Protect land and feed world

October 12, 2007

Capital Press Editorial


For many in this country it can be easy to forget that there are people around the globe, and right here in our home communities, who don't get enough food or the right foods to survive and thrive.

To combat that problem of hunger, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations sponsors World Food Day every year on Oct. 16, the anniversary of the FAO's founding in 1945.

The theme for this year's event is "The Right to Food," taken from the Universal Declaration of Human Right of 1948, which recognized the right to food as a basic human right.

The Food and Agriculture Organization runs the risk of alienating farmers in some of its own literature. According to the FAO's Right to Food Knowledge Centre at www.fao.org, the right to adequate food is more about people earning a decent living than what is grown where.

"In some countries food security tends to be linked to agriculture and farming, understandably so, where sustenance farming was the norm," according to FAO literature. "The right to food tends to be understood as the right of farmers to produce food. This is a misunderstanding.

"While the role of agriculture in some countries and some contexts is very important to the right to adequate food, the latter concept is more concerned with individual access to food, whether through production or procurement. For urban people, income security and a well-functioning market is more important than production,"said FAO.

We take issue with that statement. The right to food is not merely an issue of economics - whether or not people have the money to buy food. In order to protect - even expand - mankind's right to food we must also preserve the right to farm for an ever-shrinking pool of farmers and ranchers right here at home.

Here in the West, we are witness to the steady onslaught of urban expansion in key farming areas and the increased difficulty of family farmers to maintain their lifestyle, make a living and feed their own families economically. Well-meaning activists and bureaucrats working to save every obscure plant, insect and animal under the sun and decrying the evils of corporate megafarms don't seem to realize they are creating the environment they so detest. In some agriculture industries, farm operations have been forced to grow large in order to compete and manage the myriad regulations and avalanche of paperwork required to raise crops or livestock.

Rural areas need to feed the metropolises of the world. That means rural people on farms and ranches of all sizes are needed to produce food to meet the broad spectrum of dietary needs and consumers' desired products.

On World Food Day on Oct. 16, we recognize everyone's right to adequate food. In order to ensure everyone's rights and needs are met, we also call on people inside and outside agriculture to aggressively defend people's right to farm. A right to food doesn't fill an empty belly, food does.

Let's make sure it can always be grown in the communities of the West where it is now grown by protecting the land from environmental abuse and urban development. To protect our nation's food security we need to continue to grow food here.

We must make it more attractive for farmers to keep farming and turn their land over to future generations of farmers when they can no longer do so. 

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