Not everyone can walk their way out of hunger

For every mile you walk, you burn about 250 calories. How much do North Koreans take that into account as they attempt to walk into South Korea and China? Surely they are aware of the shoot-to-kill orders issued to North Korean border guards. On the Chinese side of the border, Chinese border guards invade the homes of ethnic Koreans living in China who may be harboring refugees from starvation.

Biofuels, increased food demand in developing countries and the high cost of fuel are taking the blame for the current world crisis but there are many reasons more people are hungry right now.

Global warming may very well bear the blame for the cyclone that destroyed 65% of Myanmar's rice fields. That same area is responsible for 50% of its poultry and pork production and 85% of its aquaculture.

Global warming is definitely one of the factors responsible for the salmon shortage that is leaving the Stellat'en people in British Columbia with only one salmon for every twenty-five people, not enough to meet their caloric needs. Warmer waters mean fewer salmon spawn. The salmon shortage has involved the region in difficult discussions over catch-sharing and fishing practices. The Tyee.

The 1,100 inhabitants of Christmas island shouldn't be hungry, but the company the island contracts with to deliver food hasn't made a delivery since January. Planes fly over from Australia once a week with small amounts of fresh produce; lettuce is selling for $11 a head.

While the U.S. may be coming to think of the typical Indian as working in a call center, India still has more poor people-- some 600 million-- than any country on earth. Yet farmers are abandoning their farmland and rice fields because they cannot recoup the cost of seeds, fertilizer and pesticides, much of it a result of patented seeds from multinationals like Monsanto, which forbids farmers saving seeds from one harvest to the next. More than 36,000 farmers have committed suicide in the years from 1997 to 2006, the last year for which statistics are available.

Other people around the world are still (and increasingly) dealing with the shortage of rice and the cost of food, exacerbated in many places by poverty and unstable governments. Boarding schools in Zimbabwe are so short of food they are asking students to bring their own groceries. The Ugandan government said this week that increasing competition for scarce food supplies in Kenya and Sudan are leading to shortages in Uganda, also.

Finally, a full belly is one of the first casualties of war. 130,000 Iraqi refugees in Syria received subsidized food aid last month, but the U.N. agency that provides the food is running out of money.

Solutions to hunger exist, but the longer we wait, the more difficult it will become.

Fences both protect and destroy animal habitat

More than 50 years have passed since the end of the Korean War and the establishment of a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. In those 50 years an abundance of plants, bird and animals have thrived in a strip of land only 150 miles long and two and a half miles wide. 97% of the land is now covered by forest and prairie.

Making themselves at home in the DMZ are Asian black bears, spotted seals, lynx, and the rare red-crowned and white-naped cranes, to name a few. Some believe the Siberian tiger has returned to the land where no human live.

In spite of years of separation, a North-South reconciliation seems inevitable. Two rail lines and two highways have been rebuilt across the DMZ. South Korea's Ministry of the Environment says that when reconciliation comes, the DMZ will be preserved for two years until more long-range plans can be developed. What those plans will be is anybody's guess. The international organization the DMZ Forum wants to see the land become a Peace Park, both to protect the land and to honor the many soldiers on both sides who are buried there.

No buffer zone exists between the wood and the steel of the 700 mile fence being built between the U.S. and Mexico. With some 440 miles of fence still to go, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff wants to make sure he completes the job before George Bush leaves office. To that end, he has announced he will be ignoring
36 federal environmental laws.

Animals, of course, are no respecters of borders. Bears, lions, wolves, parrots bighorn sheep and owls cross back and forth as part of their survival. The jaguar, which until recently bred only in Mexico, may just now be establishing a breeding presence in Arizona. Even more than Korea's DMZ, the 2,000 mile long U.S.-Mexician border is able to support a diversity of wildlife because of its diversity of terrain and climate.

The Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife claim Chertoff's waiver of environmental laws is unconstitutional and have appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. They want more time to develop plans to lessen the environmental impact of the wall.

Thus two entirely different human impulses, the yearning for reconciliation by Korea and the demand for isolation by the U.S., threaten habitat that once destroyed may never be remade.

GM crops yield less, not more, food

For the last three years the University of Kansas has been studying genetically modified soybean crops. Professor Barney Gorden in the agronomy department started the study because some farmers in the region who were using genetically modified soybeans said their crop yields were down. So Gorden grew a Monsanto GM version in one field and regular soybeans in another. The GM modified field produced 70 bushels to the 77 bushels produced by the non-modified field-- a 10% difference!

It turned out that the GM crops needed more manganese, and something about the GM Monsanto seeds-- modified to resist Monsanto's own Roundup weedkiller-- prevented the mineral's uptake. The crops recovered when extra manganese was added, but still, the yield only equaled, not exceeded, the yield of the non-modified. Farmers, of course, would have to pay the extra cost of the manganese.

Meanwhile, some countries that have resisted buying GM because of public mistrust are changing their policies. Japan and North Korea have already started importing GM crops, justifying their actions because of rising prices and the global food crisis. Today's New York Times reports that even Europe may be pushed closer to acceptance of GM foods based on their pocketbooks.

The Times article also makes the first reference I've seen to the study I wrote about last week by the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (although the article didn't refer to the group by name). This five year examination and re-envisioning of agricultural production to meet the world's needs had nothing positive to say about the role of genetically modified crops, questioning both their safety and their efficacy.

75% of all the corn grown in the U.S. last year was genetically modified.

Yet another plan the U.S. won't sign- this one to reduce hunger

Fifty years of industrialized farming has not prevented 850 million people from going to bed hungry each night.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development has been working for the last five years to find a better approach to world food production, One would think that a plan developed by 400 scientists, 60 nations, private industry and consumer and activists groups would catch the attention of the U.S. Government, and so it did. The U.S., Canada and Australia rejected the report, among other reasons, because it cautions against expecting genetically modified crops to be a part of the solution, questioning production and safety issues. All three countries are big promoters of GM food, whereas the crops are are banned in Europe.

Other recommendations include:

• Land management practices to limit the effect of global warming
• Limiting the presence of pesticide resideues, heavy metals, hormones, additives antibiotics in the food system
• Sustainable use of resources like water, soil, biodiversity and fossil fuels
• More food production on the local level
• Low impact practices such as organic agriculture
• Shifting biofuels to non-food crops

A very good summary of recommendations can be found at GreenFacts.

I was tipped to this story by the London paper the Daily Mail. Interestingly, I could not find a single reference to the study in any U.S. publication except for Grist. an online environmental magazine.

Although this particular report has gone unheard in this country, aother news about the world hunger crisis is finally making its way into the media and people's consciousness. However, with more bad news everyday, the only thing that may prevent the same kind of public numbness Iraq is receiving is the pale shadow of our own deprivation-- food is still plentiful, just more expensive.

The U.N.'s World Food Program is warning that North Korea's chronic food shortages have been excacerbated by flooding and a disaster may be in the works. The Philippines has put a moratorium on the conversion of farmland to any use but food in an attempt to increase rice production. Wheat prices have gone up 60% in Afghanistan in the last year. And six years of drought in Australia, possibly the result of global warming, have reduced the country's rice crop by 98%.