Bringing the gospel message to today's world........


Food Crisis 2009: The Many Faces of Hunger

As an introduction, please view the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMZ4nihvEng

Drought, wars, natural disasters, brutal economic shortcomings, and other calamities, begin the cycle of extreme poverty.  Hunger starts with the lack of  money to buy enough food for nourishment,   The victims become weak and ill, increasingly less able to work....starvation ensues and then eventual death.   

The World Health organization estimates that one-third of the world’s population is well fed, one-third is underfed, and one-third is starving.  Poor nutrition and calorie deficiencies cause nearly one in three people to die prematurely or have disabilities according to the World Health Organization.

Are you aware that every three and a half seconds a person dies of hunger or hunger-related causes.  This is 25,000 people a day according to the United Nations.   Most are children!  In the 1990’s it is estimated that more than 100 million children died as a result of a lack of food.  This decade should show significant increases.

This is a world where there is plenty of food for everyone.   The United States alone produces enough food to feed all the hungry worldwide.

We have always had the hungry, but an inconceivable disaster is happening before our very eyes right now  due to the cost of goods.  Prices have risen sharply in every region of the world.  The price of wheat rose by 600% in less than a year, Rice, a staple food for about 4 billion people worldwide, rose 800% in cost in the last 3 years. 
Please view:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_LidhHlrJ8

 “Soaring food, fuel and fertilizer  prices have exacerbated the problem all over the world.’ The devastating effects of high food prices on the number of hungry people compound already worrisome long-term trends,” FAO Assistant Director-General for Economic and Social Development, Hafez Ghanem said. “Hunger increased as the world grew richer and produced more food than ever over the last decade,” he added.   The shortage has led to food riots around the world, including deaths in Cameroon. Protesters chanting "We're hungry!" caused Haiti to remove its prime minister.

In London this week, the executive director of the World Food Program, Josette Sheeran, warned that more than 100 million people will be pushed into poverty by a "silent tsunami" of sharply rising food prices. Not just third world countries, this is the new face of hunger - the millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago but now are," Sheeran said. "The world's misery index is rising." 

In the United States 36.2 million people are considered to be food insecure, including 20 percent of all the children in the U.S.  In cities around the country senior citizens, young parents and middle-aged working poor are lining up at bood banks this week to stave off hunger.  U.S. food banks have reported a 30 percent rise in requests for emergency food assistance, according to a report by Feeding America, which supports 63,000 agencies and is the nation's largest hunger relief  organization. Seventy-two percent of our food banks said they are unable to adequately meet the needs of their clients," said Daly of Feed America. "It is really becoming more and more difficult every day." Catholic Charities said it is growing to critical proportion.  As an example, in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, the charity has seen an increase of more than 400 percent in requests for emergency food assistance.

The recession of the ’80s transformed the working class into the working poor, as manufacturing jobs fled to the third world, forcing American workers into the low-paying service and retail sector.  The current recession is knocking the working poor down another notch — from low-wage employment and inadequate housing toward erratic employment and no housing at all.  Comfortable people have long imagined that American poverty is far more luxurious than the third world variety, but the difference is rapidly narrowing.

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-88CUv94ItU

Food assistance groups said many families who show up at their doors were recently making it on their own. But two years of rising food and energy costs ate into what little safety net those families had. Now, as jobs losses rise, many who were making ends meet can no longer do so.

What is our responsibility to the hungry or our world?  Think about it......

Some church appeals:
ELCA :  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxSSGCE-beM
PSA:     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXsYjcFnDZI
UMC:   http://www.umc.org/site/c.lwL4KnN1LtH/b.5242281/k.507C/Can_we_feed_the_world.htm