The following is from guest writers Anna Rohde and Bethany Atkins. They write about how ELCA World Hunger grant money is being used to involve kids at the Flathead Lutheran Bible Camp in issues of world hunger.

In a letter urging her Senator to advocate for hungry children, one camper writes, “Please don’t take this as just a letter from a kid. I am very concerned about child hunger in this nation.” One addition to the programming this summer at Flathead Lutheran Bible Camp is an offering of letters by 8th and 9th grade campers to their senators and representatives. These letters are written following the weekly Hunger Drama, which combines a dramatic portrayal of hunger and homelessness with local and international statistics on these issues. In an effort to move from reactions of guilt to reaction of empowerment, we seek to give campers the tools to act through advocacy and volunteerism. The letters address issues of hunger involved in the Child Nutrition Act, and provide an immediate outlet for action. At the end of the week, campers receive handouts with volunteer opportunities in their towns. Both of these aim to use experiences at camp to fuel energy for service in their communities.

We’ve focused our garden programming on the 6th and 7th-graders that come to camp. We call it the Great Pathfinder Garden Quest and the kids follow clues from station to station, where they participate in activities that explore the environmental, social, & spiritual impacts of food production. For those who do not garden at home, the activity is exposure to tangible action & creativity. For those who do, it seeks to connect global agricultural issues with local actions. We hope this encourages thoughtful eating, living, & serving.

The garden itself is nearly 2500 square feet, comprised of about 14 raised beds of radishes, carrots, corn, tomatoes, onions, strawberries, rhubarb, lettuce, beans, and an assortment of herbs and other experimental crops. We’re learning a lot about what crops can escape the local critters! We have also started two small-scale composting systems as examples of constructive food waste disposal. One is a vermicompost with red wiggler worms in a five-tray compost bin, and the other is a homemade compost barrel that campers can participate in rotating to speed decomposition.

We have also made an effort to integrate hunger, poverty, and social justice issues throughout the camp day. During their free time, campers have the opportunity to donate some of their spending money to ELCA World Hunger. During Bible Study, campers may visit the Art Barn. Here, we seek to create sustainable projects that reuse materials from around camp and that function while at camp or have use upon returning home. For example, campers plant bean seeds in decorated cups on Mondays, which they may bring home and transplant or give away. Tuesdays, campers create paper bag luminaries reused from their pack-out lunches, to be used in prayer services later in the week. Campers paint reusable canvas tote bags on Wednesdays to reduce the waste of grocery bags at home. Finally, campers decorate quilt squares on Thursdays to be assembled into quilts by volunteers at a local church and donated through the ELCA to those in need.

We’re finding this work to be valuable and rewarding, and are thrilled to belong to a church which provides for these opportunities. Campers and staff alike are enriched by fresh perspectives and relevance to the important food issues in our world.

–Anna Rohde and Bethany Atkins, Hunger Grant Coordinators
Flathead Lutheran Bible Camp
Lakeside, Montana

Recently, I attended the first regional “Ethics of Eating” Leadership Training in Region 1. The event took place at Campbell Farm, a 40 acre working farm also used as a retreat center. We flew into Seattle the night before and drove through green, pine covered mountains on our way to the farm. On the other side of those mountains we approached dull, brown mountains. Campbell Farm is in Yakima Valley, WA, a desert on the other side of those barren mountains. I was going to learn many, many things in this desert made fertile with irrigation waters.

We talked to both conventional and organic farmers, employers and employees, and observed the farming practices of the area. Our objective was to discuss the ethics of eating in a world where 1 in 6 people are hungry. We did this by educating ourselves on our own methods of food production and transportation, and exploring the conflict of the abundance of food and empty stomachs.

I’m still sorting through most of the information; however, I want to share with you the 10 things that stand out the most to me from this experience.

1)      The farm we stayed on was fairly small and had both an organic and conventional apple orchard. We asked Craig what was the difference between organic and conventional farming. He informed us that organic farmers ‘pull a heck of a lot more weeds.’ Herbicides are not allowed, making for a more labor intensive care of organic fields.

2)      We further questioned the differences between organic and conventional, knowing that pesticides were not used either. He explained that to keep pests away from organic foods they are coated, with fish oil. A vegetarian in the group was quick to question whether or not this information was required to be advertised on organic foods. I’ve never seen an organic food label announcing the use of fish oil, and it’s pretty common practice, along with the massive amounts of bug hormones used to keep moths from mating in organic fields.

