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

Living in a desert. Probably not the number one place any given person would choose to live. Yet, it is estimated that more than half of a million people in Chicago live in what’s called a food desert. Food deserts are large geographic areas that either have no grocery stores or they are located a great distance from the community. Much of what you find in these areas, instead, is fast food restaurants and food marts, which lack the fresh food options all people need. Unfortunately, Chicago isn’t even close to being the only city in the U.S. with deserts like these. Look in areas of Los Angeles, Detroit, Nashville, and many more cities and you will find them. Chances are also good that if you look, you will notice a trend within the people of these communities. Research is showing that many are likely to be an ethnic minority and additionally, likely to be obese.

Last week, some colleagues and I took a trip to the Austin/West Garfield neighborhoods of Chicago to visit a site that has been funded in part over the years via the ELCA Domestic Hunger Grant program. Upon driving through various parts of the neighborhood, it seemed that this part of Chicago could fit the mold of being a food desert. As we made our way to our destination it was hard not to notice the lack of mainstream grocery stores and overabundance of food marts, fast food restaurants, and liquor stores. From what we learned about the population of the neighborhood while visiting the site, it would be extremely difficult for a large portion of the people who live here to find nutritious fresh foods because they would have to travel long distances on public transportation, which can get expensive. In addition, even if someone had the means to get to a grocery store, the food in their own neighborhood is usually hands down cheaper than any fresh food likely would be. Unfortunately though, it is typically highly processed and is not healthy in large portions.

This raises so many questions about how we, as a society, could allow this to be the situation so many people around the nation find themselves in. Why is it so impossible to convince a business to move into a community and provide the very basics to people in need? Why did the grocery stores leave in the first place? The shells of their former buildings still sit vacant, just waiting for a new tenant. How can we let this be swept under the rug and not educate the general public about the problems faced by citizens living in these deserts? Are we not called to stick up for all humanity, even those a few neighborhoods over? I challenge you to take a closer look around as you travel through your towns and cities and neighborhoods. Look at how many, or how few, options you and your neighbors have to make good healthy choices when it comes to food consumption. I’m thankful I have options and don’t find myself in this type of desert, but that doesn’t mean that I can deny it exists. After observing and accepting that this is the way it is now, what can we collectively do as communities to change this in the near future? Check out this story from Tennessee about people who are trying to cope with food deserts in their communities (http://wpln.org/?p=8501) and then think about ways you can help the communities around you. Then, most importantly, go out, do it and share your ideas with others.

For more information you can also check out this link and read about the food deserts in Chicago as studied by the Agroecology and Sustainable Agriculture Program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Mari Gallagher Research & Consulting Group
http://asap.sustainability.uiuc.edu/members/sagra/LaSalleBank_FoodDesert_ExecSummary.pdf/view.

~Jessie Fairfax

Last Thursday evening I attended a book discussion with some of my colleagues. The discussion was about The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer and the majority of us present were all members of organizations dedicated to fighting world hunger. As the evening came to an end and our small group of three left, we began to chat about the work that we were involved in, the different ways that we tithe, the importance of giving your time…and on and on. Eventually our group dropped down to two members, Jessica and I. As she navigated the way to my house to drop me off we pulled up to a stop light and there, standing in the middle of the road, was a young woman. She couldn’t have been more than twenty. It was ten o’clock at night and she was shivering in jeans and a light sweater, when I saw her I had an overwhelming feeling of meeting Jesus. In the Gospel Jesus talks about how if you have done unto the least of these, you have done unto Me. It was an incredible opportunity to share what we had been talking about all evening with someone in need. We rolled down the window and handed her three dollars – all the cash we had – realizing that this was a chance to affect the life we CAN save. At best the three dollars bought her a small meal for the evening, but more importantly, we wanted to show that other people do care, that there is hope. Before we rolled the window back up though, the woman turned to us and said, “Thank you so much, and God bless you.” The sincerity in her voice was unmistakable. It got me thinking about all of the homeless and hungry people I pass on the street downtown and how they also always say, “God bless you,” even if I only give them a passing smile. What faith!

I imagine that many of these people are fed at soup kitchens or food pantries and that if they are lucky they get to sleep in a shelter, but no matter what, they are faithful to their Creator. What an incredible lesson. Those who seem like they could be so angry at God for the position that they are in are instead the most faithful. Who am I, to not bless God and be His hands every day?

-Lana Lile

Paul Hawken gave the commencement address for the University of Portland earlier this month, and it’s making the rounds. I thought it was brilliant. Here’s a link to the address.

Have you held a freecycle yet? The one I held in April helped pare down my belongings in advance of my move. But now the realtor says I have to make my place look like a catalog spread—spare, spare, spare. And my 1200 books? “Just keep the pretty ones,” she said. (Oh, how that hurt!)

More stuff has to go—at least into storage, if not into someone else’s hands. That means more decisions. Giving the office table to my church for its basement dinners is easy. Debating whether to keep or release the extra set of plates and flatware for 24 is tougher. And what about those old Legos?

I have one week. One week. On the other side of this intense discernment I hope to find freedom—freedom from too much stuff; freedom of moving closer to a clear sense of what’s enough, for this life stage and the next.

Anne Basye