Put ‘end hunger’ plans into action

by Letters Editor · May 31, 2012

In your Christmas issue last December, I read about a large parish in Kenya where the Sunday Mass used to last about three hours. Recently the priest noticed people fainting during the second half of the celebration.

On enquiry he found out that it was due to hunger. So the Mass has been cut to an hour and a quarter. Parishioners used to stand around for a long time after Mass chatting; now they head straight for home, while they still have the strength to get there.

This malnutrition is not because food is not available, but because the people have not got the money with which to pay the constantly rising prices.

On the same day I read the article, one of our comfortably off, but not rich, Catholics told me about their Christmas lunch for the 12 members of the family: three starters, four kinds of meat to deal with various likes and dislikes, three different desserts this despite the grumbling about food getting more and more expensive.

I am sure that some of the left overs were used up later, but some would have become part of the one third of the world’s food produced for human consumption which gets wasted every year (FAO report 2011).

Two billion of the world’s people now spend 50%-70% of their income to keep alive. One billion experience varying degrees of hunger and malnutrition. This is because poorer countries are forced to open their markets, due to World Trade Organisation regulations, while richer countries protect their agricultural sector, and export their heavily subsidised food to developing countries.

The failure of the World Food Summits from 1994-2006 to put possible solutions into practice has worsened the problem.

We have recently again seen the selfish lack of concern of the world’s haves for the have nots at the COP17 conference in Durban.

In his 1963 encyclical Pacem in terries, Pope John XXIII clearly taught us that all people have the right to life, food. Vatican II repeated the words of ancient Christian writers: Feed the person dying of hunger, because if you have not fed him you have killed him (Gaudium et spes 69).

What can you and I do to help ensure that the underprivileged half of the world’s people, and the similar half of our own population, can enjoy their right to food?

We can eat well, but less. This would ease the growing health hazard of obesity. We can eat food which takes less out of the soil and requires less water to produce (for example cut down on meat). We can feed hungry individuals at our gate or door, support feeding schemes, assist soup kitchens for street children or get involved in the St Vincent de Paul Society.

But that is all the micro scene, local, within easy reach. What about the macro scene; the South African level, the world level?

I would be grateful if Southern Cross readers would make sustainable suggestions about what the individual, or even groups of Catholics can do to address the food issue on national and global scales, so that more of our fellow human beings can enjoy their God-given right to food.

In this way we would have something to offer to God and bring to people on World Food Day, October 16.