Ebony's Pearls

Strawberries!
Originally uploaded by nodigio

There are many things we can do to help end world hunger, in our backyards and all around the world. A lot of it has to be done by governments, but there are also things individuals and small groups can do. I've already talked a lot about individual efforts. Here are just 9 of the governmental and global suggestions I have to help mitigate world huner and set us on a path to ending it. These should all actually occur more or less simultaneously, so there really is no particular order for them.

First, governments should stop subsidizing food crops for non-food use and forcing croplands to lie fallow because the farmer isn’t legally allowed to grow anything else there. Farmers should be able to grow whatever food crops their lands will support without facing heavy fines for diversifying.

Second, governments should either stop passing and enforcing laws that cripple urban farmers, small farmers, and medium sized farmers or they should actively support such small-scale farmers growing diverse crops.

Third, the government needs to stop patenting living materials like seeds. In conjunction with this, governments need to ban terminator seed technology and stop prosecuting farmers whose crops get contaminated with patented seeds. Those farmers certainly didn’t choose to contaminate their crops with these designer, wanton seeds and if the seed researchers can’t find a way to stop their seeds from being promiscuous, they’ll just have to accept they’ll have bastard seedlings.

Fourth, governments need to rethink their trade arrangements concerning food.

Fifth, all countries should implement programs to bolster basic nutrition for their citizens through school feeding programs and food aid to the poor, elderly, and ill; and contribute to a world bank of food aid that is allowed to enter and distribute food to people in disaster and famine areas. This means each country should have a food bank from which they can feed their poor and from which they can share in times of crisis.

Sixth, we need to reduce oil dependency on food crop growing – when it takes 10 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce 1, just one, calorie of food energy, our perception of energy use is seriously skewed and needs to be corrected. We need to flip that so we use far less energy to produce far more food. It’s possible by removing our dependency on oil to grow and fertilize food crops. To do this, we need to actively promote agricultural research and subsidize it both privately and governmentally – food is an essential to life and this makes it a primary government focus. No one will object to spending tax dollars on agricultural research the way we object to our tax dollars lining the pockets of politicians or spent on gratuitous wars.

Seventh, societies and governments need to make the growing of food an attractive act, something like the victory gardens of WWI and WWII. Celebrities can glamorize home food gardening. It wouldn’t take much for script writers to add a few references to home food gardens into sit-coms and TV series and shows. Comedians could add food gardening jokes and anecdotes to their schtick. Employers could encourage employees to care for food gardens in work spaces that would reduce the costs of food in the business cafeterias and cantinas – and they could allow employees to bring excess produce to work to trade and sell in the lobbies. Governments could encourage people to garden in city waste spaces and medians and along the edges of city parks. Landlords could receive tax credits for having roof gardens. Abandoned buildings and warehouses could be used for gardening, setting up fish tanks, raising rabbits and poultry for eggs, fur, and meat. Schools could teach gardening from the earliest grades so children would develop the habit of growing, harvesting, and eating their own food – and the food grown on school grounds could supplement what’s served in the cafeterias. This would improve children’s health by providing them with exercise and outdoor time, increase their education on many levels (math, physics, chemistry, literature, and more are all involved in gardening), and giving them nutritious food to eat.

Eighth, richer countries need to invest in agricultural and energy infrastructures in poorer countries – irrigation control for both floods and drought, roads, communication, transportation, storage, and markets as well as “green-revolution” agriculture designed for their climate and soil conditions, with minimal (and preferably zero) use of oil in food production. Geothermal, solar, and wind energy can help fuel a lot of the needs of farmers without resorting to expensive and depleting oil sources. This infrastructure support includes teaching new and more earth-friendly agricultural methods to everyone and encouraging them to have home gardens as well as market farms. The rich countries benefit because they can import the foods grown by the poorer countries and the poorer countries gain in wealth in turn to buy luxury goods from the wealthier nations. It’s a reciprocating spiral of giving and receiving, buying and selling, importing and exporting.

Ninth, all countries need to abandon their dependency on oil. This ranges from plastics to oil-based fabrics to gasoline fueled transportation. Bio-fuels should also be abandoned as a bad idea. When the choice is to grow food crops for transportation needs or to grow food crops to feed people, people should win.

It’s not going to be quick, easy, or cheap, but in the end, we’ll all be wealthier, fatter, and happier.