Taking the Time to Make a Difference

At the time it happened I couldn’t even spell mystified. Something about what mom and dad were talking about just made no sense to me. We had a small farm, and while wheat or oats and corn covered the greatest portion of the acreage, the part that required the greatest amount of effort was the land devoted to tomatoes and potatoes and sweet corn and other plantings. The vegetables were for our table and for sale to others, too. Long rows of potatoes would produce a supply that would last till next year, and there would be a few bushels to sell as well. The tomato patch, with hundreds of plants, would provide what we needed, and bushels and bushels more to be sold at the market. One year, somebody wanted to buy a large quantity of our tomatoes — before they were ripe. They wanted green tomatoes. I was old enough to know that the best things in the world to eat were fresh fruits and vegetables that were ripe, picked minutes – or hours at most – before they were consumed. Somebody wanted green tomatoes — to be shipped long distance, tomatoes that would “ripen” along the way, long after they were torn from the plants that nourished them and the sunlight that infused them with goodness. I was mystified. Good food had become a commodity to be to be exchanged for money.

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The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace issued a report in June entitled “Hunger and the Pursuit of Profit: Food System in Crisis.” According to that report, 860 million people in the world do not have the food they need, and another 100 million people are on the verge of joining them. It’s not the availability. It’s the cost. The Canadian report says the cost of food has risen 83 percent in the past three years. In just a few months — between January and May of 2008, the price of rice tripled in many parts of the world. In the Global South, many people now spend up to 80 percent of their income on food. Why has this happened? “Decision-making power over one of the most primary elements of life – food – has been wrenched from the people who produce and need food, and placed in the hands of the people who profit from its trade,” according to the Canadian report. Furthermore, “the primary factor in global hunger, including the price crisis, is that our food system is deeply entrenched in a model which places commercial interests over ensuring people’s right to food.”

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Everyone, especially the youngest and poorest of the world, has a right to food, and the unborn have a right to life, Pope Benedict XVI said, according to a Catholic News Service story distributed June 2. The right to food is based on an ethical mandate to “feed the hungry,” which reminds people to share their abundance with others out of love, he said.

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Overwhelmed by the statistics? Here are some signs of hope. There is a growing trend toward “eating locally” and we can witness the rise of “community supported agriculture” projects. Sustainable agriculture, as practiced at Seton Harvest in Evansville, makes sense. More than a hundred families have bought into this project, agreeing to pay for the seeds and the plants and the care required, to be rewarded with fresh produce, grown without petro-chemicals and manufactured pesticides, ready for the table fresh from the field.

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For Christian families, the food on our tables is more than a commodity. All of God’s sons and daughters have a right to food. Eating a meal together is a holy event, a pre-courser of “the heavenly banquet” Jesus promised. Take the time to learn more about community supported agriculture. Examine the decisions beneath the global food crisis, and understand that “feeding the hungry” may take much more than sandwiches at the shelter. It will take policy decisions at the capitol to make a difference.

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