May 1-3 fast materials
Economics and Debt Meet the Food Crisis
Haiti
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Fasting options
The typical fast would begin after a simple meal Friday evening, refrain from food Saturday and break the fast with Communion or a communal meal on Sunday.
Those who are not fasting from food can choose to eat simple meals, skip a meal or design a fast that fits their circumstances.
Fasting from food should be avoided by those with health-related conditions, such as diabetes, heart problems and pregnancy. Anyone with questions about their health condition should consult with their doctor before beginning. Those fasting should read the guidelines in “Fasting 101.”
Special thanks for their help in making this month’s materials possible include Skye Murray, Shannon O´Donnell, Jim McArthur (Covenant Community Church, Louisville), Karen Ashmore (Lambi Fund of Haiti), Bruce Reyes-Chow, Jubilee USA Network and Presbyterian Hunger Program staff.
Friday evening
Preparing and Focusing
Haiti Revisited
We return to Haiti this month because the economic and debt issues affecting Haiti are the same ones that affect the rest of the world. The other reason is that three fast participants from PC(USA) congregations visited Haiti in March on a trip to encounter Haitians who are impacted by the food crisis.
Haitians, Dominicans and U.S. participants in the Food Crisis Study Trip organized by Agricultural Missions in March, 2009. Their host was the Haitian Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP). Photo courtesy of Skye Murray and Shannon O’Donnell
Reflections of Haiti
By Skye Murray and Shannon O’Donnell
Covenant Community Church [PC(USA)] of Louisville
(two of the three fasters who visited Haiti in March)
Manje nou bezwen an, ban nou l' jòdi a
(Give us this day our daily bread, in Haitian Creole)
Skye: My journey to Haiti began with the very first in this series of churchwide fasts. I was intrigued that our new moderator had written in support of a year-long fast, and I decided to take part in it with my small intentional community at church, a group of six who meet weekly and focus on the issues of justice, food and faith. I was captured by the materials about Haiti. The poverty, the food crisis and the environmental crises that Haitians face so close to the United States really astounded me.
Tricia Fischer, Shannon O’Donnell, Skye Murray in Haiti. Photo courtesy of Skye Murray and Shannon O’Donnell How could I live in such abundance when they live in such scarcity? The fast materials brought these inequalities into sharp focus for me. The weekend fast spent reading, thinking, and praying about Haiti compelled me to go there, to experience their circumstances for myself, and to be in touch with a crisis that is affecting the people in Haiti and around the world. I feel like my life has been changed as a result of this year of intention.
I connected with Agricultural Missions at the same time that I began the first fast. They were organizing a study tour in rural Haiti focusing on the food crisis. Six short months later I found myself on a plane with two other members of my church, Shannon and Tricia. My prayer was to better understand the difference between my wants and my needs.
Chavanne Jean-Baptiste (left) and Skye Murray (right). Chavanne is the founder and leader of of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP). Photo courtesy of Skye Murray and Shannon O’Donnell So often during the prayer of Christ, the phrase “give us this day our daily bread” is transposed in my mind to “give me what I want.” As I read and prepared for the trip, I became painfully aware that my daily bread comes at the expense of my Caribbean and Latin American sisters and brothers. Cheap produce, sugar, spices and textiles from these places fill my cabinets and closets. So I asked God to open me up to what it means to have exactly what we need for each day. I asked to be taught the lesson of our instead of mine, of need instead of want. This was my first step in responding to a food crisis that is affecting millions of people on our planet, a crisis that leads to a hunger related death every six seconds.
Before I continue, let me share a reflection Shannon wrote one morning as she awoke to the calling of a rooster:
In Haiti, the thing I've noticed
is when you look into the face of poverty, it looks right back.
It doesn't blink or smile or apologize or look away.
We are the ones who will first look away
because it is uncomfortable to see.
Yesterday I looked deeply into that face
and listened for all the unspoken things it has to say.
I am speechless at its story and captivated by the hidden beauty.
The longer I look, the more I know, yet will I ever be able to truly understand?