3)      One reason the fish oil may not be considered a problem is that produce is rinsed in water and chlorine. While chlorine is not natural, the USDA has decided that it is necessary considering the manure used to fertilize the organic fields.

4)      Developing the composite is a lot of work, especially for organic fields; not only must it sit in the sun for weeks to get to a certain temperature, the manure used must come from organic animals. Ten thousand gallons of water are used on approximately one square mile of compost piled about a foot high. A lot of compost, but that’s a huge amount of water in a desert of all places!

5)      The amount of water used for irrigation is just phenomenal, enough to make a desert a fruitful place! In order to conserve water, some farmers received incentives to begin a ‘drip system,’ where a small hose lines the rows of crops and drips out water, as opposed to being doused by a sprinkler system. This greatly reduces the amount of water used; however, the water table level is greatly reduced as well. This means there is less water in local reservoirs, and more water will be needed out of the Yakima river, lowing river levels for fish, which is what was happening with out the drip system. What a cycle!

6)      You may think your kids are picky eaters, but we all, as consumers, are very picky eaters and because we are spoiled. An incorporated farm that we visited throws out 15,000-20,000 pounds of produce a day. Twenty thousand pounds of fresh food goes to waste every day during harvesting season because consumers like us don’t want to buy a yellow-bottomed cucumber. It doesn’t taste any different; it just grew on the ground the way cucumbers are supposed to grow!

7)      The greatest concern expressed by farmers was over production. Over production in a local and global community where some people do not get enough to eat does not sound like a problem to me. Both big and small farm owners admitted to letting produce rot in the field, which nourishes the soil, and keeps food prices from plummeting by not flooding the markets, however this keeps this food out of the food pantries that would distribute the produce to people in need. Yet another vicious cycle.

8)      Just down the road, Campbell Farms struggles to provide healthy meals to youth in the area whose parents are financially strained when it comes to groceries, buying limited, and often unhealthy, food. While our visit may have opened up the eyes of the incorporated farmer as to how these neighbors can help each other, how often is this happening in other communities, or in my own refrigerator?

9)      These kids who aren’t eating healthy food don’t look as though their not eating. That’s when I recognized the concept of nutritional starvation. Sure these kids eat, but they eat processed, fatty, high in calorie and low in nutrition foods. It’s all their families can afford, or know to eat, even with the abundance of fresh produce all around them.

10)  On top of nutritional concerns, farm workers are 70% more likely to get uterine cancer and 60% more likely to get leukemia. May be genetics, may be working conditions? The number one cause of death among farm workers is suicide.

To end on a better note, I’ll share another quick story. On a small 18 acre farm that we visited they were raising organic chickens. The pen they stayed in was a beautiful little piece of land, covered with apple and crab apple trees as well as tall grasses. Off in one corner we noticed a small circle enclosed by some fencing: chicken jail! Apparently, there is such a thing as a cannibalistic chicken; the three housed there ate eggs.

We obviously covered a wide variety of topics, specific to the region, but applicable nationally and globally. Enjoy the food for thought I’ve shared with you, and consider for yourself the “Ethics of Eating.”

The Hunger Rumblings Blog is back online (yay!).  Lots to reflect on, new posts coming soon!  Stay tuned!

The ELCA is in the process of transitioning to a new Blog host. We will be unable to post new thoughts on Hunger Rumblings until that transition is complete (hopefully not more than a week or so). We look forward to continuing the exchange of ideas at that time. If you don’t know what to do with yourself in the meantime, why don’t you check out the ELCA World Hunger Web site!

David Creech

My roommate, Kristen, and I were recently talking about her move to Malawi this summer to be an intern for 2 months for an organization that serves the children who are the future of this small country in the southeastern part of Africa. She said to me, “Malawi is sweet” and made me pause for a second. Although “sweet” may be one of Kristen’s favorite words, it is probably not how most people would describe this place that ranks 67th in the world with a population of 14.3 million but 15th in the world when it comes to people living with HIV/AIDS. Malawi’s economic state is not much more encouraging.

Malawi seems to be a country that I’m supposed to know about. In addition to Kristen’s travels, we have another friend who was moved by a trip there in 2007 and has since started an organization to provide secondary education for girls in particular and with subsequent visits her vision is really starting to take off. Then, the ELCA World Hunger program is starting a library of books and videos for congregations, groups, individuals, really anyone, to check out if they want to learn more or host discussions about a particular topic. We were asked to help start writing synopses of these to make the database for the checkout process. The video I picked up was a documentary called Lifecycles: a story of AIDS in Malawi.

