The Globalization of Indifference: Who Cares About the Poor and Hungry?

We waste one third of the food we produce and 842 million people, that's one person in every eight human beings, go to bed hungry every night. One in four children are stunted by malnutrition while almost 500 million people are obese (see this spot video).

That's the kind of world we live in. 

Yesterday, on the occasion of World Food Day, celebrated here in Rome at the headquarters of FAO, a United Nations specialized agency dedicated to food and agriculture, Pope Francis had these magnificent words to stigmatize our culture of waste and the lack of solidarity: "the globalization of indifference".

To waste food is like stealing from the poor, he said, and "homeless people dying on our streets is no longer news" (see the UK Telegraph's report on the Pope's address here). And you can visit the Pope's Facebook page here (and like it, I did!)

 As he put it, we slowly "grow used to the suffering of the other, as if it were normal" (italics added).

 It's not normal. And it's about time we did something about this, all of us, in our personal lives. And that our politicians woke up to the problem.

The Italian Minister of Agriculture, Nunzia de Girolamo, who attended the World Food Day meeting yesterday noted that Italy had 400,000 persons suffering from hunger and that €5 million Euros had been set aside for them in the new economic "stability law". Sounds good. But this contrasts with the € 61 billion destined in the same law to the military expenditures of the Italian Ministry of Defense (that include 130 fighter-bomber planes). 

Speaking of guns vs. butter, that's a lot of guns and very little butter!

Don't you agree?
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Comments

GiuseppeBonannodiLinguaglossa.info said…
Ieri alla conferenza per la presentazione della legge di Stabilità c'erano Alfano, Letta, Saccomanni ed il sorridente Ministro della Difesa Mauro che ha salvato i 61 miliardi di Euro di spesa in armamenti di guerra di cui 90 caccia Bombardieri F35 e 40 Caccia Bombardieri Euro Fighter. Alla faccia dei 4,5 milioni di poveri in Italia.
October 17, 2013 at 2:12 PM
Anonymous said…
Watching from Canada, I say you need only look at the current situation in the US to know these problems will never be solved. I'm not usually so negative, but I've lived in Mali, spend a lot of time in Mexico and know from those experiences that the world's in bad shape.
October 17, 2013 at 4:56 PM
Unknown said…
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October 18, 2013 at 7:29 AM
Claude Forthomme said…
Thanks, Giuseppe, for your comment, it was thanks to you and your blog that I realized what was going on in Italy with those incredible plans the government has on military expenditures in spite of the on-going recession and problems with the debt.

It truly boggles the mind to see politicians who think nothing of spending €61 billion in military expenditures including the purchase of 90 F35 bombers from the US and 40 Bomber-fighter planes from the EU, the so-called Euro Fighter.And this at a time when the government can't find any funds to stimulate the economy and help the needy. All it does is throw peanuts at the Italian economy!!

And as you say, the 4.5 million poor people in Italy be damned!
October 18, 2013 at 9:16 AM
Claude Forthomme said…
emandyves, I hadn't realized you live in Canada, that is a (relative) haven from political hubris - but you're right, the situation is dire worldwide, including in the US even though the Americans have in principle enough means to solve the problems, but they don't apply them, I guess, because they don't want to...
October 18, 2013 at 9:19 AM
Claude Forthomme said…
Thanks Thiru Moorthy for the visit!
October 18, 2013 at 9:19 AM
Jack Durish said…
I remember that during the late 1950's, the Soviets began purchasing wheat from the United States. We believed that they were forced to turn to the US for help because their farm collectives simply couldn't produce enough food to feed their people. Anti-communists gloated that this was just another example of the failures of communism. Only later we learned that they had plenty of wheat of their own. It was rotting in the fields and in storage silos. It was a different kind of failure, one of distribution, another example of how market-driven solutions are superior.

Again, there is sufficient food to feed the starving masses. And again it seems that central management is failing to deliver it where it is needed. Or, I could be wrong...
October 22, 2013 at 1:59 AM
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