Page 10 , RAIN October 1977 We were going to just review the new book by Frances Moore Lappe and ]ose_ph Collins and Food Monitor, the new magazine they are involved with. Then we read this article from the magazine, and it summed everything up so nicely that .we asked if we could reprint it. Frances is the author of Diet for a Small Planet (I'm sure you've read that book- $1.25 from Ballantine - reviewed in Rain book, p. 173). Joe helped in the research and writing of Global Reach: The Power ofthe Multinational Corporations (Rainbook, p. 32- $4.95 from Simon & Schuster). Their new b'ook, Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity, expands on the theme here. It is available for $7.95 from their organization, the Institute for Food Developmevt Policy, 2588 Mission, San Francisco, CA 94110. The new magazine they are doing jointly with Harry Chapin and World Hunger Year is called Food Monitor. It will keep you well-informed. It's available for $15/year for 11 issues ($25 for institutions,. single copies for $1.50) from Food Monitor, P. 0. Box 1975, (larden City, NY 11530. ---,LdeM · Beyond the Myth As we have described our work to others during the intervening years, we have discovered a common reaction. Writing a positive book about world hunger sounds to most people like trying to make a joke about death-it just isn't in the material! The typical response is a s\gh of sympathy or a look of bewilderment. Sometimes we sense we evoke latent feelings of guilt because we appear as individuals who are "making a sacrifice." But how can we explain that we are not dwelling on the tragedy of hunger and deprivation? Instead, we are learning for the first time where our own self-interests lie. Rather than a depressing subject to be avoided, the world food problem has become for us a useful tool in making sense out of o~r complex world. But to discover the positive message hidden·in the appar~nt hopelessness of the world food problem, we must first face the force,s now paralyzing Americans with feelings of guilt, fear and, ultimately, despair. Everywhere, newspaper headlines carry a clear message: we are all in a life-and-death contest between growing numbers of people and limited amounts of food. We are in a race, we are told, and some must inevitably lose. The implicit message is that not everyone can have enough to eat. And what about us, we wonder? According to C.W. Cook, retired chairperson of General Foods, if we have "to compete with . . . an increasingly crowded and hungry world, providing adequate nutrition to millions of lower income Americans could become an impossible dream." Population growth was pronounced a "bo~b" in the 1960s and a "human ddal wave" in the 1970s. But it is not mere numbers that we are made to fear by these frightening images; the real issue is whose numbers are increasing. While describing the "race against hunger," then- • President Nixon told us that, "the frightening fact is that the poor are multiplying twic~ as fast as the rich." To this compound threat, our new ecological awareness presents its own version of the apocalypse. Warnings about over-reaching the "finite limits of our ecosystem" lead us to believe that increases in food prod.uction will inevitably damage the environment. Thus, there appears to be no way out of scarcity without making our children pay the p·rice. ln addition, as North Americans, we are told that we have a special role to play in staving.off the apocalypse. Again and of Scarcity by Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins again we r·ead that the United States is the world's only remaining buffer against starvation. We see world food security defined strictly in terms of how much grain the United States can produce or hold in reserve. And; understandably, the North American consumer then believes that food exports to the hungry are to blame for our rising food prices. One intuitive response ~o such a burden on our national shoulders is to toughen up, to feel we are being unfairly put upon, and to . \ resist. At the same time, well-intentioned attempts to stir public· action have shifted the world food crisis away from the politi~al-economic arena and have made it an issue of individual morality. Our consumption is endlessly contrasted with deprivation elsewhere. With no understanding of how hunger is actually created, we are defenseless against a diffuse but powerful sense.of guilt-guilt for just be_ing American. Thus, the hungry are made to represent a powerful threat, and, at the same time, a burdensome responsibility. We are torn. To ease the pain of our: conflicting feelings, theories such as "life boat" ethics emerge. We are told that compassion is a luxury we can no longer aff?rd. We are told we .must.learn a new ethic of detached reason: we must learn to let people die now for the ultimate survival of the human race. Such a resolution of our conflicting feelings is, in the words of writer Peter Collier, a form of "Novocain for the uµeasy soul." . But, must we deaden our sensibilities in order to find some surcease for our anxieties? Or, can we transform what appears to be the most impossible problem of our generation- the world food crisis-into a most useful and constructive tool for understanding the complex forces that limit our own lives? Can we, moreover, ©n the strength of our new insight, gain a sense of personal power over forces that increasingly diminish our own freedom of choice and our own well-being? In researching our book, Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity (Houghton Mifflin, July 1977), we have discovered that the answer is "yes!" To begin with, we have lear~ed that food must come first. Until all peopl~ 9f this earth are able to eat adequately, all other problems pale in significance. No country can afford to think of its food resources as a means toward some other end, such as income from exports, until
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