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| Feeding hungry is what U.S. farmers do best and do first |
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Feeding the hungry is what farmers do best, do first, and do with great pride. And yet many men, women, and children go hungry every day of every year in every country. Maybe even your neighbors and communities have hit hard times and feel the hunger pangs in ways they’ve never known before.
Despite the debate about using field corn for ethanol, it’s important to know that there is enough food to go around – and then some. In fact, corn growers routinely have stocks that carry over from one harvest year to the next, sometimes well over 1 billion bushels.
One of the challenges in feeding the hungry is getting food where it needs to go in a timely and affordable fashion.
According to a research paper presented recently at World Water Week in Stockholm, another problem we face is the fact that there is a lot of wasting of food products – not a production crisis. This paper was presented by the Stockholm International Water Institute, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and the International Water Management Institute.
“The amount of food produced on farmers’ fields is much more than is necessary for a healthy, productive and active life for the global population,” the report says. “Clearly, distribution of food is a problem – many are hungry, while at the same time many overeat.”
The report states that losses and wastage may be in the order of 50 percent from the time it leaves growers’ fields and reaches consumers’ forks. That’s quite a significant tally. The report states that this figure does not include crops that go to other uses, such as biofuels.
Closer to home, Associated Press reporters Chris Leonard and Catherine Tsai write about how an aging and inadequate transportation infrastructure has kept U.S. grains from reaching export markets.
“Across the country, from grain elevator to grain elevator, golden wheat and corn are … waiting for a railcar to haul them to market,” they write.
In their story, Leonard and Tsai tally just some of the high costs of delays. For instance, barge delays added an average $72.6 million annually to cost of shipping goods down the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, according to an Army Corps of Engineers analysis.
At the National Corn Growers Assoc., we worked hard for years to pass the Water Resources Development Act, which provides authorization for a 15-year project that includes the construction of seven locks on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers. Now, we are working to make sure Congress funds the most important projects quickly.
The U.S. agricultural community is doing what we can to help feed the world.
Other entities need to recognize, accept and remove bottlenecks and speed transportation of grain cargo – and remove roadblocks caused by governmental bureaucracy and political corruption in countries where hunger is prevalent. It is crucial to assure the hungry are fed.
This is something we all need to work on together. Those of us who grow and produce food are already contributing by producing record crops.
Let’s pull together – instead of attacking one another – and address the real issues that keep the hungry from being fed.
Rick Tolman
Chief Executive Officer
National Corn Growers Assoc. |
| 9/17/2008 |
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