A Better Way to Feed the Hungry

[Guest guest]

The Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation is also funding a huge vaccination

programme and that is a genocidal programme.

 

Check the www.whale.to website for further information.

 

Watch Dr David Ayoub's talk " Mercury, Autism and the Global

Vaccination Agenda " . The video is available on google video and on several

other websites, the above mentioned included.

 

Dorothee

 

 

On 7/1/08, bestsurprise2002 <bestsurprise2002 wrote:

>

>

> Published on Wednesday, May 22, 2002 in the _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_

> (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/)

>

> A Better Way to Feed the Hungry

> by Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé

> _http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views02/0522-03.htm_

> (http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views02/0522-03.htm)

> Bill Gates thinks he's got a brilliant idea: fighting malnutrition abroad

> by

> fortifying food.

> The scheme, backed with $50 million from the Gates Foundation, in part

> encourages Proctor & Gamble, Philip Morris' Kraft, and other companies to

> develop

> vitamin and iron-fortified processed foods. It then facilitates their entry

>

> into Third World markets.

> Gates seems to believe we don't have time to address the complex social and

>

> political roots of malnutrition. But in opting for this single-focus,

> top-down, technical intervention, Gates can end up hurting the very people

> he wants

> to help.

> His strategy ignores a crucial reality: Many, if not most, of the hungriest

>

> people in the world are themselves farmers. They eke out a living by

> selling

> what they grow, and eating it. Helping foreign food purveyors penetrate

> their

> markets will only further rob them of livelihood. For example, India's

> dairy

> cooperatives -- many run by poor women -- would be hard-pressed to

> withstand

> the onslaught of Kraft's marketing power.

> The Gates approach also hurts the poor if it shifts tastes toward processed

>

> foods -- typically adding fat, sugar, and salt while removing needed fiber

> and micronutrients. This diet trend already contributes to the spread of

> diseases currently burdening the industrial world. Obesity and diet-related

>

> diseases including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer are becoming a

> global crisis.

> In the Third World, grossly insufficient health care budgets are now being

> diverted to treat these conditions, and away from treating deadly

> infectious

> diseases.

> Aiding market penetration by global food processing companies also ends up

> making consumers dependent on foreign suppliers for life's essentials. But

> while corporations such as Kraft or Proctor & Gamble might well participate

> in

> Gates' do-good scheme, ultimately their interests diverge from those of the

>

> hungry. By law, theirs is assuring the highest return to their shareholders

> --

> foreigners -- not the improved well-being of local people, and certainly

> not

> hungry local people too poor to make their needs felt in the market.

> Even the piece of the Gates scheme focused on fortifying grain (presumably

> locally grown) misses critical lessons learned since the first World Food

> Conference in Rome declared war on global hunger almost three decades ago.

> Then, many still believed that hunger could be solved by simple,

> mass-production approaches. After decades of failed, technologically-driven

> solutions, a

> new wisdom is emerging.

> We recently traveled on five continents, witnessing a heartening array of

> local initiatives addressing the complex, interwoven roots of needless

> malnutrition. These are not pie-in-the-sky solutions; they are working.

> In 1993 Brazil's fourth largest city, Belo Horizonte, declared food a right

>

> of citizenship. This single shift of frame -- beyond charitable hand-outs,

> beyond market tyranny -- unleashed dozens of innovations: Making city plots

>

> available for local, organic farmers as long as they keep prices within the

>

> reach of the poor; posting where to find the cheapest prices for over 40

> food

> staples; enhancing nutrition in school lunches by replacing processed foods

> with

> local organic food. The city also tries to innoculate newly arrived

> dwellers

> against global corporate food advertising (probably including that of the

> very companies in the Gates fold) by educating them to the value of

> sticking

> with the healthy whole foods diets they grew up on in the countryside.

> Across the globe in Kenya, women of the Green Belt Movement, an

> anti-desertification campaign that has planted 20 million trees, are now

> reclaiming

> diverse, traditional food crops. They are creating organic kitchen gardens

> growing

> precisely the fruits and vegetables that provide the nutrients Gates'

> fortification scheme seeks to supply.

> A promising international " fair trade " movement now also addresses the

> powerlessness that leaves people malnourished in the first place. Third

> World

> producers can market fair trade products, such as coffee certified by

> Oakland-based Transfair USA, helping to ensure the livelihood of some of

> the world's

> poorest people.

> Tens of thousands of such innovative efforts, many citizen driven, continue

>

> to emerge on every continent. They are succeeding because they address the

> real causes of malnutrition -- concentrated economic and political power

> that

> blocks people from pursuing their interests and from building vibrant,

> sustainable local economies, accountable to local needs.

> Just imagine what might happen if Bill Gates chose not to fortify corporate

>

> foods but to use his $50 million to fortify efforts like these, encouraging

>

> their cross-fertilization and replication. With nutrient deficiencies

> stunting

> the lives of at least two billion people we can't afford ill-considered

> strategies that will hurt rather than help.

> Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé are authors of " Hope's Edge: The Next

> Diet for a Small Planet " _www.dietforasmallplanet.com._

> (http://www.dietforasmallplanet.com./)

> ©1999-2002 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

>

>