The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) will open a meeting of presidents and heads of state in Rome on November 1 3th. This World Food Summits expected to rededicate the world's leadership, both governmental and private, to the awesome task of eradicating hunger.
The long-term success of the World Food Summit will turn on the ability of societies to mobilize their resources in the fight against hunger and malnutrition. This year's annual World Food Day teleconference, People Power: Harvest of Hope, focuses on the lessons we can learn from the experience of grassroots organizations and poor people themselves. The World Food Day Study/Action Packet cites some instructive grassroots projects, and the international panel have first hand experience in such work in every part of the world. Successful community action, it is increasingly apparent, shows us how we can effectively contribute as individuals at the crucial local level. We may be guided by three overriding considerations:
1) The intractability of world hunger demonstrates that the problem will not be adequately altered by current top-down-only strategies. A wide variety of specialized institutions, conferences, development strategies, financial investments and campaigns has only reduced the number of chronically undernourished people from 941 million in 1970 to 800 million today. Much of the continuing problem can be attributed to population increase, but the fact remains that one in seven people on earth are hungry. Apart from the special circumstances of war and natural disaster, poverty is the overwhelming cause of hunger.
At the moment enough food is produced globally to provide everyone an adequate diet if available foods were equitably distributed. But even this unrealized balance of people to food is threatened by relentless population increases in poor developing countries, the loss of more and more arable land to pollution, erosion and urban development, the limits on the amount of new land to open up and reduced prospects of the Green Revolution.
2) Case studies from around the world demonstrate how different and imaginative self-help movements can be and how various support institutions have effectively assisted grassroots groups. Untold numbers of individuals are innovatively fighting food insecurity alone or, more often, by banding together to grow more food, improve their diets, earn disposable income to purchase food and do what they can to protect their environment.
Poor people, of course, cannot be expected to go it alone. They live in abject conditions and are largely illiterate and weakened by sub-standard health. They are often forced to degrade their surroundings to survive. Of the rural poor, 1 3 percent are estimated to be landless, with another 60 percent "nearly landless." Poor people in poor lands lack access to credit and the services that empower people in the modern sector. But they do know their own world and they do know what it takes to survive.
3) If real progress is to be made, it must become the moral, economic and social responsibility of everyone to help chronically hungry people who are struggling to help themselves. Poor and hungry people may be found in virtually every community on earth, including affluent ones. Fifty years of persistent hunger during a period of unprecedented technological progress suggests that nothing less than a people's crusade against hunger is needed to achieve food security for 800 million marginalized persons.
People Power: Harvest of Hope was selected as this year's theme because the grassroots are where the hungry are and where solutions may be found. What can we learn from the striving of poor people? First and foremost we must listen to what they have to say, find out what their priori-ties are and respect their felt needs. It is now increasingly recognized that assistance without consultation and partnership is a prescription for failure.
Overall, case studies illustrate how, at a time of widespread disillusionment with government-to-government assistance, the non-governmental organizations (NGOs), both in developing and industrialized countries, have emerged as perhaps the most innovative agents of grassroots development.
NGOs mobilize and focus available financial and non-financial resources, adapt planning to local conditions and give the participants a sense of ownership and responsibility. While high motivation among the poor cannot be quantified, democratic grassroots movements have found no dearth of people ready to help themselves. It seems fair to say, then, that millions of people at the bottom could better their lives if other sectors of society helped create more of an opportunity. The establishment of a worldwide, participatory grassroots movement calls for more than changes of development theory. Rather, by definition, it depends on the active participation of us all. What are individuals prepared to do to assist the hungry in their own community? What can people do to rally their neighbors to confront the universal problem of hungry?
A distinguished panel of experts on this year's teleconference will discuss the role and prospects of grassroots activism from an international perspective. Developing countries in particular have examples of self-help that have application in poor communities everywhere. In preparing the "middle hour" panels and discussions, teleconference sites are urged to consider the impact of our food policies and programs on the needy at home and in needy communities overseas. A study of grassroots development examples leads to many questions. For example, we know that in most cases, poor people in many places repay loans at the astonishingly high rate of 98 percent. Is it too much to ask local and international lending institutions to make credit avail-able to poor people?
Can U.S. consumers make choices that could assist a poor farmer in Latin America or a small craftsperson in Africa? Alternative trading organizations, as part of a small but growing marketing movement in industrialized nations, give small, developing-country cooperatives a fair price for their exports. How can their products be made available in local communities?
Urban agriculture, a largely unrecognized phenomenon, is practiced by roughly 800 million urbanites around the world. Should U.S. urban communities encourage poor people to grow food to supplement food dollars?
As the responsibility for meeting local needs is shifted to the states, local communities and charities, can the lessons of self-reliance around the world be applied to problems here at home? What can each of us do to contribute to hunger-free communities?
While heads of state consider global food security at the World Food Summit, the teleconference is a chance to discover ways the people can be part of the global solution.