12 Myths About Hunger
Pramen: Institute for Food and Development Policy Backgrounder
Summer 2006, Vol.12, No. 2. Dostupné elektronicky z http://www.foodfirst.org/node/1480
Summer 2006
Updated by Holly Poole-Kavana based on the book World Hunger: Twelve Myths
Why so much hunger?
What can we do about it?
To answer these questions we must unlearn much of what we have been taught. Only by
freeing ourselves from the grip of widely held myths can we grasp the roots of hunger and
see what we can do to end it.
Myth 1:
Not Enough Food to Go Around
Reality: Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the worlďs food supply. Enough wheat,
rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,200 calories a day.
That doesn't even count many other commonly eaten foods - vegetables, beans, nuts, root
crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish. Enough food is available to provide at least 4.3
pounds of food per person a day worldwide: two and half pounds of grain, beans and nuts,
about a pound of fruits and vegetables, and nearly another pound of meat, milk and eggs - enough
to make most people fat! The problem is that many people are too poor to buy
readily available food. Even most "hungry countries" have enough food for all their people
right now. Many are net exporters of food and other agricultural products.
Myth 2:
Nature is to Blame for Famine
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Reality: Iťs too easy to blame nature. Human-made forces are making people increasingly
vulnerable to nature's vagaries. Food is always available for those who can afford it - starvation
during hard times hits only the poorest. Millions live on the brink of disaster in
South Asia, Africa and elsewhere, because they are deprived of land by a powerful few,
trapped in the unremitting grip of debt, or miserably paid. Natural events rarely explain
deaths; they are simply the final push over the brink. Human institutions and policies
determine who eats and who starves during hard times. Likewise, in America many
homeless die from the cold every winter, yet ultimate responsibility doesn't lie with the
weather. The real culprits are an economy that fails to offer everyone opportunities, and a
society that places economic efficiency over compassion.
Myth 3
Too Many People
Reality: Birth rates are falling rapidly worldwide as remaining regions of the Third World
begin the demographic transition - when birth rates drop in response to an earlier decline in
death rates. Although rapid population growth remains a serious concern in many countries,
nowhere does population density explain hunger. For every Bangladesh, a densely
populated and hungry country, we find a Nigeria, Brazil or Bolivia, where abundant food
resources coexist with hunger. Or we find a country like the Netherlands, where very little
land per person has not prevented it from eliminating hunger and becoming a net exporter
of food. Rapid population growth is not the root cause of hunger. Like hunger itself, it
results from underlying inequities that deprive people, especially poor women, of economic
opportunity and security. Rapid population growth and hunger are endemic to societies
where land ownership, jobs, education, health care, and old age security are beyond the
reach of most people. Those Third World societies with dramatically successful early and
rapid reductions of population growth rates - China, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Cuba and the
Indian state of Kerala - prove that the lives of the poor, especially poor women, must
improve before they can choose to have fewer children.
Myth 4:
The Environment vs. More Food?
Reality: We should be alarmed that an environmental crisis is undercutting our foodproduction
resources, but a trade-off between our environment and the worlďs need for
food is not inevitable. Efforts to feed the hungry are not causing the environmental crisis.
Large corporations are mainly responsible for deforestation - creating and profiting from
developed-country consumer demand for tropical hardwoods and exotic or out-of-season
food items. Most pesticides used in the Third World are applied to export crops, playing
little role in feeding the hungry, while in the U.S. they are used to give a blemish-free
cosmetic appearance to produce, with no improvement in nutritional value.
Alternatives exist now and many more are possible. The success of organic farmers in the
U.S. gives a glimpse of the possibilities. Cuba's success in overcoming a food crisis
through self-reliance and sustainable, virtually pesticide-free agriculture is another good
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example. Indeed, environmentally sound agricultural alternatives can be more productive
than environmentally destructive ones.
Myth 5:
The Green Revolution is the Answer
Reality: The production advances of the Green Revolution are no myth. Thanks to the new
seeds, millions of tons more grain a year are being harvested. But focusing narrowly on
increasing production cannot alleviate hunger because it fails to alter the tightly
concentrated distribution of economic power that determines who can buy the additional
food. Thaťs why in several of the biggest Green Revolution successes - India, Mexico, and
the Philippines - grain production and in some cases, exports, have climbed, while hunger
has persisted and the long-term productive capacity of the soil is degraded. Now we must
fight the prospect of a `New Green Revolution' based on biotechnology, which threatens to
further accentuate inequality.
Myth 6:
We Need Large Farms
Reality: Large landowners who control most of the best land often leave much of it idle.
