'Hunger Can Be Conquered'
And, says former Wall Street Journal reporter Roger Thurow, churches have a crucial role to play.
Interview by Rob Moll | posted 2/24/2010 11:00AM
Two completely different conversations about food are taking place around the world. One is among the well-fed, who ask themselves, "What should I eat?" The other is among the underfed, who wonder, "How can I keep from starving?"
Christians influence these two conversations significantly, according to Wall Street Journal reporters Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman, authors of Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty(Public Affairs). They believe Christians should better understand that most cases of malnutrition and chronic hunger and nearly all starvation can be prevented if the right reforms are put into place. Rob Moll, an editor at large for Christianity Today, recently interviewed Thurow, now a senior fellow with the Chicago Council of Global Affairs.
Why use moral and theological language in a mainstream book about world hunger?
There's the political side of hunger and a policy prism. But there is this moral imperative to solving hunger. It's the right thing to do. Churches are extremely important for pushing the moral importance of the issue of hunger. It is something appreciated and understood in churches, since one of the main precepts of all religions is to feed the hungry. And for Christians, Matthew 25:35, there it is: "I was hungry and you gave me food … What you did to the least of these my brethren, you did unto me" (v. 40).
Bono referred to that passage when he was at Wheaton College on his Heart of America tour. Francis Pelekamoyo, the head of Opportunity International in Malawi, searched the Bible and wondered: What should I do after my years as central bank governor? That's the passage he kept coming back to. This is what we should do. This is what Jesus wants us to do.
We saw the importance of the churches in creating a grassroots clamor on debt relief and AIDS. Churches were important in delivering President George W. Bush's base, in support for what became PEPFAR, which is one of his great foreign policy legacies.
This is why hunger can be conquered, because the precedent is there. We can stir up this grassroots clamor on these issues. Why not on hunger?
Why are there still starving people? Isn't there enough food for everyone?
The hunger numbers are escalating rapidly. Before the food crisis of 2008, maybe 850 million people were at risk of starvation. In 2009, it's over 1 billion, about 15 percent or 16 percent of the world's population. A couple of years ago, the number was 13 percent.
One thing we saw in 2008, when the price of food skyrocketed, was greater demand from India, China, and other emerging econ-omies. As people become more prosperous, they are eating more meat. So their hogs and cattle need more feed.
We also saw the cost of negligence. The world didn't carry the Green Revolution forward into Africa. That not only deprived us of a source of food but also created the need for high levels of food aid.
What did the Green Revolution achieve?
Agriculture scientists led by Norman Borlaug developed a new kind of breeding method that resulted in a wheat strain that was more adaptable. It turned out to be just what India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh—which were the world's famine zones in the 1960s—needed. That seed goes over there and boom, brings a lot of people out of hunger. It wasn't long after that a country like India has surpluses of wheat and rice. The Green Revolution then moves on to other places in Asia. This formed the basis for the great economic growth seen in India and China over the past couple of decades. People were freed from the task of growing food to be able to do other things.
February 2010, Vol. 54, No. 2
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