I spent my week in rural Haiti with a woman named Diamene. She lived in a small, modest house of dirt floors, wooden walls and a tin roof. There were three small rooms and an outdoor kitchen where she built fires to cook food for her five children. There was no plumbing or electricity, and yet there was a sense of joy and hopefulness at her home that was contagious. I was introduced to her because she needed help digging a cistern to collect rainwater for her vegetables. As a participant in the Peasants Movement of Papay (MPP) she had been learning sustainable farming practices. The soil in Papay has eroded to bare rock, but with help from Mark Hare, the PC(USA) mission co-worker in Papay, Diamene learned how to build raised gardens out of old tires. As a result of the Presbyterian Church’s partnership with the MPP, families are able to provide for themselves in ways that had seemed impossible before. My travelling companion Shannon wrote:
Everything is utilized here — from old tires, to bottles, to scraps of wire or metal. Lots of the projects that the MPP has helped start are sustained by the local people, and the results are already apparent. The water irrigation alone has helped numerous families to be able to grow vegetation where there was previous dry grass.
Diamene’s strength, joy and energy were contagious. As she finished the cistern, her smile was one of the most beautiful I’d ever seen. She embodied the hope that is present in Haiti.
Moccene (left) and Skye (right). Moccene works on the "Road to Life Crew." He built and is in charge of this ‘mandala’ garden and the many gardens at the MPP center. Photo courtesy of Skye Murray and Shannon O’Donnell The people I encountered were resourceful, creative, hard working and committed to turning the situation around in Haiti. They were committed to sustainable farming methods, reforestation, community partnerships and local and national agrarian reform. Stephen Bartlett from Agricultural Missions said that if there is hope for Haiti to turn the tables of the crisis, then there is hope for the world. There are few places that have been so devastated by deforestation, erosion, unstable government and poverty. Yet in my week in Papay, I saw hope at every corner, in the network of farmers who have resolved to move from dependence on imported food to farming and consuming local food.
Cows turn the mill which extracts juice from sugar cane. Then the cane juice is cooked and made into a hard, brown artisanal candy. Photo courtesy of Skye Murray and Shannon O’Donnell
I’m convinced that rebuilding my local food economy is where I must start. Growing food for myself, supporting local sustainable farmers, making purchases with the global community in mind (is my asparagus from my state or from Peru?) and committing resources to the work of the Presbyterian Hunger Program and others who are working hand in hand with farmers in their struggle to reclaim a way of life that honors the earth, each other and future generations.
God is teaching me that “our daily bread” is the work of everyone — to create a world where we share whenever we have more than we need, where we protect the habitats of animals and plants and care for the land in a way that leaves it productive for generations to come.
Economics 101
Must We Know Economics?!
You may be different, but most United States Americans’ understanding of economics is limited. Yet our ability to understand what is and isn’t working well in our world depends in part on our economic IQ. Our capacity and moral obligation as Christians to affect positive change is founded on this, so let us take some time this month to explore the economic dimensions of the global food crisis.
Over the past year, prices for basic food commodities like corn and rice have skyrocketed and fluctuated wildly. Last spring, high prices sparked riots in cities in Latin America, Africa and Asia. In developing countries, many families spend as much as 75 percent of their incomes on food. When prices for basic staples rise, few of their governments provide assistance. Many people simply don't eat. Since 2007, some 75 million people have joined the ranks of the hungry, pushing the global population of those without enough healthy food to a crisis point of nearly one billion.
This food crisis — inextricably linked to the financial crisis — is destroying the very foundation of national economies: their people. This devastation has fatal ramifications that will be felt, not for years, but for generations — and not in one corner of the globe, or even across the developing world, but worldwide.
People take desperate measures when they and their families are hungry and unintended consequences occur. Violence, participation in armed groups, the spread of AIDS, family breakdown, substandard education and myriad other problems — with economic and security ramifications for the United States — find hunger at their roots.
— From President Obama must ensure that G20 meeting looks beyond wealthy countries' economies, April 2, 2009
Economics Made Simple
The articles in this month’s materials explain the various ways that debt and economics have created a global food system which allows one billion people to go hungry and creates harmful instability in food prices, but the basic economics behind this can be summarized in just three paragraphs:
Human-made policies and economic practices have shifted land, water, seeds, credit and other assets away from family farmers into the hands of a relatively small number of giant farm operations and agribusiness conglomerates. The costs to the environment (e.g. CO2 emissions, soil erosion, manure, poisoned waterways, etc.) and to people (e.g. diet related diseases and medical costs, low wages, pesticide poisonings, dangerous conditions, etc.) of industrial agriculture are not borne (“internalized”) by agribusiness but are paid by the public and in the form of damaged ecosystems (“externalized”).