Unjust farming systems leave farmland in the hands of the most inefficient producers. By
contrast, small farmers typically achieve at least four to five times greater output per acre,
in part because they work their land more intensively and use integrated, and often more
sustainable, production systems. Without secure tenure, the many millions of tenant
farmers in the Third World have little incentive to invest in land improvements, to rotate
crops, or to leave land fallow for the sake of long-term soil fertility. Future food production
is undermined. On the other hand, redistribution of land can favor production. Historically
comprehensive land reforms have markedly increased production in countries as diverse as
Japan, Zimbabwe, and Taiwan. A World Bank study of northeast Brazil estimates that
redistributing farmland into smaller holdings would raise output an astonishing 80 percent.
Myth 7:
The Free Market Can End Hunger
Reality: Unfortunately, such a "market-is-good, government-is-bad" formula can never help
address the causes of hunger. Such a dogmatic stance misleads us that a society can opt for
one or the other, when in fact every economy on earth combines the market and
government in allocating resources and distributing goods. The markeťs marvelous
efficiencies can only work to eliminate hunger, however, when purchasing power is widely
dispersed.
So all those who believe in the usefulness of the market and the necessity of ending hunger
must concentrate on promoting not the market, but the consumers! In this task, government
has a vital role to play in countering the tendency toward economic concentration, through
genuine tax, credit, and land reforms to disperse buying power toward the poor. Recent
trends toward privatization and de-regulation are most definitely not the answer.
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Myth 8:
Free Trade is the Answer
Reality: The trade promotion formula has proven an abject failure at alleviating hunger. In
most Third World countries exports have boomed while hunger has continued unabated or
actually worsened. While soybean exports boomed in Brazil - to feed Japanese and
European livestock - hunger spread from one-third to two-thirds of the population. Where
the majority of people have been made too poor to buy the food grown on their own
country's soil, those who control productive resources will, not surprisingly, orient their
production to more lucrative markets abroad. Export crop production squeezes out basic
food production. So-called free trade treaties like NAFTA and WTO pit working people in
different countries against each other in a `race to the bottom,' where the basis of
competition is who will work for less, without adequate health coverage or minimum
environmental standards. Mexico and the U.S. are a case in point: since NAFTA we have
had a net loss of over a million jobs here in the U.S., while Mexico has lost 1.3 million in
the agricultural sector alone and hunger is on the rise in both countries.
Myth 9:
Too Hungry to Fight for Their Rights
Reality: Bombarded with images of poor people as weak and hungry, we lose sight of the
obvious: for those with few resources, mere survival requires tremendous effort. If the poor
were truly passive, few of them could even survive. Around the world, from the Zapatistas
in Chiapas, Mexico to the Landless People's Movement in South Africa, wherever people
are suffering needlessly movements for change are underway. People will feed themselves,
if allowed to do so. Iťs not our job to `set things righť for others. Our responsibility is to
remove the obstacles in their paths, obstacles often created by large corporations and U.S.
government, World Bank and IMF policies.
Myth 10:
More U.S. Aid Will Help the Hungry
Reality: Most U.S. aid works directly against the hungry. Foreign aid can only reinforce,
not change, the status quo. Where governments answer only to elites, our aid not only fails
to reach hungry people, it shores up the very forces working against them. Our aid is used
to impose free trade and free market policies, to promote exports at the expense of food
production, and to provide the arms that repressive governments use to stay in power. Even
emergency, or humanitarian aid, which makes up only eight percent of the total, often ends
up enriching American grain companies while failing to reach the hungry, and it can
dangerously undercut local food production in the recipient country. It would be better to
use our foreign aid budget for unconditional debt relief, as it is the foreign debt burden that
forces most Third World countries to cut back on basic health, education and anti-poverty
programs.
Myth 11:
We Benefit From Their Poverty
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Reality: The biggest threat to the well-being of the vast majority of Americans is not the
advancement but the continued deprivation of the hungry. Low wages - both abroad and in
inner cities at home - may mean cheaper bananas, shirts, computers and fast food for most
Americans, but in other ways we pay heavily for hunger and poverty. Enforced poverty in the
Third World jeopardizes U.S. jobs, wages and working conditions as corporations seek
cheaper labor abroad. In a global economy, what American workers have achieved in
employment, wage levels, and working conditions can be protected only when working
people in every country are freed from economic desperation.
Here at home, policies like welfare reform throw more people into the job market than can
be absorbed - at below minimum wage levels in the case of `workfare' - which puts
downward pressure on the wages of those on higher rungs of the employment ladder. The
growing numbers of `working poor' are those who have part- or full-time low wage jobs yet
cannot afford adequate nutrition or housing for their families. Educating ourselves about
the common interests most Americans share with the poor in the Third World and at home
allows us to be compassionate without sliding into pity. In working to clear the way for the
poor to free themselves from economic oppression, we free ourselves as well.
