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Faith and farming
FAITH IN ACTION
By Katherine Marshall
We're seeing many calls to conscience these days. Nibbling breakfast, I clicked on a video where Jacques Diouf, head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, calls on people everywhere to sign an appeal to the World Food Summit that begins November 16 in Rome. He counts aloud to six, then reminds us that in that time a child has died. Karen Armstrong launched a Charter of Compassion on November 12 in Washington. Its aim is a groundswell of citizen action to live the golden rule - to treat others as you would have them treat you.
But translating noble principles and even the passion and energy of millions of "Yes we can"-inspired supporters into action isn't easy, particularly where agriculture is concerned. The path from a $20 billion promise for new resources to bolster agricultural development, made by the G8 in Italy last June, to successful change on tens of millions of African farms is long and bumpy.
So last Friday, working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and my NGO, the World Faiths Development Dialogue, we gathered a diverse group to ask the loaded question: "what's religion got to do with it?", focusing on agriculture in Africa. A vast array of ideas came forward, bound together by the appreciation that "it's complicated". What made the brainstorming especially interesting was the common reaction that the introduction of religion into the discussion was new, and inspired new ways of looking at the problem.
A first and fairly obvious action area is advocacy. "Give us this day our daily bread" is a prayer that resonates across faith traditions. David Beckmann, President of Bread for the World, and founder of the U.S. Alliance to End Hunger, is convinced that the moral case for fighting hunger can resonate at all levels and across societies. Religious leaders and communities can be strong advocates.
But closer to the farm, it gets more complicated. Every country and community is different and actions at farm level need to be bolstered not only by national policies that affect prices, fertilizer availability, and interest rates, but rich-world policies (especially farm subsidies) that so deeply affect markets and prices. A vast array of faith-inspired organizations and communities are active in agriculture but their efforts are fragmented. Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, and Islamic Relief have agricultural strategies and work in many countries, but tens of thousands of organizations and programs run the gamut from soup to nuts (literally). There's an unmined potential here: while the global donor community backed off agriculture, tempted by other priorities and daunted by its difficulty, many of these organizations plugged on. So they have a wealth of experience, just not collected or pulled together in any coherent way.
Another challenging call is for more partnership, whether between public and private, or among faith-inspired groups and communities. Cutting across faith boundaries offers many theoretical benefits: better understanding, pooling of knowledge and resources, cutting down fear and ignorance that divides communities. It is easier said than done, however. There are promising small examples that offer inspiration but still far to go.
Perhaps the most interesting probing was around how faith affects attitudes towards farming. Farmers combine practicality and pragmatism with faith: they put seeds in the ground and wait for something to happen. In Africa, beliefs in spirit worlds affect how people relate to change - whether new seed varieties, irrigation practices, or land tenure arrangements. It's all very well to imagine that attitudes will change with education but that's not always the case. Bishop Aboagye Mensah from Ghana gently reminded his eminent colleagues of the strong influence Friday the 13th still seems to exert in the United States.
Most of Africa's food is produced by women, so women's roles figure prominently in the new investment strategies. Religion can be a strong force for positive change but it can also trap women in subordinate roles where even contact with an extension worker is cut off.
The word "holistic" is much in vogue these days; it makes the important if hardly surprising point that things are connected. In practical terms for agriculture it harks back to the realization that just vaccinating a chicken or delivering fertilizer rarely achieves good results if done in isolation from other facets of a farm family's life. In many respects, women come at the beginning and end of that process. There's a long way to go to meaningful action.
So we are embarked on a long learning and action process. Next steps? More talking to those concerned -- farmers, pastors, imams, women's groups, government leaders, others. We hope to gather focus groups of recent Peace Corps volunteers who might offer insights and ideas (volunteers welcome). It is daunting to recognize and grapple with the long road between global inspiration like a Charter for Compassion and supporting African farmers looking through a faith lens, but it's good to be trying.
ActionAid in a preparatory release before the Food Summit urged Pope Benedict XVI to pray for a miracle: the $3 billion that the G8 has found in new money to solve world hunger is, they pointed out, less than Goldman Sach's $3.2 billion profit announced on the eve of World Food Day. The real miracles, though, will happen on farms and in families, impelled by a mosaic of actions that build on traditions, address different aspects of people's lives (especially gender roles), and bring new technologies and support in ways that work.
Katherine Marshall is a senior fellow at Georgetown's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, a Visiting Professor, and a senior advisor for the World Bank.
By Katherine Marshall |
November 16, 2009; 12:56 AM ET
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Faith in Action
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Posted by: ccnl1 | November 17, 2009 4:15 PM
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Then there's this just below:
But no matter - Church policies as regards prevention/obfuscation of birth control information in poverty-stricken third world countries that can ill afford population growth is medieval in thought, word, and deed.
Backward Church policies are nothing new - an all-male clergy prohibited from marrying, has contributed to clerical behavior that has cost Rome and it's affiliates in the USA and elsewhere hundreds of millions of dollars in legal settlements.......
Church apologists don't have a leg to stand on.
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/blog/eyeonasia/archives/2009/10/_hunger_scoreca.html
Posted by: persiflage | November 17, 2009 1:39 PM
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Then there's this just below:
But no matter - Church policies as regards prevention/obfuscation of birth control information in poverty-stricken third world countries that can ill afford population growth is medieval in thought, word, and deed.
