World Hunger

* The Jan. 13 Voices essay by the Rev. Gordon Dalbey (“Of Cat Food and World Hunger”), relating his memories of the starving boy during his Peace Corps service to his current purchase of cat food, was a moving and eloquent plea to us all. The problem in most famine-struck countries, though, is not a lack of arable land. Changing over from “non-nutritious export crops” would probably not put food in Igwe’s belly. Most of these countries are troubled by severe, but man-made, problems: poor distribution services, lack of even simple machinery to increase yields, no education or incentives on using fertilizers, crop rotation and other techniques and, above all, local warfare driving refugees off their land into urban areas or refugee camps.

The Peace Corps is one agency working to improve these conditions, as are others. Dalbey’s contribution to such organizations is one way to reduce hunger in these countries. Reducing imports of their “coffee, tea, sugar, tobacco, rubber tires or cocoa” is not.

KATHY KORNEGAY

Twentynine Palms