One of the goals of U.S. agricultural policy has been to keep food as cheap as possible to gain market share in the world for U.S. crops and to maximize profits for agribusiness, which turn cheap grain into meat and processed food items. U.S. consumers benefit at the cash register but lose by paying $100 billion+ annually on diet-related healthcare costs. Another disadvantage to the “cheap food policy” is downward pressure on wages, to which farm workers and small-holder family farmers can attest.
Repaying huge foreign debts has made it nearly impossible for poorer countries to support their family farmers and ensure food security. So the largest farms and firms grow ever larger. Large-scale agribusiness and food retailers have increasing influence to further shape policies and practices in their favor.
One example: In the past almost all grains produced on a continent stayed there; now ships transport food crops all over the world and just three multinational corporations — Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Bunge — control the vast majority of grain that moves between nations. Agribusiness and biotechnology lobbyists meet with members of Congress every day to register their concerns and needs. Tens of millions of dollars are contributed to the major parties and campaigns. Executives from these corporations circulate through the revolving doors and regularly become leaders in the U.S. Department of Agriculture and return to their corporations after their service in the government. The result has been the consolidation of the agri-food sector into a small number of giant farms and corporations and the near extinction of family farmers.
Dispelling a Food Myth
At a recent international gathering, “Jacques Diouf (director-general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)) called for more aid, in this case a $30 billion additional annual infusion to increase farm output in poor countries, as well as for “policies and programs, such as social safety nets” to enhance “access to food by the hungry.” But Diouf’s FAO, much like the G8 Summit a month earlier, appeared to emphasize the first part of this prescription: production. In June, it announced that the most “influential” factor in the food price spikes was “utilization outstripping production…in a number of major exporting countries.” The takeaway? Higher prices mean supply is short, so more supply is the way to lower prices and ease hunger.
The trouble is, the facts simply don’t support the case. The world produces close to 3,000 calories per person per day — more than enough for everyone in the world to have an adequate diet. And that’s counting only the leftovers — what remains after we turn well over a third of the world’s grain and the world’s fish catch into animal feed, which comes back to us in the form of food with only a fraction of the calories put into it, and after we use nearly a third of U.S. corn to feed ethanol-powered cars …
From The Food Crisis and the Fear of Scarcity by Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé. Read the full article to see how the media perpetuates this myth.
The Role of Debt
It was mentioned above about how odious debt repayment leaves few funds available to poorer countries for them to support their family farmers and ensure food security. Catherine Gordon’s article explains how this plays out.
Haiti's Crushing Debt Burden
Haiti’s international debt is estimated at 1.4 billion U.S. dollars and rising. Scheduled debt repayment for 2005 was $56.3 million. To put this figure into perspective, in 1999 Haiti spent $4 per person on health and $5 per person on education, while also spending $5 per person on debt …
Download Catherine Gordon’s article on Haitian debt. Catherine is the Associate for International Affairs in the PC(USA) Washington Office.
Learn More
 The Politics of Rice
This news report from Inside USA explains the food crisis and its impact on Haiti. (17 minutes)
Food Crisis in Haiti
By Karen Ashmore, Lambi Fund of Haiti
Last year Haitians led the world in protesting the soaring cost of food. The prices of rice, beans and fruit have increased tremendously in the last year. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued a report saying that the food crisis threatened the Caribbean nation's fragile security.
Research shows that international aid programs create dependence on food imports and interfere with the production of local food crops and sustainable agriculture. Industrial farming and food aid can have disastrous effects on developing countries. While food aid and imported food purport to address the problem of hunger, they often exacerbate it by crippling local agriculture's ability to compete and be profitable. Sustainable agriculture, on the other hand, provides a long-term solution that addresses both hunger and its root cause, poverty.
