Hunger Report 2005 Executive Summary
Strengthening Rural Communities
Bread for the World Institute's 15th Annual Report on the State of World Hunger
by Todd Post
For millions of people the world over, the story of Alemayehu Michael is an all too familiar one. A 46-year-old frontier farmer in Ethiopia, he and his family depend entirely on agriculture. Year after year, in spite of hard work, life for them boils down to a struggle for sheer survival and a dependence on emergency aid. In a country like Ethiopia, where half the population suffers from moderate to severe malnutrition, one must become relentlessly self-reliant.
Chronic hunger could be alleviated almost overnight if governments sought to raise the incomes of the most vulnerable people. Where the most vulnerable reside is in rural areas of their countries. Rural people the world over share one profound thing in common. Regardless of where they live, whether in developing nations or right here in the United States, theirs is a story of neglect. Abandoned by their governments, they persevere on the strength and courage that is born and nourished by virtue of their circumstances.
In spite of tremendous obstacles, Alemayehu’s is a story of hope and ultimately triumph. His experience and many others appear in the 2005 Hunger Report, Strengthening Rural Communities, Bread for the World Institute’s 15th annual report of the state of world hunger.
The impetus for this year’s Hunger Report grew out of the 2003 report, Agriculture in the Global Economy. That report that revealed the complexity of the problems facing rural communities reaches well beyond agriculture. Limited health care, limited educational opportunities, fragile infrastructure, few well paying jobs—these and other problems mount, bringing with them hunger.
Here in the United States, some of the worst cases of domestic hunger and poverty exist in rural areas cut off from economic opportunities and standard services most Americans take for granted. For the colonia of Las Palmeras along the U.S-Mexico border, for instance, safe water, adequate sewage systems and passable roads languish on various government agency to-do lists. And yet the community has resolved not to stand still and wait. People struggle under extraordinary stresses but they remain determined to improve their community.
The 2005 Hunger Report focuses on rural communities at home and abroad because these are here some of the greatest challenges—as well as the greatest potential—exist for reducing hunger.
Exploding U.S. rural myths
Lexington, Nebraska, illustrates the flux that characterizes many communities in rural America today. The town’s first boom came in the 1970s when a combine plant arrived and offered its workers good wages. But when the farm equipment manufacturer closed its doors in 1986, the population of Lexington dropped from 10,000 to 6,600. In 1990, a slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant moved into the old combine factory and the town’s population shot back up to 10,000. The packing plant recruited workers from Mexico; 3,500 of the town’s new residents were Hispanic immigrants.
Lexington’s story is consistent with what has happened all across rural America. Rural Hispanic populations in the Midwest, Southeast and Northwest are growing faster than any other racial or ethnic group, driven in large part by demand for workers by the meatpacking industry. It was the growth of the Hispanic population in the 1990s that prevented net population loss in more than 100 rural counties in the Great Plains.
In 1950, more than 2,000 rural counties were defined as agriculturally dependent. By 1990, that number had dropped to 556 and by 2000 to 420. As rural America continues to change at a rapid pace, the Hunger Report looks at who has been left behind and what has been the impact on communities.
In most rural areas of the United States, the vast majority of people are doing something other than arming. A greater number of people in rural America now have jobs in the service sector, with manufacturing also coming in ahead of agriculture. The small family farmer – a symbol of rural life as important to the American psyche as the bald eagle – is a dying breed. Those who have held on are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain a livelihood just by farming. Most family farmers today are forced to work off the farm as well to supplement the inadequate returns from farming.
What we call “rural America” today is a complex amalgam. Besides farming communities, there are factory towns, resort towns, wide-open unsettled mesa land, casino towns in the desert, small mountain communities, fishing and logging villages, "whistle stops," commuter communities and more. Scratch the surface of rural America’s rich diversity and what stands out is that one in seven rural Americans is poor, and at some point each year nearly a third of rural residents are food insecure.
Policymakers must generate new economic value for these communities. The Farm Bill, for better or worse, is currently the vehicle for rural development policy. Most of the money spent on rural America (via the Farm Bill) ends up in the pockets of large landholders and agribusinesses, doing little to help struggling rural families. In this report we are calling for a major overhaul of U.S. rural policy to address the needs of the entire rural population.
It is time for the United States to significantly reduce agricultural subsidies by phasing out the trade distorting kind and capping those paid to large landholders and agribusinesses. The money saved should be redirected into rural development to help build sustainable rural communities. This must be coupled with programs that ease the effect on farmers who will suffer during the transition.
Rural communities worldwide stand to benefit
According to the World Bank, if agricultural subsidies were removed, the number of people worldwide living on less than $2 per day would fall by 144 million, 67 million of them in Africa. The average European cow receives $2.50 per day in subsidies, while 75 percent of African people live on less than $2 per day.
In addition, tariffs imposed by high-income countries on many agricultural goods from developing countries – especially meat, sugar and dairy – are almost five times those on manufactured goods. The most significant difference between U.S. rural communities and those in the developing world is that, for the latter, agriculture is the predominant economic driver.
Smallholder farmers are affected worst of all, and these make up the largest number of hungry and poor people in the world. One example is the impact of U.S. cotton subsidies on cotton farmers in West Africa. Production costs in West Africa are much lower than in the United States, yet the U.S. farmers get a guaranteed price for their cotton that makes it impossible for the West Africans to compete. U.S. producers can “dump” their cotton on the world market at a fraction of the production cost because they have the subsidies to cover their costs. Cotton farmers in the United State – all 25,000 of them – receive more in subsidies than the entire gross domestic product of Burkina Faso, where more than 2 million people depend on cotton for their livelihoods.
Rural areas in developing countries not only have been neglected by their own governments, but often decisions made in foreign capitals have as much or more impact on their lives as events at home. The potential benefits to developing countries from increased trade far surpass anything possible through aid alone, but the 2005 Hunger Report also calls for increased development assistance To cut poverty and hunger in the developing world, trade reform and effective, targeted development assistance need to go hand in hand. Both are essential and the United States must do its share.
“Poverty traps” of the world, most of which are in rural areas of developing countries, need to be the primary focus of efforts to reduce hunger. Because they face such colossal challenges, they are incapable of breaking the cycle of poverty without help from outside. International bodies like the World Bank have recognized that a number of these areas could make significant advances in economic development with greater assistance from the rich countries of the world.
In 2005, the number of hungry people in the world reached 852 million. This number is a stark reminder that the world has yet to get serious about the challenge of ending hunger.
2005: A year of important decisions
2005 may well prove to be an important turning point in the fight against hunger. A new administration and Congress have the opportunity to lift up the problems of hunger and food insecurity and include them in the priorities of our national agenda. Bread for the World and its coalition partners are asking Congress and the president to strengthen their commitment to cutting domestic hunger and food insecurity in half by 2010. An important part of that commitment is providing adequate funding for the national nutrition and food assistance programs, and supporting the efforts of local communities to improve the systems and public policies that fight hunger.
In September, the United Nations convenes a meeting to review the progress on the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). With progress on reaching the hunger goal lagging behind other MDGs, this is the time for world leaders to make hunger a priority. The ministerial meetings of the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization resume in December. The Doha Round goal of enabling the rural poor to share in the benefits of expanding trade and integrated global markets is well aligned with the MDGs.
All of these are important opportunities to focus attention on strengthening rural communities. To make progress against hunger and poverty, we call on global leaders not to overlook the plight of rural communities any longer.
Todd Post is senior editor in Bread for the World Institute.
