Today, 150 nations will celebrate World Food Day. This year's theme is The Right to Food, which is "the right of every person to have regular access to sufficient, nutritionally adequate and culturally acceptable food for an active, healthy life. It is the right to feed oneself in dignity, rather than the right to be fed." The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates over 850 million people live without this basic right.
Food insecurity exists for a dozen daunting reasons, such as war, corruption, climate change, and natural disasters. These are hard issues to tackle. Reforming the US Farm Bill shouldn't be.The Farm Bill actively contributes to food insecurity by subsidizing the overproduction of key crops. When the inevitable surpluses are dumped into the global market, developing-world farmers can't sell their goods at prices adequate to support themselves, their families, and their communities.
Rarely is such an assault on the Right to Food so completely preventable and therefore so completely inexcusable. Use this World Food Day as a platform to call for Farm Bill reform, as the Church World Service did last year. Remind our senators of the Farm Bill-food insecurity connection today, and ask your friends to do the same. It's the best way you can celebrate World Food Day.
Other Farm Bill news:
AP, WTO largely rules against US in cotton dispute with Brazil
Kleckner in the New York Times, Today's Harvest of Shame
St. Cloud Times, TV ads urge senators to stop aid to wealthy farmers