When I was in Haiti visiting a peasant organization earlier this year, I met a young boy named Stanley. Friendly and outgoing, he soon began tagging along after me. I talked with his father, who had been learning English. He proudly told me about the crops his community organization was raising and the tree nursery they had built as they were reforesting the denuded hills around their remote mountain village. While they were poor by American standards, here was a community that was well-educated, self-sufficient and lived in peace in beautiful surroundings.
Photo courtesy of the Lambi Fund of Haiti Then catastrophe struck. The economic situation of the peasantry was already difficult when the recent hurricanes hit the Caribbean. The degradation of the environment contributed to the damage. Waters gushing from the severely deforested mountains carried mud and debris and flooded the valleys and towns of Haiti. Gonaives, Haiti's fourth largest city, was under two meters of water for two weeks. Reports are still coming in and the assessment of damage incurred has reached catastrophic proportions.
Photo courtesy of Lambi Fund of Haiti The flooding from the hurricanes caused hundreds of deaths, loss of crops, homes, microenterprises and animals. The devastation and losses have left the Haitian government absolutely overwhelmed. They are now faced with the task of rebuilding an infrastructure of roads, bridges and canals destroyed by natural disasters, but undermined by years of neglect, divestment and corruption.
Photo courtesy of Lambi Fund of Haiti Meanwhile, people continue to struggle. Families in remote areas are seeking shelter in schools and churches, their villages cut off by washed out bridges and roads. At least 1,000 deaths have been reported, with more expected as the waters recede. A million people remain homeless. Crops and livestock have been wiped out, making an already chronically dire hunger situation worse.
Food aid has its place to help with immediate survival after a natural disaster. But long after the food aid trucks have gone, the Lambi Fund of Haiti, a partner organization with Presbyterian Hunger Program, will still be working side by side with Haitian peasant groups helping to rebuild sustainable communities.
Haiti’s neighbors and the international community must not only find the compassion to help the country’s desperate survive at this time, but they need to ensure a steady stream of support in the future. Haiti’s problems will not recede with the flood waters. For its part, the Haitian government, which had begun to invest in agriculture in the devastated regions, needs to continue to pursue long-term solutions, including large-scale reforestation and alternative fuels to replace the charcoal production that has left Haiti with less than two percent tree cover.
Given the crucial role of agriculture for the survival of large segments of the population, an obvious option is to place emphasis on staple food production, especially at the small farm level, as a means for reducing poverty, reducing reliance on costly imports, and improving the nutritional status of the rural poor. Sustainable organic farming is ideal for these poor areas. It is environmentally sound, requires little money and is labor intensive. Done right, organic farming can bring high yields and provide people with healthy nutritious food. Organic farming improves soil fertility and provides a more sustainable method for peasants to continue farming. The use of traditional methods, hand tools, composting, organic fertilizers and pesticides help conserve the soil. The practice of planting cover crops, crop rotation, agroforestry, reforestation and intercropping help improve soil too. Maintaining a seasonal calendar suited to the local environment is another way to ensure success.
With goals to increase crop yields, plant more trees and improve soil fertility, local peasants must continue to develop plans to achieve their goals with self-sustaining outcomes. This is how they will be able to replenish the land, feed their families and earn a livelihood with dignity and respect. Stanley and his community desperately need your help. Join hands with Haiti to make that happen.
Friday evening prayer
Open me, O God, as I begin this time of fasting.
Open me to your Holy Spirit.
Open me to my sisters and brothers.
Open me to your children in Peru.
Open me to your creation.
Open me to myself.
Open me that this might be a time
of drawing closer to you
of reflecting on how I live
of remembering the impact I make on your world
of realizing anew my relations with others
of renewing my efforts to follow Jesus.
Open me, O God.
Amen.
Saturday: fasting and integrating
Saturday Waking Prayer
God of the very breath we breathe
let your peace be known amidst the economic chaos of the day
be with those bound by worry and anxiety
be with those facing loss of food and shelter
be with those who are desperate and panic-filled
be with those who turn away from the stranger
be with those who cling to apathy and comfort
be with those leaning more on self than on You
be with us all as we strive to live lives worthy of Your grace
be with all your children, Lord
be with all your children
And let your peace be known, Lord
let your peace be known..
