Fighting hunger

Today is the last day of the World Summit on Food Security. The summit was held in Rome and sought to re-energize international commitment to reducing and soon eradicating hunger.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations recently released predictions that stubbornly high food prices and a year of droughts will cause the number of hungry people in the world to pass the 1 billion mark in 2009.

The number is sobering, and has prompted an Internet campaign to urge the 1 billion people privileged enough to access the Internet to pledge one euro (about $1.50) per week in order to help feed the 1 billion who cannot access even one cup of sustenance.

The Web site went live Sunday and relies on the power of disturbing statistics to compel monetary donations.

When I checked the Web site, a ticker informed me how many children had died of malnutrition since the page loaded.

Sometimes, the statistics and scare tactics can be overwhelming. However, world hunger is a challenge that the international community can solve. A report by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy paints an encouraging picture:

“In the 21st century, we have the means to defeat hunger: We grow enough food, we know enough about redistributive economics ... and we can afford to provide the basic needs that protect every person’s entitlement to an adequate, nutritious diet.”

The report goes on, of course, to explain how the powerful political interests of American processing and shipping industries have shaped America’s food aid policies to benefit the wealthiest even as they elbow out local farmers and cultivate dependency on foreign assistance.

However, without the lobbying of the industrial agricultural behemoth, Congress may not be pushed to continue appropriate current levels of funding for food aid. Domestic political interests should take the back burner this week, as nations gather to recommit to helping the hungriest of the world community.

The numbers thrown around this week will focus on the problem, rather than the solution. If this 1 billion mark will thrust world hunger onto the international and national agenda and awaken global consciousness, then I’ll set aside my own discomfort with reducing the extraordinary individual struggles of human beings across the world to one (albeit huge) number.

It’s going to take more than a marketing campaign, though. This issue presents an easy moral choice, a rare opportunity for true bipartisan legislation, and a reason to call back and re-issue the message of hope that rang so clearly one year ago.

Obama’s administration faces many hard choices from how to balance health care reform with a woman’s right to choose to how to best move forward in Afghanistan and Iraq. This policy issue doesn’t present the same ethical complexities.

All of us, the lucky billion with access to food and the Internet, must do our part (Google “billion for a billion” tonight), and our lawmakers must do theirs.

There are no hard choices in fighting hunger – it should and must be done.