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Celebrate World Food Day 2011 By Helping End World Hunger:
Support Sustainable Agriculture!

This year, the theme of World Food Day is “Food prices - from crisis to stability”. How can we stabilize food prices? How can we help prevent heart-wrenching famines where small children die of starvation, buried by their own parents?

If we buy into the message of modern agribusiness, the answer lies in genetically modified organisms, more pesticides, more chemical fertilizers and more machines. But will this really solve world hunger? Our globe is already being harvested with industrial agriculture at an unprecedented level, yet world hunger still persists. And in nations where food is abundant, many people are obese yet malnourished and diseased.

How can we solve these problems? The answer lies in sustainable agriculture. One scientific study after another has confirmed this fact. Local, organic and sustainable production far outperforms industrial agriculture in providing stable, nourishing food for our world’s population.

Since the dawn of mankind, people have relied on local food production to feed their families and communities. It only makes sense. It’s been the blink of an eye, compared to the history of humankind, that we’ve relied on such mass-scale, chemical-based agriculture for our food needs. This global experiment isn’t solving world hunger; it’s only making it worse.

Consider the following facts:

In 2008, a groundbreaking study sponsored by the World Bank and 5 UN agencies combined the efforts of over 200 scientists and development experts from over 80 countries. The report found that agroecology (a technical term for sustainable agriculture) is the direction we should go to end world hunger - not GMO.

A recent report titled, “The Environmental Food Crisis”, by the UN Environment Programme, predicts food crises will get worse. The recommended solution? Sustainable agriculture on small family farms.

A comprehensive 2007 study by the University of Michigan found that a global transition to organics could actually increase food production dramatically - as much as 50%! Another comprehensive, peer-reviewed study found that switching to sustainable agriculture resulted in a 93% increase in food production.

GM crops do not yield food production increases. At the same time, the required expensive seeds, expensive chemicals and other resources not suited to local agrarian economies.

So why is agribusiness exerting so much influence over our food supply? The answer is simple: the power of profits. While bio-tech companies may invest in feel-good media campaigns, the truth is their advertising is simply an attempt to white wash the real facts. We all need to work together to stop world hunger: no child born on this planet should ever have to die of starvation. The answer lies in supporting local, sustainable farming.