Amen.
— The Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow, Moderator of the 218th General Assembly (2008)
Breakfast-time prayer
God, let us never forget that you are with us always.
Help us to remember that you shine through your people,
And that if we need to see your face,
All we must do is look into the eyes of another.
May we see you
In our next-door neighbor
And in the face of a Haitian farmer
In the people squashed against us in the crowded bus
And in the face of those who speed by in their expensive cars
In the weary shoppers elbowing their way towards the counter
And in the face of a child starving
In the doctor who treats people in a local clinic
And in the face of a young girl dying of AIDS
In the playful children kicking dust
And in the faces of their mothers watching.
O God, our Companion,
Let us never forget that you are with us everywhere.
— Jubilee USA Network, adapted
Lunchtime prayer
Haitian Mealtime Blessing
Lord Creator, Sustainer and Comforter of our world, whose power has worked many miracles, be with us and abide within us.
Let us be mindful of our many blessings:
When we plant for pleasure and for beauty rather than necessity.
When we pick and choose the best of well-stocked grocery bins and vegetable markets,
When we are impatient with long lines that seem to move so slowly.
Remind, us Lord, of those who garden for survival.
Remind, us Lord, of those who have neither money nor choice about what they and their children eat — because they are starving.
Remind us of those whose work consists of continual, grueling tasks which require stooping, bending, planting and weeding and then go home, lacking even clean running water to prepare meals over coal fires.
Remind us of those who count it a blessing to be ABLE to WAIT in lines because it is a chance to receive bare staples of rice or flour for their families for one day or maybe a week.
Only through the power of your love do our lives cross.
Though their lives and our experiences are so different – even worlds apart- brothers and sisters are we.
Nourish us then with this food prepared for our bodies
Empower us with your spirit and love so that we can use the gifts and talents you have given us to end the imbalance and hardships that our sisters and brothers face.
Be with those we love, pray for, and cherish.
In the name of our Lord, we ask it.
Amen.
— The Rev. Lula Creed
The Rev. Creed is now deceased. She was an ordained clergy member of the Presbytery of the Peaks who loved and served the Lord with many gifts and talents. She was a dancer, a writer, a poet and singer.
Suppertime prayer
God of eternal justice and endless mercy,
we confess our sins of action and complicity,
sins that have oppressed our sisters and brothers,
compromised our witness to the gospel,
and endangered the earth you made.
We have found profit and pleasure in economic injustice.
We are consumed by selfishness and captivated by greed.
We have plundered the resources of nature,
failing to be responsible caretakers for your creation.
We have fractured your church and abandoned your mission.
Forgive us, gracious God.
Restore in us a vision of abundant life for all,
and a longing for the promise of your peaceable realm.
Amen.
—David Gambrell
A Prayer of Confession based on the Accra Confession
Evening prayer time
We dare to imagine a world where hunger has no
chance to show its face.
We dare to dream of a world where war and terror are
afraid to leave their mark.
We long to believe in a world of hope unchained and
lives unfettered.
We dare to share in the creation of a world where your
people break free.
Dare we open our minds to difference?
Dare we open our lives to change?
Your kingdom come, O God.
Your will be done.
Amen.
— Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, U.K.
Bible Study: Jesus and the Money Changers at the Temple
By Jim McArthur, Covenant Community Church
Mark 11:15-18
Jesus is baptized by John in the Jordan River and the Spirit descends like a dove through the torn open heavens. After his time in the wilderness, Jesus starts to head towards his destiny in Jerusalem. To get there, he has to navigate through a society and terrain that were dominated by the political power of Rome and the religious might of Jerusalem.
Jesus came and ministered to peasants and fisher folk from the countryside of Nazareth and Galilee. As Christ made his way to Jerusalem on a donkey, he timed his entrance to coincide with the return of Pilate, the governor of Judea. Pilate’s primary goal was to maintain order and deliver tribute back to Rome by any means necessary, and he had several legions to help him do this. Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem was a counterpoint to the power that Pilate was bringing to Jerusalem. John Dominic Crossan calls the Palm Sunday story “an anti-imperial, anti-triumphal one, a deliberate lampoon of the conquering emperor entering the city on horseback through gates opened in abject submission.”