Lifecycles provides a unique look at the country of Malawi, a place where there is no longer a family that can claim it has not been touched by AIDS. As a documentary, the filmmakers have real conversations with the people who are living in these difficult and uncertain times where 200 people a day are dying from HIV/AIDS and related diseases. 24 million people in Africa are infected, and an estimated 1 million of them live in Malawi. It examines various aspects of life from those who are considered wealthy because they can afford the medicines to fight their HIV to prostitutes who are aware of the dangers but feel they have no other option to provide for themselves. The film is only about an hour long and shows a picture of the country that most have probably never had the opportunity to see. (If you are looking for a copy of this DVD check out this link: www.amazon.com/Lifecycles-story-Malawi-Doug-Karr/dp/B000QRIK3G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1246291681&sr=8-1)

I have loved learning about this country so far. While all of the statistics and stories about Malawi paint a grim picture, there is hope in this country and for its people. The documentary shows people who are clinging to this hope with such passion and it is inspiring. There are also people there on the ground, listening to what Malawians need and want help with. From Kristen and her ministry with the kids to our friend Cassie and her passion for the women of Malawi to the ELCA’s own partnerships with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Malawi (www.elca.org/Who-We-Are/Our-Three-Expressions/Churchwide-Organization/Global-Mission/Where-We-Work/Africa/Malawi.aspx) through our Companion Synods program, there is hope and it comes from listening to those who are there and living through the tough times.

If you want to learn more about Malawi, or any country, a great place to start is the CIA World Factbook at www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook. I encourage you to find someplace and start investigating. You might just find that seemingly down and out places have some pretty “sweet” things to offer if you look for them.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations projects that world hunger will reach a historic high in 2009 with over one billion people going hungry every day. According to FAO, “the most recent increase in hunger is not the consequence of poor global harvests but is caused by the world economic crisis that has resulted in lower incomes and increased unemployment. This has reduced access to food by the poor.” [Full report]

The projected 1.02 billion figure breaks down as follows:

• Asia and the Pacific – 642 million people
• Sub-Saharan Africa – 265 million
• Latin America and the Caribbean – 53 million
• Near East and North Africa – 42 million
• Developed Countries – 15 million

The number one billion can be paralyzing. But therein lies our greatest challenge: to realize as individuals we cannot help feed one billion people. But together as smaller communities, as one nation, and as a global communion of churches and citizens, we can make a tangible difference.

–Aaron Cooper is Writer-Editor for ELCA World Hunger

If you’ve spent any time on this blog, you already know that I (and and many of my colleagues) have some thoughts on how food is produced and distributed here in the U.S. For a sampling of some of our thoughts on the issue, click here, and here, and here (and while you’re at it, go ahead and click here too).

These are pressing issues and worth our reflection. For one, so many of our food practices exacerbate global hunger and poverty. When it takes 10 pounds of feed to raise one pound of beef we strain food supplies (I know this is a simplification, but it still carries some truth). When 1/5 of our oil consumption is spent on producing and distributing our food we harm the environment by depleting finite natural resources and releasing harmful gases that cause global climate change (which, by the way, is the number one issue if we want to talk seriously about sustainable development of impoverished nations and feeding hungry people). When we subsidize large companies to make cheap food that then causes health problems we perpetuate a cycle of poverty (the last article linked above explains how this happens well). In short, there is lots of room for improvement when we look closely at how we do food in America.

Now, as I see it, there is no easy solution to all of these problems. I admit that I don’t know all the nuances and complicating factors. It is for this very reason that I need to think long and hard about the issues. I think the starting point is awareness that there is indeed a problem (of this I am certain). The next step is to find those ways in which we truly address root problems.

David Creech

I recently watched a 2006 PBS home video titled Malaria: Fever Wars. The information that it posed in the first few minutes was overwhelming: three million people die a year from malaria; a child dies every 30 seconds from malaria; it is a plague that will double in the next 20 years if no one acts; two billion people are at risk. Then they hit you with this: malaria is preventable and curable.

The disparity framed in this film is eye opening. The effects of malaria on an individual, family and even the community in rural Kenya are substantially greater than the discomfort experience by a man in Florida while he waits for the medicine to begin working. The Florida community only suffers a bit more insecticide that year, while in Kenya, a sick child affects the productivity of his mother and other members of his community when he needs their assistance to travel for a day by foot and bus to the nearest hospital. Once there, the child cannot be afforded the treatment he needs and he is not cured.