Backward Church policies are nothing new - an all-male clergy prohibited from marrying, has contributed to clerical behavior that has cost Rome and it's affiliates in the USA and elsewhere hundreds of millions of dollars in legal settlements.......
Church apologists don't have a leg to stand on.
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/blog/eyeonasia/archives/2009/10/_hunger_scoreca.html
Posted by: persiflage | November 17, 2009 1:38 PM
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Then there's this just below:
But no matter - Church policies as regards prevention/obfuscation of birth control information in poverty-stricken third world countries that can ill afford population growth is medieval in thought, word, and deed.
Backward Church policies are nothing new - an all-male clergy prohibited from marrying, has contributed to clerical behavior that has cost Rome and it's affiliates in the USA and elsewhere hundreds of millions of dollars in legal settlements.......
Church apologists don't have a leg to stand on.
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/blog/eyeonasia/archives/2009/10/_hunger_scoreca.html
Posted by: persiflage | November 17, 2009 1:37 PM
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And the country with the largest population in the world is??
Atheist China!!!!
Then there is "Hindu India"!!!
And this:
"Nevertheless, on the global scale the world population is increasing,[98] as is the net quantity of human food produced - a pattern that has been true for roughly 10,000 years, since the human development of agriculture."
Posted by: ccnl1 | November 17, 2009 1:15 PM
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The arguments for population control are so well formulated as to be indisputable.
Organizations like the Catholic Church, that rigidly reinforce the trend toward continuing population growth by preaching against conventional birth control methods and reproductive control are part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.
Global food and water shortages, like the effects of global warming, are inevitable - the question is when, not if....the effects will be devastating beyond anyone's ability to predict outcomes.
Posted by: persiflage | November 17, 2009 11:59 AM
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Food for thought, the growth of people vrs food prodution. Bear in mind costs, weather, water, soils, and birth control or lack of birth control. Can you see a very violent world soon to come? I CAN.
Posted by: usapdx | November 16, 2009 7:32 PM
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(United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization)UNFAO's world hunger map is posted at http://www.fao.org/economic/ess/food-security-statistics/fao-hunger-map/en/
It is obvious that the hunger issue (if there is one), based on the map, is located in equatorial Africa, a region beset by civil wars and Isalamic warlords. One wonders, however, as to how hunger statistics are gathered in such dangerous, non-governed areas??
The annual questionaires sent out by the FAO:
"Data Collection
The Statistics Division sends out four major questionnaires annually to countries to collect statistical data to be included in the FAOSTAT databases.
The questionnaires used for data collection in 2006 were:
"Crop and Livestock Production (xls)
Prices received by Farmers - Primary Crop and Livestock Products (xls)
Agricultural Resources – Land and Irrigation (xls)
Agricultural Resources – Fertilizers (xls"
But nothing about the number of citizens going hungary?? So again, how does the FAO go about getting their estimates of those going hungry every day???????
Posted by: ccnl1 | November 16, 2009 11:15 AM
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The global statistics of abortion as a means of birth/population control aka baby deletion:
"One in five pregnancies worldwide ends in an abortion. Although it is lower than the previous years, that is still one high global statistics in there. The rate of abortion has a significant fall compared with the mid-nineties, but nearly half these terminations still take place in unsafe conditions, a study says.
In 2003, the latest year for which full figures are available, 42 million abortions were carried out around the world, compared with 46 million in 1995.
For every 1,000 women aged between 15 and 44 in 2003, 29 had an abortion, down from 35 in 1997.
Abortion rates were lowest in Western Europe (12 pregnancy terminations per 1,000 women) but highest in Eastern Europe, where the rate was 44 abortions per 1,000 women. In the United States and Europe, it was 21 per 1,000, while in Asia and Africa, the rate was 29 per 1,000.
Forty-eight percent of all abortions worldwide were unsafe, and more than 97 percent of unsafe abortions took place in developing countries.
On the basis of the 2003 data, on average 90 percent of women worldwide will have had an abortion before the age of 45, the study calculates.
This varies, though, between many women who will have had multiple terminations and many who will have had none at all, note the authors, led by Gilda Sedgh of the Guttmacher Institute in New York and Iqbal Shah of the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Source: www.enews.ma"
One might also assume there are almost 800 million STD cases/year globally based on the fact that there are 1 million abortions a year and 19 million cases of STDs/year in the USA.
And then there is this:
"FIRST-YEAR CONTRACEPTIVE FAILURE RATES
Percentage of women experiencing an unintended pregnancy - (and the decision to have or not have an abortion)
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contr_use.html
Method Typical
Pill (combined) 8.7 %
Tubal sterilization 0.7
Male condom 17.4
Vasectomy 0.2
3-month injectable 6.7
Withdrawal 18.4
IUD
Copper-T 1.0
Mirena 0.1
Periodic abstinence 25.3
Calendar 9.0
Ovulation Method 3.0
Sympto-thermal 2.0
Post-ovulation 1.0
1-month injectable 3.0
Implant 1.0
Patch 8.0
Diaphragm 16.0
Sponge §
Women who have had a child 32.0
Women who have never had a child 16.0
Female condom 27.0
Spermicides 29.0
No method 85.0
Abstinence 0
Hand jiving 0
Mutual masturbation 0