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May
4
Growing Hunger Seen as a Problem of the Will
May 4, 2008 |
It is not a lack of capacity to produce food, but a lack of will that is causing an increase in hunger after a rise in food prices, says a Vatican spokesman.Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, analyzed the ethical causes and consequences of the “spirling increase in grain prices,” on the most recent episode of the weekly Vatican Television program “Octava Dies.”
Father Lombardi recalled that in 2000 “the biggest summit of heads of state in history solemnly proclaimed the ‘Millennium Declaration’ that spelled out the most urgent goals for humanity to be achieved by 2015.”
“The first was to reduce poverty and hunger by half within this period,” he observed. “Almost eight years have passed, and in recent months a very grave food crisis is developing in many countries because of the vertiginous increase in grain prices. The number of starving and malnourished people is once again beginning to increase rapidly and is threatening to reach 1 billion — and this does not seem to be a passing crisis.”
Citing recent studies, Father Lombardi sees three principal causes of this phenomenon: “the distorted market caused by the agricultural subsidies in rich countries; the new production of biofuels brought on by environmental concerns; the increased consumption of meat in big countries like China and India, in which a large part of agricultural production is no longer directly dedicated to grains for human consumption.”
According to Father Lombardi, “Food is not physically lacking in the world, nor is the capacity to produce it. Rather, what is lacking is the will to, first of all, resolve the most grave problem, namely, providing the poor with enough to eat. Other things, other concerns take its place.”
“Military expenses, for example, continue to grow. Other interests control the game in our world despite the Millennium Summit’s having correctly singled out and proclaimed the primary objective,” the Vatican aide added.
“But a declaration is one thing, and the hard reality is another,” he concluded. “We now look to a new summit of the FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization] in June to deal with the food problem. This is another opportunity that we must not let get away because in the meantime too many of the poor are dying.” Courtesy Zenit.org
