Farmers Unite Against Hunger

We’ve all heard the expression: “I’m not trying to solve world hunger here; I’m just trying to …”

Hunger. It’s an issue so pervasive and complex—widespread and close to home; ageless yet ever-changing— that it’s become the epitome of unsolvable problems in our everyday speech. Hunger can be as painfully obvious as famine in a third-world country, or as clandestine as the kids next door counting on the local school lunch program for their main source of nourishment.

The numbers are staggering. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FOA), worldwide about 850 million people are chronically hungry due to poverty, while up to 2 billion lack food security intermittently due to varying local economies, local climate change, and lack of infrastructures to distribute and store food.

The paradox: While direct food aid is inefficient and unsustainable, the reality is that urgent situations need it—hunger won’t wait. Yet food aid can create a dependency that weakens incentives for recipients to proactively improve local situations.

Unsolvable as it might seem, promising progress is being made by ongoing efforts of none other than those who produce food in world’s food basket: America’s farmers and ranchers.

Locally, nationally, and globally—farmers unions are taking on the issue of food security, helping members improve the efficiency of food aid while they educate people worldwide on how to produce the food and infrastructure they need.

Here’s a look at some of the successful practices and programs that famers’ unions have developed and supported in a steady effort to improve food security and, ultimately, eradicate hunger.

Feeding North Dakota

It’s ironic that in the state with the strongest economy, the lowest unemployment rate and the fastest job growth rate in the country, census data still showed a rise in poverty in 2010 over 2009.

And a recent article in the Fargo Forum newspaper reported that Participation in the National School Lunch Program is up 10 percent in the last decade for Fargo and West Fargo while Moorhead’s rate increased by 5-10 percent last year, according to the districts’ figures.

Many variables are creating pockets of poverty and lack of access to good food even in the land of plenty, including an increase in the number of new Americans in the region’s largest cities and a lack of affordable housing in western oil-boom towns cutting into family food budgets.

In the battle against hunger, what better group is there to step forward than the growers and livestock producers across the region? That’s exactly what’s happening. Farmers and ranchers in different states have different ways of contributing, said Claudia Svarstad, vice president of National Farmers Union (NFU).  “Our union members in Oklahoma often donate animals and cover the butchering. Some members pledge produce from a certain percent of their land every year. Other states have “gleaners” who volunteer to harvest crops that for various reasons would otherwise be left in the field.”

North Dakota Farmers Union (NDFU), established in 1927 and headquartered in Jamestown, has established and urged participation in a number of successful programs for years. At its core, NDFU’s main mission is the prosperity of family farms, ranches and rural communities—and that includes taking care of each other and the community in need.

NDFU President Elwood “Woody” Barth said, “While our family-farm and ranch organization members realize  we produce very high-quality products, they also understand completely that people even right here in our own communities as well as around the world sometimes don’t have the means to purchase those food products.“ To meet urgent needs, Barth said that local co-ops and NDFU are continuously contributing goods and produce to local food banks.

And Barth believes that a combination of education and neighbors-helping-neighbors has made a difference in rural North Dakota. “There’s a definite downward trend [in hunger] in many ND rural communities because farmers and ranchers in ND have seen some of the best profits the past several years that they’ve seen in agriculture because of the prices and crops. The wet weather in many communities this past year [2011] might affect that and so our staff is really looking into how we can be of assistance, and help our members help each other.”

Roger Johnson, NFU president and former North Dakota agriculture commissioner, says that education and awareness are both extremely important in fighting hunger.

“It’s been my experience that people close to people that are hungry don’t see it,” Johnson said. “What you have in North Dakota right now is what economists might call an unbalanced economy, or disequilibrium,” he said. “There is an acute demand for a lot of workers. It drives up wages. And while wage pressure is, of course, good overall, people need to realize that the economy lags. You suddenly have a brand new demand on limited resources like housing competing with family food budgets. The economy will catch up, but during this adjustment you’ll have folks who are hungry in the land of plenty.”

Johnson says people need to “think to look” for the problem, and that both NFU and NDFU are working hard to raise awareness. “It’s a very simple message of looking out for your neighbors, which is at the heart of the famers’ unions…and it’s a common thing in the history and people of North Dakota, too. But education and awareness are key.” That’s what the farm organizations do, he said, and that while organizations across each state might do it a bit differently, they’re all involved in outreach.

Feeding America

A formal program supported by NFU is titled “Feeding America” and the efficiency of the program in providing food and education where needed is proving to be among the best practices in fighting hunger. Feeding America’s network members supply food to more than 37 million Americans each year, including 14 million children and 3 million seniors.

NFU’s Svarstad heads up the program efforts there and helps ensure member participation. Svarstad says that on average every dollar that comes in to Feeding America is converted into food worth $17 in retail value because of the company’s fine-tuned business practices and ongoing commitment to efficiency.

“Feeding America works with corporations and producers that have excess food, or food that’s coming to the end of its shelf life. So the food is mostly donated, or provided at very low cost. That lets Feeding America spend money on the efficiency of distribution,” Svarstad said.

Feeding America also controls much of the distribution and is able to drive down costs through negotiation and donation agreements.

In addition, contributions to Feeding America are sometimes met by a match, such as a recent $50,000 matching gift from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation whereby every dollar given to Feeding America through the National Farmers Union was doubled.

