October 27, 2004
Hungering for Peace
Talk at the Peacexpeace workshop
at the Gather the Women Congress '04
By Rose Lord
I would like to talk to you about the relationship between food and peace and to state that there cannot be peace in this world until we eliminate hunger.
Why do I say that? Because hunger is violence. It is a source of great physical, mental and spiritual pain. And this form of violence, like any other, cancels out peace.
We see in the news, faces of hunger and despair, mothers in Asia and Africa with babies whose limbs are like sticks, mothers who wake up every day wondering, how will I feed my children? We in the western world are fortunate. We rarely see such faces in our midst. On the contrary, we see the overly-plump faces of children from well-to-do families. But which of these faces, I ask, will most likely grow up to be those of terrorists -- if they survive?
I belong to an organization called Global Coalition for Peace. It is our twofold goal to spread the understanding of a concept called in Sanskrit, "Ahimsa" and to help bring unity to the myriad efforts for achieving peace and justice in our world.
Ahimsa means "to do no harm, to respect all of life." If someone had asked me fifteen years ago, "Do you respect life?" I would have answered, "Yes, of course I respect life." But then a series of personal and societal events made me realize that I did not respect all of life, only those forms of life that I could personally identify with. I realized that the way I was conducting my life, even the way I was eating, was an expression of my limited respect for life. So I changed the way I eat and I started a journey of discovery about this connection between food and peace. The journey continues and the connection becomes ever clearer.
Several years ago I was given the privilege of helping to found Global Coalition for Peace and one of my main activities within this organization has been the development of a program called Mother-to-Mother for Peace and Non-violence. This program creates partnerships between mothers from different cultures and nations (specifically those that are in conflict with one another) for the purpose of supporting each other in their decision to raise their children in a framework of non-violence. A nice idea, but not long after we started promoting the program I received a letter from a woman in India who is the director of a project involving many hundreds of impoverished mothers there in India. She stated that she would like to invite these women to participate in the program but, she asked, „How can I ask my mothers to focus on teaching their children non-violence when they can't even put a decent meal on the table? These people, she told me, are born with malnutrition and it is with them until they die. She challenged me. "You find a means to help feed these people and I will help with your program of non-violence."
At first I rejected her proposal. This was not what the program was all about. But the more I thought about it and discussed it with other people, the more I realized the truth of what she was saying. It takes about $30 a month to adequately feed a family in India. As one man I talked to put it, "I spend that much on cat food every month."
That is a clear illustration of the lack of equity that exists in our little world. I say little world because, as I'm sure you realize, thanks to our technology, it has become a very small world indeed and what affects one in America or Europe or Australia, affects the people of Africa, India and Japan.
So what do we do? Do we just hope that the government food programs that are being conducted will eventually take care of the problem? NO. These programs have been going on for many decades and they have not solved the problem. Not enough food is being distributed to the people who need it the most and the food is not of the quality that's needed.
Another thing I've learned during my fourteen year journey of discovery about food and peace is that there is a huge disparity between truly healthy food and most of what is on the market today. If all facets of the production and distribution of food are put together, it would undoubtedly add up to the biggest business in the world. And that is exactly the status it has taken in the so-called, developed world ˆ that of a business and nothing more. So, over the past 100 years or so, our food has come to be produced as cheaply and efficiently as possible, mass produced on huge corporate farms with chemical fertilizers and pesticides and with little, if any, regard for the nutritional quality of that food or the havoc that this attitude is wreaking on the earth.
The last 100 years has seen epidemic increases in degenerative diseases like diabetes, cancer, arteriosclerosis, and osteoporosis. These diseases were once quite rare. * Now they are not only common in adults but they are even attacking the fragile bodies of our children. Other, new and puzzling disorders that even affect our children's minds, like Attention Deficit Disorder and autism are also increasing in epidemic proportions and research has indicated a distinct link between these disorders and nutrition. This is another form of violence and it is being perpetrated against you and your family.
Without our constant and vigilant urging, our government, regardless of which political party is in office, is not going to change this. Our government is heavily supported by the many interests that make up the food industry.
So, at a point in history where it is possible to provide all of Earth's people with a healthy diet, we are instead producing an abundance of unhealthy food and exporting it to other developed and undeveloped countries while elsewhere in the world people continue to starve. For the sake of our quality of life, for the sake of our planet and for the sake of future generations, mankind needs to make a correction in the way we are doing things. Many people have realized the urgency of this situation and one by one or family by family they are making the correction.
These are the problems:
The quality of our food is making us sick.
There are people in this world who do not have enough to eat.
The violence of hunger is making, and will continue to make, peace an unattainable goal.
The question arises, What can we do?
There are so many things we can do.
First we have to educate ourselves. We spend so many hours, days, years of our lives learning about things that will have little or no effect on our lives and we learn so little about the subject of nutrition which affects our ability to function, to think, to enjoy every moment of our lives.
Secondly, we have to affect an improvement in the quality of our food. We can bring this about simply by making the effort and commitment to purchase the real food that is available from the dedicated small farmers who are growing it. If we start to support these farmers, we will enable them to produce all the healthy food that we could ever hope for.
Thirdly, we have to find ways of sharing our abundance with the hungry people of the world. We cannot keep our sympathies, our consciousness, contained within the boundaries of our own families and friends, or even within the borders of our country. To do so will only give us a temporary and false sense of security while the hungry of the world prepare to wage their battle for survival and the earth, heaving a great sigh, succumbs to its own degenerative disease.
[* These diseases may also have a number of other causes, including environmental toxins and radiation. -- Editor]
You can join Global Coalition for Peace's effort to make real food available to all the people of the world. Visit these website to learn more.
<http://www.schooloflife.org/> (click onto Spiritual Food for the New Millennium)
<http://www.globalcoalitionforpeace.net/>
For information on the Mother-to-Mother for Peace and Non-violence program
<http://www.m2m.globalcoalitionforpeace.net/>www.m2m.globalcoalitionforpeace.net
Write or call us at:
Global Coalition for Peace
4209 East-West Highway
Chevy Chase, MD 20815
301-654-4899
or
Global Coalition for Peace
6534 Quaker Drive
Pittsburgh, PA 15236
412-655-3063
e-mail us and we will send a brochure