U.N.-Affiliated Group Studies Ways to Feed a Hungry World

Like most Americans, Shirley Williams of Corona del Mar never gave much thought to the problem of world hunger. But that changed during lunch at an all-day conference on hunger at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.

Ten of the 200 conference participants were chosen at random to sit on a dais in the center of the ballroom where they were served a sumptuous meal. Others did not fare as well: About 60, including Williams, were given a sandwich and cup of coffee, and the rest were fed rice, with barely enough to go around.

“It was a very powerful way of illustrating the hunger problem in the world,” said Williams, 58. “It became very clear to me that I was one of those very small group of people that’s eating very well in the world today while there really are a billion people that are chronically malnourished.”

Since that day in 1980, the mother of four children has devoted herself to doing what she can to help the starving nations of the world join the well-fed countries dining at the banquet table.

Her latest effort is participating in a nationwide hunger study sponsored by the United Nations Assn., the educational and support group for the United Nations.

“Food on the Table: Seeking Global Solutions to Chronic Hunger” is the fourth in an annual UNA series designed to give citizens a voice in shaping U. S. foreign policy. Previous studies have examined the danger of nuclear weapons, the United Nations’ role in maintaining international peace and security and international cooperation in outer space.

The hunger study project is being conducted by more than 90 of the UNA’s 165 chapters and divisions around the country, in conjunction with 130 national organizations affiliated with the UNA.

Volunteer Leader

Williams, volunteer leader of the Orange County chapter of Results, a grass-roots, anti-hunger lobbying organization, is one of a dozen people participating in the Orange County study group organized by Peter Creelman, president of UNA’s Coastline Chapter.

“I tried to get a balance of people who are concerned with the hunger problem locally,” Creelman said. “We have an attorney, for example, and we have someone from a food distribution center and someone (Williams) from a lobbying organization.”

The Orange County group met for the first time in mid-February. Using an 80-page briefing book produced by the UNA national office that provides background information on world hunger and policy choices facing the United States and other countries, the participants broke into subgroups to begin examining a series of questions on which policy recommendations would be useful.

The three main questions they have been addressing are:

- What strategy should the international community pursue to ensure that an adequate food supply is always accessible to everyone?

- Is foreign assistance an appropriate means of spurring development in poor countries?

- If development efforts succeed in raising the incomes of the poor in coming years, will the world be able to meet the food demands of the 6 billion people who will inhabit the planet by the year 2000 without destroying the agricultural base?

Creelman said the group will reassemble as a whole at the end of April “to go over what we’ve come up with and pull it into one report.”

That report, along with recommendations from other study groups around the country, must be forwarded to the UNA national office by May 15. The various recommendations then will be compiled into a single consensus report to be released on U. N. Day, Oct. 24. Copies of the report will be distributed to the media, to the United Nations and to policy makers in the United States and other countries.

Brainstorming

“The process we’re going through is kind of a brainstorming type of process with people of different backgrounds and different specialties putting their minds together on a national basis,” said Creelman.

Acknowledging that “we haven’t tapped the resources of the county on this subject,” Creelman said he is interested in hearing the public’s views on how to solve the hunger problem and invited telephone calls at (714) 520-5704.

Creelman said he hopes that the UNA report will provide “some fresh insights and possible approaches to dealing with the problem of global hunger. I also hope at the local level, in terms of networking, we will become better acquainted with other organizations dealing with the same problem.”

As program manager of the Food Distribution Center Serving Orange County, )study group member Kelley Sullivan said she sees the problem of hunger daily in Orange County.

The nonprofit charitable organization in Orange--the largest food distribution center in the county--distributes an average of 770,000 pounds of food a month to about 200 nonprofit agencies, which in turn pass it on to the needy throughout the county.

Below Poverty Level

“In Orange County, there are 320,000 people living at or below the poverty level who are at risk of going hungry some time during the month,” Sullivan said. “The food center is reaching 98,000 of those individuals, which is 15% of that 300,000, so we have a long way to go. “

Project member Elaine Weinberg, an Irvine attorney who became concerned with global hunger after visiting China in 1977, said Population Reference Bureau statistics show that the world population was 5.026 billion in July, 1986.

“Estimates in the past have always been that we would reach 6 billion by the year 2000, and it looks like we will easily do that,” Weinberg said. “I think what that means is we are on a course where it is now definite we will have huge famines throughout the world.”

Creelman and other project members, however, said they do not believe that the problem of worldwide hunger is so overwhelming as to be insolvable.

“The goal, I think, is not food handouts but to provide the means and resources for the developing countries to become self-sufficient in their own food production,” Creelman said. “Some countries have already begun to become self-sufficient, so it isn’t an impossibility.”

Said Williams: “What’s needed is for governments to agree to make ending hunger their top priority, not building more bombers.

“If it’s a top priority, we can solve it.”