Hunger for Justice

Hunger for Justice: the Immorality of our present food system

It came as a surprise to me, and perhaps it will to you, to learn that the right to food is included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, enacted in 1948. Article 25 begins, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food…………….”. Given that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated in 2012 that there were 868 million undernourished people in the world, it is staggering to see in various sources that from 30% to 50%  of worldwide food production rots or is thrown away. It would seem that the above right is not being implemented very satisfactorily.

What is going on here? Although starvation is partly caused by local factors like civil unrest and the effects of climate change, the data above point to a severe dislocation in the worldwide supply of food. This is the theme of the book Stuffed and Starved, by Raj Patel. In the introduction he tells us that the “stuffed” – the obese – are victims of the same problem as the “starved”: food production as it is now practiced on a global scale. Corporations, in other words, control what and how and whether we eat.

Let’s consider the “stuffed” aspect first. In 2013 there are enough calories available in the “land of the feed” to feed every US citizen twice over. Even subtracting the food that rots, is thrown away or sold and given in aid programs abroad, a great surplus still remains. It is therefore not surprising that food production firms do everything in their power to sell more food. Every time the US government has updated its dietary goals, the food industry has objected to any statement that could be construed to mean “eat less”, although from the health point of view that is exactly the advice many citizens need. Already in 1997 American children got 50% of their calories from added fat and sugar, a situation that has only gotten worse. Industry opposes government regulation, tries to discredit nutritional recommendations and intimidates critics.

The government, meanwhile, issues dietary recommendations with its right hand while using the left to subsidize the corn and soy used as animal feed or in so many products of no or little nutritional value. Fruits and veggies are not subsidized. As sweets and soft drinks offer up to 4 times the calories in the carrots that could be bought for the same money, healthy food is available only to those who can afford it. Not exactly what the Universal Declaration on Human Rights had in mind.

But now let’s turn to an even more dismal aspect of agribusiness, its contribution to growing numbers of starving humans. Soybean cultivation in South America feeds animals in Europe, while local farmers are forced off their land and starve. We have spoken of subsidies, which lead to overproduction that is exported to poor countries whether they want it or not, ruining their own local agriculture. “Free trade has nothing to do with freedom”, as Jean Ziegler, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food from 2000 to April 2008, commented, “ it’s the freedom of the predatory animal in the jungle” .

A modern addition to the causes of starvation is the subsidized use of corn for the production of biofuel, a practice that has little effect on carbon dioxide reduction but which has raised the price of corn dramatically. Stock market speculation on food has driven up prices as well.

Finally, the principles of the green revolution no longer apply; new principles need to be taught and implemented.

Solutions to these blatant perversions of food production abound: bring back local food production, better regulate hedge funds dealing with food, stop subsidizing biofuel, or produce it from waste organic raw material, are some that are gaining ground but slowly in the face of the enormous power wielded by agribusiness.

But isn’t there a far more basic cause of this extreme dislocation in food production and dissemination? Isn’t it simply morally wrong to treat food as just another commodity, like computers and printers? Should it be treated as the responsibility of a public utility, like water? Or partially government regulated, like health insurance in Switzerland?

Of course food is different from water in being far more complex. But it is ethically similar in there is a difference between what we need and what we want. We need to drink a certain amount of water each day; we do not need to water lawns or fill swimming pools. Indeed, it is just these uses that are forbidden in times of water shortages. Should certain practices, like forbidding speculation on food, be instituted?

Or should food production be treated like health insurance here in Switzerland? This would mean basic “packages”, government required and regulated, sold by private concerns in competition with one another. More luxurious food would be available to those who could afford it, but everyone would have the required basic food supply.

It is clear that reforming our food system in any meaningful way will be enormously complicated, particularly because agribusiness as it is presently practiced has such clout on the world market and in the seats of government. But to say it is impossible is to be complacent about the fact that obesity is now one of the most widespread medical problems in children and adolescents in the United States and other developed countries, while 1 in 8 people in the world go to sleep hungry every night.

It is also to say that the rights of agribusiness to continue its present practices unfettered are more important than the human rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Do we really believe this?

Sources and suggested reading

http://www.fao.org/hunger/en/

Food Politics, Marion Nestle

The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan

The film We Feed the World

Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply by Vandana Shiva

World Hunger: Twelve Myths by Frances Moore Lappe, Joseph Collins, Peter Rosse and Luis Esparza

In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan