Free Republic

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and possibly a slathering of bureaucratic buffoonery. As part of Obama's “Feed the Future” initiative, farmers in Ethiopia will be given bags of seed and will be trained on how to plant the seeds and apply chemical fertilizers. You know, because what is perhaps the oldest known civilization on the planet can't possibly continue to survive without the help of an “advanced” nation, its tax dollars and its corporate puppeteers. Reporter Philip Brasher writes ... President Barack Obama is counting on an unusual mix of taxpayer dollars and investments from profit-hunting...

The Food Network is currently promoting a crusade to end childhood hunger in America. Had the Food Network not been relentless promoters of the Obamas, I could almost see this as an ironic comment on the utter lack of appeal of the food being produced in schools across America in the First Lady's name. But the Food Network is serious. In their holiday promotion their spokespeople cite the much-debunked statistic that one in five children in America goes hungry on a regular basis. . Something is truly out of whack here. If one in five American children are going hungry...

Food banks across the country are reporting shortages as the holidays approach and the underemployed and the long-term unemployed are utilizing them to stave off hunger. Food bank lines continue to swell despite claims by the federal government that the economy is improving and increased spending on food stamps: Forty-six million Americans, or one in five, are now receiving food stamps. “The need continues to be strong. Even though the state level unemployment percent is low, this does not address the underemployed and long-term unemployed,” said Bruce Wilson, director of operations for the New Hampshire Food Bank. NHFB has already...

Egypt, famed for millennia as the “breadbasket of the Mediterranean,” now faces alarming food shortages. “Food for Stability,” a startlingly candid report by Gihan Shahine in Cairo’s Al-Ahram newspaper, makes clear the extent of the crisis. To begin, two anecdotes: Although compelled by her father to marry a cousin who could afford to house and feed her, Samar, 20, reports that they “have only had fried potatoes and aubergines for dinner most of the week.” Her sisters, ten and 13, who left school to take up work, are losing weight and suffer chronic anemia. Manal, a nurse and single mother...

Hunger and panic are spreading among people unable to work because of restrictions aimed at containing the spread of Ebola in Liberia and Sierra Leone, say church workers in West Africa. In Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, church groups “are trying to get food and distribute it to families who have asked us to help, but movement is heavily restricted and there is little we can do,” Salesian Father Jorge Crisafulli, provincial superior in West Africa, said in an Aug. 22 telephone interview from Accra, Ghana. Neighborhoods in Monrovia have been sealed off under terms of the government-imposed state of emergency. The...

More than a thousand locals lined up Friday morning for several hours under the scorching sun and heat in Miami for a box full of food. The event located at the Central Shopping Plaza at 3825 NW 7th Street started at 9:00 a.m.

Cases in West Africa's Ebola outbreak this year have risen to 2,240, including 1,229 deaths, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday, reporting the toll in four countries, including Nigeria. While Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and No. 1 oil producer, appears to be containing its smaller outbreak, Liberia and Sierra Leone are struggling to halt the spread of the deadly Ebola virus among their populations. On Friday, these small two West African nations and a medical charity chided the WHO for its slow response, saying more action was needed to save victims threatened by the disease and hunger.

A British medical journal announced a finding last month that might be the best news in the history of the world: Nearly one out of three people in the world is overweight. Members of the media responded to this thrilling discovery by lamenting the globe’s growing waistline. Pundits rushed to condemn widespread access to inexpensive food. Everyone seemed so excited to attack obesity that no one noticed the report’s incredible story of human achievement and hope. Throughout history, malnutrition and hunger-related health issues have killed more people than any other cause. Over the course of the past half-century, however, the...

It´s a quiet crisis. In a city of plenty, a staggering number of people are struggling to feed themselves and their families. Nearly one in five New Yorkers, 1.4 million people, now rely on a patchwork network of 1,000 food pantries and soup kitchens across the city to eat. That represents an increase of 200,000 people in five years — straining the charities that are trying to help. The two biggest, City Harvest and the Food Bank for New York City, now provide nearly 110 million pounds of food to soup kitchens and food pantries a year. Yet those working

What does that even mean? That some shall-remain-unnamed Republican colleague literally told her, presumably when asked why he supported the one percent budget cut to the federal food stamp program recently passed in the farm bill or why he did not support extending unemployment benefits or something, that his entire party’s policy platform is based off of its collective and utter indifference to the plight of families in poverty? …Why do I feel skeptical? Via RCP:(VIDEO-AT-LINK) "I asked a Republican friend why his party remains so opposed to extending the vital lifelines for struggling families and really hungry children. This...