What I found interesting is the link from malaria to the lack of infrastructure that was discussed. Malaria causes a loss of productivity worth 12 billion dollars every year. Understandably, families and communities struggling with malaria spend the productive hours they have on necessary tasks such as providing food, water and shelter. While infrastructure development is critical, it’s not as urgent as eating, and there’s simply not enough time, money, or governmental support to tackle everything that needs to be done.

Education takes a back seat to more pressing necessities, and when children are sick, they cannot go to school anyway. The lack of education puts the community at risk for disease and also leaves them with few people qualified as medical professionals. If no one is educated, who can begin to develop their community’s infrastructure?

A hospital in Kenya, without access to water, serves over a half of a million people. The hospital only has one doctor. Rural communities frequently rely on unlicensed quacks to provide medical care, even when their children die under their care. With a health care system such as this, who delivers the aid?

When one must walk for hours on paths that are barely suitable for walking just to get to a road, how is aid supposed to be delivered?

It becomes obvious that the solution can not be just treatment or prevention of malaria with resources just ‘dropped off’ in areas of need. It demonstrates the cycle that these communities are unable to break: poverty, hunger and disease, each a cause and effect of the other issues. This is why the focus of the ELCA World Hunger Program is so important. It combines relief, education, advocacy and development, recognizing that alone, none of these is a solution, but together, it will help communities to be their own solution.

-Rachel Zeman

Have you ever seen the book Material World: A Global Family Portrait? To produce it, photographers and statistically “average” families from various countries collaborated on a portrait of each family outside of its home, surrounded by its possessions. Material World illuminates the question, can all 6 billion of us have all the things we want?

If my son and I hauled all of our stuff to the front lawn for a portrait today, it would still be an impressive pile. But since our freecycle, since the open house, my home is very spare and spacious. With more space around my belongings, it’s easier to see them, and decide which things to release and which to wrap, pack, and promote to heirlooms.

It would be nice to have heirlooms instead of stuff. Frederic and MaryAnn Brussat begin their book Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life with a chapter probing things and our relationship to them. They note:

Christians…hold everyday objects in high regard as vessels with which they can serve God. Jewish mystics teach that every created thing contains sparks of the divine. Hindus take great pleasure in ordinary things as manifestations of Brahman. And Sufi poets find the fingerprints of the Beloved on everything.

Despite this broad and holy tradition, many of us still have a hard time loving, honoring, and caring for things. We have many possessions but regard them superficially, value them slightly, and treat them shabbily….How different we might feel about our world after making a practice of saying hello and thank you to the refrigerator that hums while it keeps our food cool, to the slippers that warm our feet on cold winter nights, and to the pen that expends all its in so that we can express ourselves…when we cherish our things, they reciprocate; when we ignore them, they can turn toxic.

Are we thankful for the objects we live among? Can we appreciate our heirlooms, and follow the words of Hildegard of Bingen about everything else?

Greed says: “I snatch all things to myself. I hug all things to my breast; the more I have gathered the more I have…. When I have whatever I need, I have no worries about needing anything from someone else.” Simple sufficiency replies: “You are harsh and devoid of mercy because you do not care for the advancement of others. Nothing is sufficient to satisfy you. I, however, sit above the stars, for all of God’s good things are sufficient for me…. Why should I desire more than I need?”

Anne Basye

Good afternoon ELCA World Hunger Supporters,

Are you on Facebook? Have you joined our Cause? If not click here: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/29958

We have a new goal! Let’s raise $5,000 on Facebook in 2009 as a part of the Change the World: 2009 Lutheran Youth Challenge.

Little changes can have big effects.

Imagine…If we all skipped a latte…

Together we would raise $13,692 (blowing our goal out of the water!)

OR provide…

1,369 weeks of meals for a child orphaned by AIDS in Africa
273 goats to provide fertilizer and milk for families in Kenya
91 hand water pumps in Bolivia
Temporary housing for four U.S. families

ELCA World Hunger staff members will kick off this challenge on Friday, June 19, 2009, by skipping their morning beverage and donating it via the Facebook Cause. Then, we’re asking each of you to join in, donate the cost of your beverage, and then tell us about it! Post it, email it – spread the word!

Skip a latte. Make some change.

Thank you!
Lana Lile
Your Friendly ELCA World Hunger Intern

View this announcement on Facebook: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/posts/231070?m=8e92585a