May-July 2000

How Do We Attain True Food Security?

When There's More Than Enough Food
To Go Around, Why Do So Many of Us
Suffer from Malnutrition?

Hunger and starvation. These words evoke haunting images of Ethiopian famine victims a world away from our well-fed lives. In a world where we produce enough food to feed every man, woman, and child four pounds a day, why does malnutrition still stalk the land?

• Worldwide, 1.2 billion people are underfed and 760 million are chronically hungry
  
  
• In this country, some 30 million people -- most of them children -- can't afford a healthy diet
  

But that's only half the story. For malnutrition is not just an affliction of the poor. In fact, as many people suffer from eating too much of the wrong kinds of foods as from eating too little of everything.

• Half of all Americans are overweight and a quarter are dangerously obese
  
  
• Worldwide, 1.2 billion people are overweight. Half of humanity lacks essential vitamins and minerals
  
  
• More than half of all diseases are attributable to poor diet
  

Whether we eat too much or too little, our eating habits are often driven by a sense of insecurity. Not enough time to prepare our own food, to shop wisely, to watch what we eat. Tempted by ads and fashions to eat what we least need and to skip what would best nourish us. Do we eat because we're hungry or because we're feeling bored, anxious, or lonely?

Do human beings have a right to "food security"? (Is there any more fundamental right?) What would it take to assure every human being receives an adequate diet? Whose responsibility is it to ensure that supply and how can it be efficiently distributed to those most in need?

How can we increase the food supply to meet the demands of a growing and increasingly affluent population? Will genetically engineered foods propel a new "Gene Revolution" to match the productive but environmentally costly Green Revolution of a generation ago? Or should we switch to "sustainable agriculture," forswearing pesticides in favor of more natural, "organic" practices?

Who grows the food we eat and what is their relation to the land they cultivate? Right now, most is grown on vast corporate plantations harvested by migrant laborers working for minimal wages under back-breaking conditions. Meanwhile, family farms that were once the backbone of our culture are rapidly going the way of the buffalo. What will be lost if they disappear? How can we revive them?

In May through June of 2000, MMP mounted a public education campaign to raise awareness about these issues. In all we scheduled and completed 214 interviews, of which 39 were nationally, globally, or regionally syndicated. More than two-thirds were broadcast on commercial radio, where such issues are seldom given an informed airing. Sixty-one nationally known authorities were interviewed on such topics as the right to healthy food, hunger and malnutrition at home and abroad, organic and sustainable agriculture, genetically engineered foods, preservation of small farms, urban agriculture, agribusiness and public relations, the dangers of pesticides and herbicides, and the globalization of agriculture.

Guest Speakers by Topic

A Place at the Table: The Human Right to Healthy Food

Anuradha Mittal, Policy Director, Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy

Peter Rosset, Executive Director, Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy

Diseases of Poverty, Ailments of Affluence: Hunger and Malnutrition at Home and Abroad

Domestic:

Gary Gardner, Senior Researcher, Worldwatch Institute; Author

Douglas O'Brien, Director, Public Policy and Research, America's Second Harvest

Lynn Parker, Director, Nutrition Policy and Child Nutrition Program, Food Research and Action Center

International:

Rev. David Beckmann, President, Bread for the World

Lucas van den Broeck, Program Director, Action Against Hunger

Feeding Frenzy: The Unbalanced American Diet

Patricia Bertron, Nutrition Consultant, Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine

Joel Fuhrman, Member, Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine

David Schardt, Center for Science in the Public Interest

Sustainable and Organic Agriculture: Can We Feed the World and Still Nourish the Earth?

Jill Auburn, Director, Sustainable Agriculture & Research Education Program, U.S. Department of Agriculture

Chris Campany, Organizer, National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture

Paul Faeth, Director, Economics and Population Program, World Resources Institute; Member, Sustainable Agriculture Task Force, President's Council on Sustainable Development

Paula Ford, Coordinator, USDA Sustainable Agriculture and Education Program

Joan Gussow, Professor Emerita, Nutrition and Education, Columbia University

Liana Hoodes, Associate Director, Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture

Kim Kroll, Associate Director, USDA Sustainable Agriculture and Research Education Program

Brian Leahy, Executive Director, California Certified Organic Farmers

Mark Lipson, Policy Program Director, Organic Farming Research Foundation; Member, USDA Advisory Committee on Agricultural Biotechnology

Amy Little, Executive Director, Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture

Danila Oder, Food Irradiation Consultant, Organic Consumers Association

Genetically Engineered Foods: The Promise and Perils of Reconstructing Nature

Charles Benbrook, President, Benbrook Consulting

Gabriella Flora, Program Associate for Agricultural Biotechnology, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Margaret Mellon, Program Director, Agriculture and Biotechnology Program, Union of Concerned Scientists; Author

Ronnie Cummins, National Director, Organic Consumers Association

Michael Hansen, Research Associate, Consumer Policy Institute; Member, USDA Advisory Committee on Agricultural Biotechnology

Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director, Center for Food Safety and The International Center for Technology Assessment

Martin Teitel, Director, Council on Responsible Genetics

Saving Small Farms, Caring Communities and an Intimate Relation to the Land

Bill Christison, President, National Family Farm Coalition and Missouri Rural Crisis Center

Leon Crump, State Director, Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund; Farmer

Fred Kirschenmann, President, Kirschenmann Family Farms; Co-Founder, Farm Verified Organic; Member, National Organic Standards Board

Kathy Ozer, Director, National Family Farm Coalition

Duane Perry, Executive Director, Farmers Market Trust

Rhonda Perry, Program Director, Missouri Rural Crisis Center

Ted Quaday, Program Director, Farm Aid

Concrete and Cauliflower: America's Urban Agriculture

Jac Smit, President, Urban Agricultural Network

Agribiz and the P.R. Game: The Big Just Keep Getting Bigger

A.V. Krebs, Director, Corporate Agribusiness Research Project; Editor, Agribusiness Examiner

John Stauber, Director, Center for Media and Democracy; Editor, PR Watch

Poisoning the Well: Dangers and Alternatives to Pesticides and Herbicides

Theo Colborn, Director, Wildlife and Contaminants Program, World Wildlife Fund; Author

Jay Feldman, Director and Founder, Beyond Pesticides/National Coalition Against Misuse of Pesticides

Rebecca Goldburg, Scientist, Environmental Defense Fund

Jacqueline Hamilton, Senior Project Attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council

Susan Kegly, Program Coordinator and Staff Scientist, Pesticide Action Network North America

Marion Moses, Director, Pesticide Education Center

Richard Mott, Senior Analyst, World Wildlife Fund

Jane Rissler, Senior Staff Scientist, Union of Concerned Scientists

Gina Solomon, Physician; Senior Scientist, Natural Resources Defense Council

David Wallinga, Senior Scientist, Public Health Program, Natural Resources Defense Council

Food Fights: Free Trade, Fair Trade and the Globalization of American Agribiz

Kristin Dawkins, Director, Global Governance Program, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy; Author

Debra Harry, Executive Director, Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism; Board Member, Council for Responsible Genetics

Deborah James, Director, Fair Trade Program, Global Exchange; Board Chair, Fair Trade Federation

Sophia Murphy, Program Director, Trade and Agriculture Program, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Additional Participants (local contacts)

Bill Harris, Café Campesino

Rhonda Janks, Associate Professor and Extension Specialist, Kansas State University

Martin Richards, Member, Community Farm Alliance; Farmer

Gilles Stockton, Rancher, Member, Northern Plains Resource Council