The recently completed World Food Summit managed to focus a little bit of attention on two critical global issues: the dimensions of world hunger and the conflicting strategies for easing the burden of hunger for the world's poorest citizens.

Of the nearly six billion people now living on the earth, about 800,000,000 are so poor that they lack access to the basic essentials for living. Nearly one seventh of the humans on earth - about three times the population of this country-live in poverty. The situation is so desperate that 35,000 people die every day from hunger and related diseases. Half of them are children.

Although the situation is most critical in the poor, developing countries, the increasing presence of food drives in our own communities reminds us that hunger also exists in the wealthiest countries.

The Food Summit's participants agreed that steps must be taken to reduce the number of poor by half to about 400,000,000 by 2015. The Summit's statement on hunger affirmed"the right of all to have access to adequate food and the basic right of all not to be hungry." The United States disagreed with this. Our government said that to achieve the right to adequate food is "an aim or an aspiration" but not an international obligation of governments.

While the desire to feed the hungry may be nearly unanimous, the conflicting methods proposed to reach that goal are likely to produce very different outcomes. In one view, "Trade is a key element in achieving world food security." In another view, "Indigenous and traditional knowledge and practices in production, processing and preservation of foods need to be promoted, improved and disseminated to ensure equitable availability of safe food. ... National self-sufficiency in basic food staples should be sought."

The U.S. plans to feed the world with ever greater use of genetic engineering, large-scale, capital-intensive agriculture and mega-corporations selling processed food around the world to those who have enough money to buy it. Third-world countries with productive agricultural resources will grow vast quantities of uniform crops for export to the first world. In theory, this system produces enough income to pay for imported, processed food. In reality, it doesn't work that way.

Peasants are pushed from self-sufficient lives into dependency as either farm workers or urban poor. This strategy implies control over land, capital, water and genetic resources by large corporations, and promises liberal use of pesticides and a decrease in the diversity of farming systems, diets, foods, organisms and lifestyles.

The voices of the people, as represented by over 200 civil society organizations from more than 70 countries representing farmers, peasants, indigenous communities, environmentalists and mothers, as well as advocates of organic agriculture, peace, and human rights, favor more local and democratic control. Their smaller-scale solutions empower women and the poor with the knowledge and resources to feed themselves, their families and their communities using traditional methods. They would replace the current agricultural paradigm which tends to destroy nature with one which seeks to produce in harmony with nature's laws.

The corporate strategy depends on secret formulas, patented organisms and so-called "free" trade. It sees hunger as a production problem when in fact there's plenty of food, it just isn't used wisely or distributed equitably. This system creates dependence and ignorance among the people and generates "exclusion and poverty."

In contrast, the people's strategy depends on widespread knowledge and access to resources and a wide diversity of plants, animals, diets and farming methods. It creates self-reliance and empowers communities. It sees corporate-dominated industrial growing and distribution systems as the cause of such widespread hunger in a world where more than enough food is produced to feed everyone.

Last month, hardly anyone paid much attention to the Food Summit in Rome, Italy. Hardly anyone's paying attention as these same forces play out the same issues right here in Connecticut right now. As the industrial system's proponents seek to limit farming with restrictive zoning, home, school and community gardeners and farmers work to spread the knowledge we need to feed ourselves. More about all this next week.

This is Bill Duesing, Living on the Earth.

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