Is Their Famine Ours?
Photo credit: FAO
This was published in the fall of 1975 in the Yale Standard.
Forty-thousand people are believed to have died in the drought that has ravaged Somalia and Ethiopia in recent months. Relief workers in Bangladesh say that at least a million have perished from starvation since the 1971 war.
The United Nations has a list of 33 countries considered to be close to widespread starvation, where over 500 million people have suffered acutely from malnutrition. Experts say that more countries are in critical need of food today than a year ago.
The world food crisis has not left us. It has gotten worse. While famine and malnutrition have indeed become common words, and pictures of emaciated victims are not unusual in periodicals, this has not stopped hunger from taking 12,000 lives every day. More people suffer the incessant cry of their bodies for food than ever before, daily becoming weaker and more susceptible to sickness and disease.
For a nation such as the United States to understand the magnitude of this problem is very difficult. This country has never experienced the nightmare of widespread famine, when one’s whole being cries out for the next mouthful of food, when bread, flour and rice are more valuable than jewelry.
This country has reached a near-zero population growth, but in the rest of the world there will still be 74 million more mouths to feed next year. Four-fifths of these will be born in one of the 33 destitute countries that contain two-thirds of the world’s population and produce only one-fifth of the world’s food.
One farmer in Asia or Africa provides enough food for five others to live on besides himself. In this country one farmer provides for 46 others. In India a laborer works in the fields five days to produce 100 pounds of grain. Here it takes five minutes to produce the same 100 pounds.
It is very clear that many nations cannot support themselves, and the responsibility lies on the shoulders of those nations who have an abundance to provide where there is need.
It is very clear that many nations cannot support themselves, and the responsibility lies on the shoulders of those nations who have an abundance to provide where there is need.
The Government estimates that a record-breaking 2.1 billion bushels of wheat will be harvested this year, 5.7 billion bushels of corn and 1.4 billion bushels of soybeans. But domestic use of wheat, for example, will require only 33 percent of the total. Similar statistics of excess production can be listed for Canada, Australia and others, yet people will continue to go hungry.
The question has to be asked, is this suffering necessary? Cannot America and its people, as well as other able nations, alleviate this suffering?
For a nation to be in famine relief, the move has to start with individuals, with totally unselfish men and women. There are some, a comparative few, who are giving their lives to prevent as many deaths as possible. One is Larry Ward, president of a Los Angeles-based food relief organization, Food for the Hungry.
Mr. Ward founded Food for the Hungry five years ago as a famine relief organization. When natural disasters such as drought, flooding and earthquakes hit an area and cause acute food shortages, it goes into the area immediately with thousands of pounds of food. Since its founding in 1971, Food for the Hungry has shipped more than $3 million worth of food into such countries as Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Mexico, Panama, Burma and Haiti.
Mr. Ward, who has worked in famine relief for over 20 years, is a believer in Jesus Christ as his personal Savior and further believes that Christ’s work for him is to feed the hungry.
“A man asked me one day why I was doing this work. I had my New Testament with me, and I had to say that it was because of what I read there,” commented Mr. Ward. “I looked at my life, the only life I have to give to this needy world and to God, and then looked into the Scriptures in terms of God’s priorities. I was struck by the obligation we have to provide for those who lack.”
When an earthquake shook much of Managua, Nicaragua to the ground in December 1971, leaving tens of thousands suddenly helpless, the organization flew over 600,000 pounds of food to the victims within days of the quake.
And, because most of the food is donated to Mr. Ward’s work, it costs about a penny to get a meal from the United States to a victim of famine.
Right now, Mr. Ward says, the areas of greatest need are India and Bangladesh. “I think the situation in India is much worse than Mrs. Gandhi wants the rest of the world to know,” he said. “You also have the places of chronic need like both coasts of Africa, Haiti, Northeast Brazil and Bolivia.”
As to why such need exists, Mr. Ward commented: “So many of the countries that are in trouble are where you have the wealthy few and the hungry masses. I’m convinced that most of what is called food crisis and malnutrition is man’s improper stewardship over what God has given him. Right now there is plenty of food in the world to keep people from starvation, but they don’t get it. I believe that the heavy hand of God’s judgment comes upon those that have not taken care of the poor out of their own abundance.”
While America worries whether her wheat stockpile will be 250 or 300 million bushels, people starve who could be saved if they had a small portion of these surpluses.
Jesus spoke these words concerning stewards and those things committed to them: “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more” (Luke 12:48).
In a world gone half-mad with power plays, greatness does not come by answering in kind, but by acting generously in love—a love shown in actions, not just words.
Distressing, indeed, have been recent revelations of corruption within this nation’s grain industry, of companies and officials short-weighing their grain customers. To this situation the Scriptures speak very clearly: “A false balance is an abomination to the Lord” (Proverbs 11:1).
The brief drought of a year ago certainly demonstrated to most Americans that our grain crops are not immune to natural disaster. Famine is not an impossibility in this country. People saw their weekly food prices soar, as drought dried up the corn fields in the Midwest.
Prolonged drought leads to one thing—famine. A famine in this nation would mean famine in dozens of other nations as well. It is a Biblical principle that the greedy and selfish misuse of abundance will lead to want—a divine judgment. The catalogue of evils for which the city of Sodom was suddenly destroyed included this indulgence: “Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her…neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy” (Ezekiel 16:49).
The surest way to avoid such judgment as prolonged drought is for this country to open its storehouses of excess food wider than it ever has before to those who are truly in need and cannot feed themselves. The result would mean millions of lives saved and rich blessing on this country from God.
We have an obligation to respond to the cries of millions of hungry people. If we don’t, when this country is in need, there will be no one to help. “Whoso shuts his ears to the cries of the poor will be ignored in his own time of need” (Proverbs 21:13).
If you would like to know more about the famine situation throughout the world, Mr. Ward will send you his book And There Will Be Famines—a brilliantly written, concise statement about famine’s bitter reality, and how it affects the lives of millions.
Food for the Hungry operates on the narrowest margin possible, in order to channel the highest percentage of its donated funds into direct famine relief. The address is: P.O. Box 200, Glendale, CA 91204.
God’s promise is that as we give what we have to give, He will increase us more and more:
“There is he who scatters, and yet increases; and there is he who withholds more than is meet, but it tends to poverty. The liberal soul shall be made fat; and he who waters shall be watered also himself. He who withholds corn, the people shall curse him; but blessing shall be upon the head of him who sells it” (Proverbs 11:24-26).