This is a topic I’ve wanted to tackle for months now. It’s heavy, and complex. But it’s necessary. Now, with the culling of millions of chickens, the ramping up of testing cattle for bird flu, a vast increase in acreage going to “renewable energy” sources, and the constant destruction of ecosystems for “development,” this seems like the right time to touch on this topic.)
“If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.” – Joseph Stalin
If I ask you to imagine 45 million people, you probably can’t.
What does it even look like?
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That’s roughly twice the population of Australia, or the whole population of Spain or Argentina, or roughly 14% of the population of the United States.
45 million people of average size standing shoulder to shoulder would take up approximately 3.23 square miles!
It’s almost too enormous for comprehension.
Yet, as recently as 1958-62 (just over 60 years ago), widespread famine ravished China, and, according to historian Frank Dickotter 45 million (approx 7% of the population at the time) Chinese people died unnecessarily as a direct result of the Great Chinese Famine.
But why? How did it get this bad? Why didn’t people stop this from happening? And HOW can we use the lessons from the Great Chinese Famine to prevent this from happening to the American population–if it’s not too late already?
What is Famine?
You might think of famine as an isolated geographic area that has food production low enough to cause great human suffering, malnutrition, and probably some level of starvation.
Sure, that is one facet of it, but that’s not all.
Wiki has this to add “According to the United Nations World Food Programme, famine is declared when malnutrition is widespread, and when people have started dying of starvation through lack of access to sufficient, nutritious food.” (emphasis added)
With this broader umbrella of famine, one could easily and rightly argue that the United States of America is already experiencing famine. Or, one could say we are on the brink of massive famine, possibly already too far down the slippery slope to right ourselves before catastrophic damage.
Does American cheese slapped between two pieces of pasty wonderbread and loaded into plastic baggies “nourish the hungry?”
If EBT (also known as “food stamps”) recipients have access to all the sodapop and processed, sugar-laden, chemical-infused snacks they can ingest, does that count as “access to sufficient, nutritious food?”
Can people starve to death via lack of nutrition while their bellies are full of artificial cheese flavored puffs and fast food?
Farmer and advocate Ron Finely certainly has some thoughts on urban access to “sufficient nutritious food.” As he explains, “the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys.”
How many cans and boxes of “food” at the local food pantry does it take to make a healthy dinner? – if the recipients even know how to “cook” and have all the equipment needed including an actual kitchen.
“Food Access” vs Food Security
In America, “food access” means you have access to enough soda pop, chemical-laden chips, white bread and processed cheese to fill your belly.
Americans have collectively decided to call people who can’t afford enough food “food insecure” and we attempt to solve this lack via “food stamps” or Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT). For those unaware or who have never needed this service, it’s a certain amount of money per month allocated for food to each member of a household that falls below the poverty line.
But real food security is about knowing how and when and where to grow and harvest food that nourishes you, and having the ability and resources to source your own nutrition.
For example, access to grassfed raw milk from hyper local (within easy walking/biking distance) cows, fresh fruits and vegetables grown and harvested within bicycle riding distance of where they are consumed. Or the ability to grow and harvest our own meat whether that’s hunting, fishing or raising livestock where we live…this is food security.
And most Americans don’t actually have food security.
Yes, I know there are proud individual homesteaders nodding their heads and feeling great that they’ve got a jump on the food security issue. And rightfully so.
But preserving that food security might include protecting yourself against hungry neighbors. How many hungry children begging for food are you willing to turn away and/or kill to protect your family? Are you prepared (and able) to defend your homestead against roving bands of gangs ready to take what they need to feed themselves?
Creating food security anywhere helps to create food security everywhere. Homesteaders are important and do good work.
But that’s not all we need.
We must listen to the farmers, producers and advocates who are sounding the alarm and telling us clearly where we need to pay attention.
One big irony of modern America is that farmers and growers actually producing food for local communities are criminalized for doing so. Such as Ron Finely (video in the previous section), and Wisconsin farmer Vernon Hershberger.
This is, in part, because federal and state governments (Americans in general) have a myopic focus on “food safety” and pay little mind to true food security.
Mass starvation is just around the corner.
I strongly dislike hyperbole.
And yet, I find myself recognizing the truth that if we Americans do not change our food system dramatically, we are headed in the same direction–or worse–as China during the Great Leap Forward because we are following the exact same patterns that led to the Great Chinese Famine.
Is it too late to reverse course?
This isn’t–and can’t be–about something short term. Food takes time to grow. Ecosystems don’t restore themselves with the snap of a finger. Complex ideologies that leave many Americans in food deserts don’t shift overnight. Reversing course must include a conscious mindset shift towards (re)learning to grow or harvest nutrition, locally, from the land we share.
We run around worried about ourselves, the immediacy of food for the next few days, reading headlines of mass casualties in war, the accompanying disease and famine, and we carry on, not absorbing the incredible loss that it symbolizes, running on the hamster wheel of isolating our little corner, our little homestead so it “doesn’t happen here.”
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But, as is always the case, this is both complicated and part of a complex system – a system from which most Americans are divorced.
What do I base these wild and hyperbolic-seeming statements on?
Let’s explore the parallels…
If, by the end of this article, you do not share my concerns, please tell me how you’ve reached your conclusion.
I’d like to have hope that we are already on a path of course correction, that my conclusions are far-fetched and unlikely. I’d like to believe in something better than what I see as an inevitable outcome of destructive agriculture policies year after year and shocking ignorance on the part of most Americans.
But if you do agree that our trajectory is on a destructive path, it’s not too late to course-correct. Famine isn’t here yet–at least for most of us. And our individual power to make changes in our households and communities is inspiring.
But we must begin.