Here Are The Countries That Spend The Most On Food Matthew BoeslerFeb. 24, 2014, 8:28 PM Renaissance Macro Research, Congressional Research Service This chart plots the share of household income in a given country spent on food against the level of household income in that country. Neil Dutta, head of U.S. economics at Renaissance Macro, warns that rising food prices may serve as an additional economic headwind to some of the emerging markets in the top-left region of the chart (India, China, Indonesia, and Nigeria, to name a few). "Food prices are climbing for a range of items including cattle,...

STAVANGER, Norway — Convicted Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik has threatened to go on a hunger strike unless he gets access to better video games, a sofa and a larger gym. In a letter sent to The Associated Press and other media, Breivik writes that the hunger strike would continue until his demands are met or he dies. Breivik’s lawyer Tord Jordet confirmed Tuesday that the letter was authentic and said his client was waiting for a response from prison authorities on 12 demands before deciding whether to begin a hunger strike sometime during the next eight weeks.

The United Nations estimates it would cost $30 billion a year [1] to end world hunger. That sounds like a lot, but the world spent more than ten times that amount in 2012 on global warming mitigation, according to a recent Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) study [2]. And the U.N. says the world needs to spend even more on global warming mitigation. Much more.According to the Reuters analysis [3] of the Summary for Policymakers of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report, due to be released this April, the UN is calling on the world to...

This past week I took my kids to see the second movie in the Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire. While it is a violent series, I cannot think of a better movie or book series to open the door to moral and political discussions with our teen and preteen kids. For those unfamiliar with the Hunger Games, it is the story of a gladiatorial competition in a futuristic totalitarian regime, which requires each of 12 isolated districts to select a teenage boy and girl by lottery to fight to the death until only one “victor” survives. The story centers on...

GREENSBORO — Cathy Coons has been passionate about fighting hunger since she was a teenager in Westchester County, N.Y. It was there that she first joined in a fast to raise money for Save the Children, the well-known charitable organization for children in need in the United States and around the world. Since moving to Greensboro in 2004, Coons has continued to take part in a variety of volunteer initiatives to alleviate hunger and poverty, primarily through Starmount Presbyterian Church, where — as a member of the mission committee — she is actively involved in such local ministries as senior...

In the 22 years that Swami Durga Das has managed New York’s River Fund Food Pantry, he has never seen hunger like this. Each Saturday, hundreds of hungry people descend on the pantry’s headquarters, an unassuming house on a residential block. The first people arrive around 2 am, forming a line that will wrap around the block before Das even opens his doors. “Each week there’s new people,” Das told MSNBC.com. “The numbers have just skyrocketed.” The new clients are diverse—working people, seniors, single mothers—but many of them share something in common: they represent the millions of Americans who fell...

WASHINGTON, Oct 17 2013 (IPS) - Near the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in downtown Washington, just a few blocks away from the federal district, dozens of homeless men and women wait for the evening shuttles that will take them to their dinners at one of many food shelters around the city. They can get by during the day with the few dimes and quarters spared by passersby, but the only daily meal they can really count on is the one they will get at the local food shelter, and so for them, hunger is a very real problem. Two...

Algae suit generates food to feed your constant hunger When we think of futuristic fashion, our minds often lean toward the minimalist designs of Star Trek or Tron. But maybe what we wear in the future will have more to do with what we eat than what we want to look like. That's the premise behind the algaculture symbiosis suit designed by Michael Burton and Michiko Nitta. The symbiosis suit is designed to make food for you as you go about your daily routine. A number of tubes, placed in front of your mouth, harness the CO2 you breathe and...

Cassidy et al. / Environmental Research Letters Shifting crops grown for animal feed and biofuel to food for direct human consumption can feed an additional 4 billion people with existing cropland, a study says. The lab-grown burger taste-tested Monday in London is billed as one way to avert a looming food crisis by freeing up the agricultural resources used to feed billions of cattle each year. Another way to avert the crisis is to stop eating animal products altogether, according to a recent study.In fact, "we find that doing a complete radical shift away from grain-fed animals, and stop...

New York’s Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake school district has become the latest casualty in first lady Michelle Obama’s preferred lunch plan, dropping the menu after too many students complained of hunger. “[Food service manager Nicky] Boehm and her staff worked hard to implement the new regulations, but there were just too many problems and too many foods that students did not like and would not purchase,” said Assistant Superintendent Chris Abdoo about the National School Lunch Program in a statement reported by EAGNews.org. “Students complained of being hungry with these lunches and the district lost money.” Undaunted, the nattering nabobs from...