Myths about Hunger

       The conceptual origins of "Myths about Hunger" are found in a publication provided by FOOD FIRST in an article entitled "Hunger Is Not a Myth, But Myths Keep Us From Ending Hunger." Food First reminds us that between 400 million and a billion people do not get enough to eat. Of those, twenty million will die. Most of those who die are children.

     Increased food production, advanced agricultural techniques, and billions of dollars in foreign aid are not solving the problem of hunger. Part of the explanation is that foreign aid is inevitably tied to existing "structures of misery" (Michael Harrington, 1984). By becoming aware of the misconceptions associated with hunger, it is hoped that as a world community we can come closer to addressing the true dynamics of hunger.

MYTH #1:     Scarcity – People are hungry because there is not enough food

        Enough grain is grown worldwide to provide every man, woman, and child with 3500 calories per day, which is what the average North American consumes. Enough food is grown in worldwide to provide everyone with an adequate diet.

The one common denominator in every country where hunger is prevalent is that a few powerful people wield an ever tightening control over food production, distribution, and other economic resources . A United Nations study found that in eighty-three countries worldwide, 3 percent of the population controls more than 80 percent of food production. Redistributing control of food production would help to eliminate hunger.

MYTH #2:     Overpopulation – Hunger exists where there are too many people to feed

                Population density by itself does not directly correspond to the prevalence of hunger. Food First notes that Bolivia has six times as much land under cultivation (per person) as China while 45 percent of Bolivia's people are hungry. China, on the other hand, has eliminated widespread hunger.

There are obvious long term problems associated with rapid population growth, but rapid population growth is not in its self a cause of hunger. Rapid population growth is a symptom of poverty . Families who live in poverty give birth to several children to:

Ensure the survival of some children because infant mortality rates are high.

and because poor families depend on children to gather resources.

Overpopulation will cease to be a problem when poverty is no longer a problem.

MYTH #3:     Increased Production – The solution to hunger is to use improved technology to produce more food. Foreign aid facilitates this process.

         Often efforts to increase food production have ended up increasing the prevalence of hunger . Often increased production is financed by First-World countries. Foreign assistance provided by the United States government is often distributed by AID (Agency for International Development).

    Food produced via First-World financing is often exported back to the core leaving the local population more hungry than before the aid arrived in their country.

Although fifty percent of AID's budget goes for agriculture, rural development, and nutrition, AID does not do much to alleviate hunger and malnutrition. AID's concentration in agriculture is designed to increase agricultural production in crops destined for the U.S. and to increase consumption of U.S. technology and farm products like fertilizer and pesticides.

         While local farmers grow, process, and package fresh vegetables for export to more affluent countries that can afford the exports, local hunger and poverty persist and actually increases (Barry et al., 1983:91). Although the aggregate economy of the local government expands, the daily lives of individuals become more desperate. This is a sad contradiction in U.S. policy toward Central America.

Foreign investment distorts the local economy in the following ways .

A.     Further Concentration of Wealth:

        Foreign aid causes a further concentration of wealth in poor countries. Farmers who can benefit from increased production use their profits to buy out poorer farmers or they invest their profits in other sectors of the economy. Land, therefore, is further concentrated in the hands of fewer people.

B.     Problems Associated with Advanced Technology:

       High technology itself is a problem because machinery replaces human labor, thereby creating more unemployment and more poverty.

C.     Inflation:

       The influx of large amounts of money creates other economic problems, such as inflation, thereby further exacerbating the existence of those who have to live at a subsistence level. Inflation occurs when foreign money is used to buy farm implements. When extra money is available to purchase certain items, the price of those items invariably goes up. Money that may originally be intended to improve the immediate conditions of the poor may create a situation where locals can no longer afford to buy necessary items.

MYTH #4:     Foreign Assistance is designed to Alleviate Hunger

     Of course, the assumption that foreign assistance is designed to help the poor, the hungry, and the dispossessed is itself a myth . If the sole reason for foreign aid were to improve the conditions of people living in developing countries, the goal should have already been met in Central America.

      In 1982 alone, El Salvador received enough aid to triple the per capita income of its one million poorest people (Barry et al., 1983: 243).

           The main purpose of foreign aid has never been to help the world's starving masses or to encourage the economic development of the Third-World in a manner that benefits the majority of people who live there. Foreign aid is "an instrument of American national security policy " (Nathan and Oliver, 1985:250). Foreign aid seeks markets for U.S. investment and seeks to short circuit attempts to nationalize U.S. interests. U.S. foreign aid also attempts to arrange treaties so that U.S. interests are further promoted (Barry et al., 1983:83).

While speaking before the House Subcommittee of Foreign Operations, Clarence Long sarcastically characterized U.S. foreign aid as a process that takes "money from the poor in rich nations and gives it to the rich in poor nations" (Barry et al., 1983:111).

             Often, U.S. foreign aid has decisively anti-humanitarian consequences. As First-World demand for agricultural exports increase, the value of Third-World farm land also increases.

MYTH #5:     Land Redistribution – Redistributing control over resources would mean even less food production for the hungry because such redistribution would decrease the efficiency of food production.

Three aspects of centralized ownership act to produce more hunger.

A.     Centralization Discourages Food Production

          Anti-democratic systems of land tenure often leave large tracts of land unused. Food First cites Brazil as an example where most Brazilian land is in the hands of a few owners. In Brazil, only about 15 percent of arable land is under cultivation.

B.     Land Redistribution Encourages Production

           Large scale producers grow less food per acre than do small scale producers. To survive, small scale producers have to cultivate every available acre. Large scale producers, on the other hand, can profit by keeping acreage out of production. Large scale enterprises have significant impact on local economies because they tend to control most of a given commodity. By drying up supplies in specific commodities, the monopolies can cause the price per unit of specific commodities to rise.

          When land ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few, returns from production are seldom invested in making agriculture more productive. Instead, profits are invested in other areas of the economy that can make even more profits for the landowners and further concentrate power and resources.

MYTH #6:     Rich vs. Poor – Providing assistance to hungry people in poor countries is a threat to high standards of living enjoyed by those in rich countries

          The terms "rich country" and "poor country" are not very meaningful when it comes to describing hunger because all countries have hungry people. Furthermore, hunger is not a Third-World issue. The United States has more than twenty million people who are considered hungry while more than two billion pounds of government surplus food sit in storage (Food First).

         Similar economic conditions are in operation to cause hunger in all countries of the world. In the U.S., and Third World countries, small and mid-size farmers are being squeezed out of business because they are unable to compete with corporate farms.
  

          More and more, the economy is a world-economy. Forces that affect poor people in the U.S. are the same ones that affect people in Nicaragua or Southern Africa. When mega-corporations move to Mexico to take advantage of "cheap" labor, poor Mexicans are exploited and Americans lose jobs.

      The poor in foreign lands are not our enemy. They should be our allies in a common effort to achieve secure and satisfying lives. As corporations operate ever more on the world level, labor organizations as well must encourage worker-unity on a world level.

MYTH #7:     Goodwill – Everyone wants to end hunger

        Corporations can benefit from hunger. Keeping land idle can create huge profits. When supplies of a particular commodity are scarce, demand and, therefore, prices rise. While land lies idle, those who are already poor are pushed further into poverty. High levels of poverty and unemployment are good for profits. When many people are desperate for work, none can demand decent wages.

   Governments of countries that have many poor people also benefit from hunger. In some poor countries in Africa, the government can pay as little as 20 percent of the market price for crops.

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