[ Americans have plenty to give ]

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Jun 14, 2002 by Capital-Journal

Hunger Awareness Day, the first so dubbed, was June 5. It was co- sponsored by the America's Second Harvest and American Farm Bureau Federation.

Each of those organizations is the largest in its respective field.

According to America's Second Harvest (also known as A2H), hunger is real to millions of Americans. It reports that 80 percent of the food banks affiliated with A2H report increases in demand for food assistance in the last year.

Hunger amid plenty is an old reality of our weary world. I recall in 1968 seeing women on the docks of Recife, Brazil, sorting through and scraping out sometimes the contents of our ships' garbage cans. Women also came aboard to the porthole of our galley to beg. Although I was a radarman, I was serving my prescribed time as a cook's helper. I handed out all the fried chicken and bread I could get away with, although later our own rations would be pretty slim due to the lone nature of our intelligence mission to a number of Third World nations in communist-fomented turmoil, including Angola.

I saw even more graphic hunger in India later that year. Swarms of stunted street urchins would confront sailors as we disembarked on the piers. We were issued strict orders not to give these unfortunates so much as a dime or a bite of candy. The throng of little ones would accidentally suffocate and crush to death anyone seen handing out anything as they rushed to be the next lucky recipient.

That was tough walking through that crowd.

So, later when I became a "farm writer" for daily newspapers, I always shuddered inwardly when I heard American farmers complain about our giving away the seed and agronomic technologies to foreign farmers whose production would then compete against ours. I hear that said even today, although less frequently than in the early 1980s, when export markets were said to be a cure for our surplus crops, low prices and rising costs. I cringed because I thought idealistically that the starving masses I saw in Africa, India and South America might have a better chance being fed by their own farms than by us. What is probably closer to the truth is that the needy probably would have continued to be desperate in either case and continue to suffer diminished quality and quantity of life.

The problem is generally distribution, or access to food, which is linked to ability to pay.

I really thought, and still do, that it is immoral to withhold means to enable the hungry to feed themselves, even if it means reduced profits. No seed or equipment company has paid me a cent to write one word on their behalf. So when I say it's crummy to suggest that we should have kept our competitors dependent on us for food, go ahead and hate me. I don't care. Back here at home we've always been fond of the saying that it's far better to teach a boy how to fish than to give him a fish each day. Besides, a hungry enemy is willing to eat your lunch and he'll resent you until he gets it done.

I'm simply saying I saw dozens of mothers scraping garbage cans in peacetime Brazil, and because of that I'm not against their nation growing some corn and soybeans, assuming some of it would feed them.

I joke with friends about that television ad in which the woman who played Archie Bunker's daughter, Gloria, years ago pleads to help feed the hungry. Gloria, as have many of us, has grown portly. The joke is that Gloria could feed five hungry kids indefinitely if she gave up just one of her own meals a day. You could say that about a lot of us.

To help buy some food for some hungry Americans, one may call A2H at (800) 771-2303.

Jim Suber is a former staff writer for The Topeka Capital- Journal. He is an independent regional columnist who writes about rural life and agricultural issues.

See SUBER, page 2

Suber: Americans have plenty to give