April 25, 2008

NEW YORK - In the wake of a global crisis that threatens millions with possible starvation, global humanitarian agency Church World Service continues to call for meaningful changes in how food is produced and distributed across the globe.

"This shows now more than ever how the world's hungry are forgotten in the global marketplace," says CWS Executive Director and CEO the Rev. John L. McCullough. "In our work across the globe, we're finding even those who were once able to buy food are now in danger of malnutrition or even starvation."

The current situation has the potential of becoming the worst such crisis in 30 years, according to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and has already prompted riots in a number of countries, from Haiti to Egypt. World Bank President Robert Zoellick has warned that rising food prices could push an additional 100 million people in low-income countries into poverty.

Yet the answer to much of the world's food security problem isn't to produce more food. United Nations-backed research indicates enough food exists to feed the world's hungry; the problem is that much of the world's poor can't afford food in their local market.

As such, CWS has focused much of its anti-poverty work on as basic a level as possible, by the household. In Cambodia, CWS and its partners are training families to produce food in places where they previously had not been producing it. Proper instruction in agricultural and production techniques mean more food can be grown, rather than purchased.

"The price increase affects not only Cambodia but also Thailand, Laos and others," said CWS Cambodia staffer Hong Reaksmey. "Rice...sold for $546 per ton in March, is up 68 percent from a year earlier. The current situation has exacerbated an already perilous situation for tens of millions."

In an effort to also look beyond the current crisis to long-term solutions, CWS this week co-sponsored a day-long Global Policy Forum in New York City that included discussion of ways to provide more food security for vulnerable people in future emergencies. One conclusion: governments, the United Nations and private lenders together must commit more money to rural farming programs that provide families some measure of security in the face of rising food prices caused in part by increasing use of crops for bio-fuels, not food.

CWS operates several offices across Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the mere lack of availability of farming tools and seeds presents a chronic problem to food security. To help curb the current crisis, CWS is securing more plants, a greater provision of seeds (wheat, mustard and other plants for Kitchen Gardening) and compost for distribution across the region.

CWS has a 60-year history in fighting poverty and hunger across the globe. The agency works with local partners in some 80 countries. McCullough says local agencies within each starving community can play the greatest role in re-shaping poverty in the world of the global marketplace.

"What we're really trying to do is provide these communities with the resources and tools they need to help themselves," McCullough said. "We are providing emergency food relief but that is not the whole answer. If the world's hungry is to have a chance at escaping poverty, we have to empower them."

Make an online donation to CWS hunger and poverty fighting programs, donate by phone at 1-800-297-1516, or donate by mailing a check to Church World Service, 28606 Phillips Street, P.O. Box 968, Elkhart, IN 46515.

Media Contact: Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676; lcrosson@churchworldservice.org Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526; jdragin@gis.net