This article appeared in the MetroWest Daily News

June 24, 2008

McGovern: Addresing the global food crisis
By Jim McGovern and Madhu Sridhar

As world leaders met the first week in June in Rome to tackle the global food crisis, there rightly has been much debate about long-term solutions to bring down soaring food prices. But with the world's poor, especially children, currently suffering from hunger in ever greater numbers, let us not forget our obligation to relieve their pain today. The United States is the world's wealthiest nation and the largest donor of emergency food aid. We have a special moral imperative to lead efforts to solve the crisis.

There are systems already on the ground that can bring food immediately and directly to the world's most vulnerable populations. Yet rising food prices have compelled relief organizations to cut back their support in the developing world. Last month, food price inflation forced the World Food Program to shut down its acclaimed school breakfast program in Cambodia, depriving 450,000 children of meals at a time when their families are counting every grain of rice.

With the cost of staple foods at record highs, an estimated 290 million people are threatened by rising food prices. In India alone, food price inflation may cause up to 1.8 million more children to become malnourished. India is already home to one-third of the hungry children in the world, with its rate of child malnutrition almost double that of Sub-Saharan Africa. Hunger is also one of the main reasons that 13.5 million Indian children are out of school, as many impoverished households have their children work in order to make ends meet. And even if they make it to school, malnourished children are not able to concentrate on their lessons.

School meals not only relieve short-term child hunger, but also provide long-term educational benefits and help break the cycle of poverty. An evaluation in Bangladesh has found that schools with feeding programs experience increases of over 14 percent in student enrollment and over 15 percent in achievement test scores. The World Food Program has reported that school feeding programs increase school enrollment by an average of 22 percent.

In India, all government primary schools are required to provide their students with free school lunches every day. In India, as in the rest of the world, school lunch programs have been demonstrated to provide many benefits above and beyond simple nutrition. The largest non-governmental organization to partner with the Indian government to provide these lunches, the Akshaya Patra Foundation, has also found that school meals lead to increased enrollment and retention of children in school as well as improved student performance.

While our leaders in Washington, D.C. have made some strides in fighting hunger, including successfully increasing funding for the Nutrition Title of the Farm Bill by over $10 billion, the bill reduced the mandatory funding to feed hungry school children in the developing world by more than 90 percent. We need to ask ourselves as a country why, as the food crisis continues, we deprive children of what is often their only solid meal of the day.

The only thing crueler than not feeding a hungry child is to feed that child for a while and then stop. As millions of families and children in the developing world fall into poverty and hunger due to the global food crisis, our leaders, whether in Rome or in Washington, D.C., must boost their support for the world's hungry children.

U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-MA, is an honorary member of the Akshaya Patra Foundation USA Advisory Board. Madhu Sridhar is president and CEO of the Akshaya Patra Foundation USA.