The math: Take a $50,000 contribution, add a matching gift, and you’ve turned it into $100,000. Then consider that each dollar, because of efficient practices and expertise, is turned into $17 worth of retail-value food. The result is virtually $ 1,700,000 worth of food from $50,000 in donations from union members.

Of course, there will always be a need for local food banks to receive gifts of food from the local community. But the efficiency of the Feeding America program has been so impressive that Svarstad said when she knows of an effort or group considering donating to urgent food aid, she encourages them to consider a monetary donation to Feeding America instead of, or in addition to donating food itself.

In addition, Svarstad said that NFU has been involved in a “farmer-to-farmer” program to exchange best practices and be more successful in local production to strengthen food security in every community. That program requires time versus monetary contribution, but education and local food security are, after all, the ultimate weapons in fighting hunger.

And Johnson pointed out that NFU’s education efforts are coming to fruition even among the youngest members. NFU holds an all-states national camp annually for leading senior youth. The camp’s prevalent focus is civic responsibility. Each year, the kids donate proceeds from co-op stores to nonprofits. Last summer they elected to give it to those in need through the Feeding America program.

Feeding the World

Though the average amount per capita varies from year to year, over the past decade statistics have shown that the world produces enough food to feed everyone. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, worldwide agriculture produced 17 percent more calories per person in 2002 than it did in 1972—at 2,720 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day—despite a 70 percent population increase.

The fundamental problems causing hunger are poor local economies, inadequate infrastructures for storage and distribution, and that many people in the world do not have the land, means or education to produce enough, or the income to purchase nutritious food. In some countries the very people who labor to produce food are exploited or not allowed to consume it.

“Ironically, many of the hungry in other parts of the world are farmers…and that suggests all kinds of policy implications of things that should and should not be done to reduce hunger,” said NFU’s Johnson.” But clearly one thing that has to be done is to build economic capacity.”

Wars, climate change, and exploited farmers who simply do not get a fair price for produce in third-world—or even developing countries; all contribute to the plight of the farmer.

Robert Carlson, who was president at NDFU from 1997-2010 and now is now president of World Farmers’ Organisation, has seen the problems of farming and hunger from regional, national, and worldwide views.  He said that while NDFU has for years involved members in food drives and regional food-bank donations, the organization has always worked to educate members on local needs and long-term solutions, with increasing focus on education over the past decade.

During his presidential term at NDFU, Carlson said the organization gave significantly to worldwide hunger relief and education efforts. Particularly of note were two major projects through the international humanitarian organization CARE which fights global poverty:

• In 2002, NDFU teamed up with CARE to lead one of the first major outreaches from the United States to Afganistan after September 11, 2001 to ease hunger among war widows and children. NDFU spearheaded the drive to raise money to buy 52,000 bushels of North Dakota wheat. Of the more than $180,000 raised, NDFU contributed $75,000 — the balance was donated by North Dakota residents, along with additional donations from out of-state contributors. The North Dakota State Mill and Elevator milled the wheat into 1,000 metric tons of fortified flour. CHS Cooperatives covered the milling and bagging costs, while Duetsche Post World Net provided transportation.

• In 2007, NDFU and CARE began to raise at least $50,000 to educate the Shuar (Shh-WARE) people.

• southeastern Ecuador’s Morona Santiago province on sustainable production. The Shuar’s traditional aja (Ah-ha), or “family garden”, once served as a successful food-supply, as well as an intergenerational connection in which women would pass food-growing traditions and techniques to daughters. But the aja system has been weakened by the introduction of modern farming practices that are often harmful to the ecosystem, and food security undermined by exploration of the natural resources of the region. Under the program, the Shuar women have significantly improved their families’ food security, while preserving their environment and renewing the value attached to the knowledge and tradition of the aja.

The latter example is akin to efforts that Carlson now focuses on as president of World Farmers Organisation.

“The World Farmers Organisation focuses most of its effort on improving farming methods, storage, and transportation so that those with poor food security now can do a better job of feeding themselves and increase farm income to improve entire community economy,” Carlson said.

Improving the Fight

Locally, nationally and worldwide—as pointed out by leaders at NDFU, NFU, and WFO—a sea-change has been underway to focus less on short-term fixes and more on solving underlying issues.

Organizations are working to drive down dependencies on long-term food aid with more investment in efforts that educate farmers and food producers, support sustainable practices, and help build stronger local economies.

To make the most of your contributions and efforts to fight hunger, reconsider your own giving practices:

• Educate yourself about underlying causes of hunger in your community and beyond, and get involved to help eliminate those causes.
• Get involved with your local and national Farmers Union to help education and support more efficient food production from your neighborhood to the world.
• Encourage community gardens, or donate garden or farm land to be used for local food production.
• Instead of donating food you’ve purchased at retail, consider giving to an organization that can make the most of, and even multiply your contributions—such as Feeding America.
• Look for sources of wasted produce (gardens, farms, retail outlets) and connect them with agencies that can use their goods.

For more information….

North Dakota Farmers Union
www.ndfu.org

800-366-8331

(701) 252-2341 or (800) 366-8331

National Farmers Union

www.nfu.com
(202) 554-1600

Feeding America

www.feedingamerica.org
(800) 771-2303

World Farmers Organisation

www.worldfarmersorganisation.com