverty, homelessness, and crime. That is why taxpayers pay a much bigger price over time when federal initiatives such as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) are reduced or abolished.
Mashal Husain added this morning that “those who feed the world should be seen, honored, and never stand alone." Thus the annual World Food Prize and its 57th laureate honored today, Huub Leliveld of the Netherlands. Leliveld is a food safety expert who for six decades has created and applied scientific evidence to inform modern regulation, legislation, and standards-setting across 113 nations. Hunger certainly kills, but unsafe food takes 420,000 lives every year.
Husain positioned the challenge very well when she said that feeding people while also providing them with safe food "is not just a technological challenge; it's a moral calling."
