2009 Solomon-Tenenbaum Symposium
1:30 - 2:45 p.m.
"Global Hunger: Its Causes and Solutions"
Lumpkin Auditorium, Moore School of Business
Symposium Panelists’ statements
Edward R. Carr
Department of Geography, USC
“I am a development geographer who is principally concerned with the intersection of development and adaptation to
current and projected climate change. I am going to argue that the problem of global hunger is principally one of the right
to use the resources necessary for food production, as well as the right to food itself (sometimes called entitlements). By
association, I will argue that the current media and development focus on availability (really a question of access) is
leading us toward neo-Malthusian misunderstandings of hunger in particular places. These misunderstandings persist
because it is easy to gather data to measure issues of availability, but much more time consuming to identify entitlement
problems and scale them up for policy purposes.”
Bibliography:
Davis, Mike. 2002. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. London: Verso.
Sen, Amartya. 1981. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Rabbi Jonathan Case
Beth Shalom Synagogue, Columbia, SC
“Hunger is a moral issue. Throughout scripture there are countless examples of people being called to account for the
welfare of one another. One does not need to travel far to find religious exhortations to feed and clothe the poor. The
ultimate biblical axiom of being one's "brother's keeper" is cited at the outset of the Bible. If hunger were a scientific
issue there would be many accompanying problems to grab our attention. Yet the sad fact is that there is an abundance
of food, and through waste, greed, and indifference, people go hungry.”
Bibliography:
Leviticus 19: 9-10; Deuteronomy 24: 19-22; Isaiah 58: 7-8 and 10-11; Amos 5: 1-27.
Edward A. Frongillo Jr.
Department of Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior, USC
“We must remain concerned about the capacity of our world to feed an ever-increasing population of humans. Sustaining
adequate availability of food while preserving the capacity of our earth and agricultural systems to produce that food
continues to be a challenge. But, the most pressing challenges are to ensure that 1) all can access and use the food that is
available and 2) those living during the critical periods of pregnancy and the first two years of life after birth receive
adequate quality and quantity of food. There is now overwhelming evidence that inadequate nutrition during these
critical periods is a cause of about half of the 11 million child deaths per year, poor child development and learning,
decreased capacity to work, and substantial loss of economic productivity. For example, Vietnam loses about one entire
year of national economic productivity every 18 years because of poor nutrition. Furthermore, the insecurity about food
and the hunger that families experience, even in high-income countries like the U.S., is related to adverse effects on
families, parents, and children. Because of substantial prior investment in being able to measure these effects, we can
now present incontrovertible evidence to motivate decision-makers to act. A pressing need is to develop, disseminate,
and use knowledge about what actions decision-makers can and should take, and about building the capacity,
commitment, and consensus to take those actions.”
Bibliography:
The World Bank. 2006. Repositioning Nutrition as Central to Development: A Strategy for Large-Scale Action.
http://publications.worldbank.org/ecommerce/catalog/product?item_id=5117188
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/NUTRITION/Resources/281846-1131636806329/NutritionStrategy.pdf
Maternal and Child Undernutrition. 2008. A series of five articles appearing in The Lancet, Vol. 371 No. 9608 pp 243-260;
Vol. 371 No. 9609 pp 340-357; Vol. 371 No. 9610 pp 417-440; Vol. 371 No. 9611 pp 510-526; Vol. 371 No. 9612
pp 608-621. http://www.thelancet.com/series/maternal-and-child-undernutrition
Stephen Kresovich
Vice President for Research and Graduate Education, USC
“As a plant geneticist interested in agricultural development, the overall question I ask is: ‘How can our understanding of
the genetic basis of plant diversity be harnessed to better meet the needs of society in an environmentally sound and
sustainable manner?’ Regarding persistent global hunger and poverty, I believe in a systems approach, historically
employed at Cornell and truly multidisciplinary in nature: ‘Success in our long-term goal of sharply reducing persistent
hunger and poverty depends on combining excellent, detailed science with a sound strategic grounding in the ‘big picture’
context of specific scientific investigations. The big picture in rural areas around the globe is complex and highly varied
because biophysical and cultural-socioeconomic phenomena are inextricably linked. Feedback across coupled sub-systems
often renders futile policy, institutional or technological interventions that neglect the broader context in which specific
efforts are launched. We hypothesize that poverty reduction interventions are more likely to succeed when they are
based on (mental or mathematical) models that adequately address system complexity, especially the dynamic feedback
processes operating across scales and between human and biophysical sub-systems.’”
Bibliography:
st
Conway, Gordon. 1999. The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the 21 Century. New York: Cornell University Press.
Diamond, Jared. 1997. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). 2006. The State of Food Insecurity in the World:
Eradicating World Hunger – Taking Stock Ten Years after the World Food Summit. Rome: FAO.
Ruth W. Messinger
President, American Jewish World Service
“Hunger is both a cause and effect of poverty. Malnutrition leads to less productivity and long-term cognitive deficiencies
in children. Communities go hungry not because there is a lack of food in the world, but because they are dependent on
imports and are vulnerable to price volatility brought on by rising oil costs, political instability, climate shifts and natural
disasters. By addressing the underlying causes of poverty, communities can better insulate themselves. Until
communities in the developing world are empowered to reclaim their ancestral land, grow their own food and given
control over their local markets, they will remain dependent on the industrialized world. With the right resources,
technology, training and capacity to organize, communities throughout the developing world have demonstrated the
ability to grow food and develop sustainable livelihoods. Hunger is political, and by organizing people and giving them the
tools to use their own collective leverage and talent, we can end hunger in our lifetimes.”
Bibliography:
Mousseau, Frederic. 2005. Food Aid or Food Sovereignty: Ending World Hunger in Our Time. Oakland, CA: The Oakland
Institute. http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/pdfs/fasr.pdf
Steward, Corrina, Maria Aguiar, Nikhil Aziz, Jonathan Leaning, and Daniel Moss. 2007. Towards a Green Food System: How
Food Sovereignty Can Save the Environment and Feed the World. Jamaica Plain, MA: Grassroots International.
http://www.grassrootsonline.org/sites/grassrootsonline.org/files/Towards-Green-Food-System.pdf
John H. Rashford
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, College of Charleston
“My view of the problem of global hunger is based on the fact that I am a cultural anthropologist doing ethno-botanical
research with a strong interest in anthropological theories for the origin of agriculture. I view global hunger as a function
of human reproductive success and the simultaneous worldwide development of agriculture as a culture-based process
of intensified production, a process which serves as the means of addressing the resource demands resulting from
human reproductive success.”
Bibliography:
Cohen, Mark. 1977. The Food Crisis in Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins of Agriculture. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Rindos, David. 1984. The Origins of Agriculture: An Evolutionary Perspective. New York: Academic Press.