Seven Billion People

Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, may be the greatest hero of the twentieth century that most people never heard of. Mention of the Green Revolution today would most likely conjure up images of solar panels and wind farms. But world hunger was the great social issue of the 1960s. It still is, or should be and Dr. Borlaug did more to relieve it than maybe anybody else ever did. The world of 1960 could not feed its population of 3 billion people. The world of 2011 can comfortably feed the 7 billion now on the planet. Where hunger exists today the reasons are political.

Dr. Borlaug was an agronomist doing research in Mexico during the 1940s where he developed new high yield and disease resistant varieties of wheat. The new varieties combined with improved farming techniques enabled Mexico in 20 years to go from importing more than half its wheat to a net wheat exporter. The success prompted an explosion in agricultural research funded by governments and private foundations around the world. A better diet allowed the average Japanese to grow a foot in stature in a single generation. Improved food supplies made it possible for who knows how many millions to move from subsistence farming into the middle class.

But there are still over 900 million hungry souls out there. Why so many? Poverty mostly; wars explain some of it, rampant government corruption in places like India and Africa contributes its share, and of course poverty and hunger go hand in hand in a vicious cycle. Malnourished people don’t make good workers. Hungry children don’t develop properly. They are more likely to get sick, the illnesses they get are more serious, and so it goes. My maternal grand parents both died in their 40s of tuberculosis. Their doctor thought it was because they had weak constitutions from a poor diet as a young couple, saving money so they could start a business. He may have been right.

Access to clean water and an adequate, secure food supply are probably the most important prerequisites to those most basic of Jeffersonian human rights; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And both are achievable, now. We can do a lot to help. It wouldn’t even have to cost us much, maybe not anything. We could start with eliminating these insane ethanol mandates. They cost us a lot of money, distort markets for grains and other food stuffs going well beyond corn prices, and have precious few benefits. That alone could shave a few million off the list of the undernourished. There are other things we could do here at home too, like make sure no child ever goes to bed hungry. We’ve made progress there, with Head Start, subsidized school lunches, and back pack programs to see to it children have food for weekends. But that food doesn’t always reach every child. We should make sure it does. The return on investment could be enormous.

We could do more with trade policy as well. Trade can be a powerful tool for encouraging foreign officials to clean up their own acts. Whatever China’s sins may be, they have had to play by certain rules to get and maintain membership in the World Trade Organization. The result has been epic economic growth for that country. A more prosperous China is not likely to tolerate the famines once common in that long suffering place. Mothers here can no longer use starving Chinese children to motivate kids to eat their vegetables. Improved trade ties with third world countries ought to be a priority in our foreign policy. A good opportunity would be to restart the stalled Doha Round of World Trade Talks. Any trade unionist raising a protectionist voice in protest ought to be sent to bed without his supper.