Myth 12:
Curtail Freedom to End Hunger?
Reality: There is no theoretical or practical reason why freedom, taken to mean civil
liberties, should be incompatible with ending hunger. Surveying the globe, we see no
correlation between hunger and civil liberties. However, one narrow definition of freedom the
right to unlimited accumulation of wealth-producing property and the right to use that
property however one sees fit - is in fundamental conflict with ending hunger. By contrast,
a definition of freedom more consistent with our nation's dominant founding vision holds
that economic security for all is the guarantor of our liberty. Such an understanding of
freedom is essential to ending hunger.
Selected References:
Note: for a full list of references see Lappe, Frances Moore, Joseph Collins, and Peter
Rosset. 1998. World Hunger: Twelve Myths. New York: Grove Press.
Myth 1: 1.Data calculated from FAOSTAT. 2005. Rome: United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization. 2.Handbook of International Trade and Development Statistics.
1995. New York and Geneva: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
Tables 7 and 8.
Myth 2: 1.Sen, Amartya. 1981. Poverty and Famines. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
2.Timberlake, L. and A. Wijkman. 1984. Natural Disasters: Acts of God or Acts of Man?
London and Washington, DC: Earthscan. 3.Messer, Ellen. 1996. Hunger as a Weapon of
War in 1994. Pp. 19-48 in The Hunger Report: 1995, ed. Ellen Messer and Peter Uvin.
Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers.
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Myth 3: 1.Merrick, Thomas. 1994. Population Dynamics in Developing Countries. pp. 79105
in Population and Development: Old Debates, New Conclusions, ed. Robert Cassen.
New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. 2.Bread for the World Institute. 1996.
Hunger, 1997: What Governments Can Do. Silver Spring, MD. 3.World Bank. 1994.
Human Development Report.
Myth 4: 1.Vandermeer, John and Ivette Perfecto. 2005. Breakfast of Biodiversity: The
Truth about Rainforest Destruction. Oakland: Food First Books. 2.Nicholls, Clara Ines and
Miguel Altieri. 1997. Conventional Agriculture Development Models and the Persistence
of the Pesticide Treadmill in Latin America. International Journal of Sustainable
Development and World Ecology 4:93-111.
Myth 5: 1.Shiva, Vandana. 1991. The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World
Agriculture, Ecology, and Politics. Penang, Malaysia: Third World Network. 2.Pearse,
Andrew. 1980. Seeds of Plenty, Seeds of Want: Social and Economic Implications of the
Green Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press.
Myth 6: 1.Sobhan, Rehman. 1993. Agrarian Reform and Social Transformation. London:
Zed. 2.Thiesenhusen, William C. 1995. Broken Promises: Agrarian Reform and the Latin
American Campesino. Boulder: Westview Press. 3.Griffin, K., A.R. Khan, and A. Ickowitz.
2002. Poverty and the distribution of land. Journal of Agrarian Change 2(3):279-330.
Myth 7: 1.Collins, Joseph and John Lear. 1995. Chile's Free Market Miracle: A Second
Look. Oakland: Food First Books. 2.Bello, Walden. 1994. Dark Victory: The United States,
Structural Adjustment and Global Poverty. London: Pluto Press, Food First Books, and
Transnational Institute.
Myth 8: 1.(World agricultural commodity export data) FAOSTAT data. 2005. Rome:
Untied Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. 2.Goldsmith, Edward and Jerry
Mander, eds. 1996. The Case Against the Global Economy and a Turn Toward the Local.
San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
Myth 9: 1.Wright, Angus and Wendy Wolford. 2003. To Inherit the Earth: The Landless
Movement and the Struggle for a New Brazil. Oakland: Food First Books. 2.Collier,
George. 2005. Basta! Land an dhte Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas. Oakland: Food First
Books.
Myth 10: 1.OEDC. 2003-4. Total DAC Aid at a Glance.
www.oecd.org/dataoecd/17/39/23664717.gif 2.Lappe, F.M., R. Schurman, and K. Danaher.
1987. Betraying the National Interest: How U.S. Foreign Aid Threatens Global Security by
Undermining the Political and Economic Stability of the Third World. New York: Grove
Press.
Myth 11: 1.Sklar, Holly. 1995. Chaos or Community? Seeking Solutions, Not Scapegoats.
Boston: South End Press. 2.Untied States Conference of Mayors. 2002. A Status Report on
Hunger and Homelessness in America's Cities: A 25-City Survey, December 2002.
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Washington DC: United States Conference of Mayors. 3.Bonanno, A., L. Busch, W.
Friedland, L. Gouveia, and E. Mingione, eds. 1997. Food Security and Agricultural Trade
under NAFTA. Minneapolis: Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
Myth 12: 1.Shue, Henry. 1980. Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign
Policy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.