After entering the city, Jesus proceeds to the temple. The Temple was the commercial, judicial and spiritual center of the Jewish world. Commerce in the temple was commonplace. The temple and business in the court of the Gentiles exploited the weakest members of society in two ways. First, they charged a fee to convert the Greek and Roman currencies to Hebrew currency. Second, they charged a premium for the animals that would be used for sacrifices. This second practice created a culture of guilt and stacked the deck against the people who were forced to play the game.
Jesus would have none of it and overturned, or even destroyed the tables in the temple. According to Ched Meyers, the Greek word for “overturning” can also mean “destroying.” Meyers also notes that the practices that Jesus condemns “represent concrete mechanisms of oppression that doubly exploited the poor and the unclean. Not only were they second class citizens, but the cult obligated them to make reparation, through sacrifices for their inferior status, from which the marketers profited.” This violated one of the key aspects of the temple as a place of Justice, and this could not stand. Jesus, in his choice of action, confronted the Temple court and stood with the marginalized peasants of society. He challenged the power structures on behalf of those who were being taken advantage of and whose voices had been ignored and silenced.
Suggested study questions:
- In today’s globalized economy, this story from Mark could relate to the economic gap between the Global North and the Global South. What countries/organizations dominate the world today like the “political power of Rome and the religious might of Jerusalem?” Who are the “peasants and fisher folk” of today and how are they affected by dominating forces? In what ways might we be complicit in these forces? How might we begin to “overturn these tables?”
- If commerce in the Temple was commonplace, was Jesus’ message to remove it from the Temple, or to reform commerce to be more equitable for everyone? How is the economy a moral and religious issue? The Christian tradition speaks of the whole earth as God’s household, the oikouméne, the same New Testament Greek word from which we get economics, ecology, and ecumenical. How are these three concepts related to each other, and what is Jesus trying to say about the oikouméne in this passage? See the Biblical Resources from the Sabbath Economics Collaborative.
- Beginning in 2008, a series of events created a huge food crisis in Haiti and around the world. Free trade agreements reduced Haiti’s import tariffs, cheap rice flooded the markets in Haiti, farmers in Haiti lost business, urban populations swelled as unemployment rose, gas prices shot up making imported food unaffordable, violence broke out, food donations further weakened Haitian farmers’ ability to compete, and Haiti’s national debt increased, crippling the government. Are there similarities between the rule-makers of global free trade and the money changers at the Temple? What are some long-term solutions to the food crisis in Haiti and other countries of the Global South? What does a “household of God” economy look like? How can we begin the journey from the current reality to a just and sustainable economy? [See the Rev. Douglas Meeks’ "The Economy of Grace vs. the Market Logic" ]
Learn More
Hurricanes, Haiti, and a missionary’s passion to hold hunger at bay
This PNS article focuses on the work of PC(USA) mission coworker Mark Hare and his efforts to foster sustainable agriculture in some of the poorest areas of Haiti.
HAITI: Debt Relief—Food Security Fact Sheet
- In 1825, France demanded Haiti pay 150 million francs ($21 billion today) as compensation for their loss of property in Haiti, including slaves.
- Today, Haiti has a total external debt of $1.4 billion, 45 percent of which was given during the corrupt Duvalier Regimes. Each year, Haiti pays approximately $56 million to service this debt — almost $1 million every week.
- In 2006 Haiti qualified for debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Country initiative which could significantly lower Haiti’s debt by the end of 2009, at the earliest. This could mean 100 percent debt relief from the Inter-American Development Bank ($534 million), but approximately only 15 percent relief from other creditors such as the World Bank and IMF. Thus, after debt relief under HIPC initiative is achieved in 2009 (or later) Haiti may still be paying service to $500-600 million of debt.
- Average import tariffs in Haiti are 2.9 percent, making it the most economically liberal country in the western hemisphere, while continuing to be the most economically poor country as well. The tariff decreased over the past 20 years, thanks largely to the structural reforms implemented in 1986 and 1995 by the IMF and World Bank, allowed imported food products to undercut the price of locally produced food, while at the same time hindered potential revenue that could have bolstered national production.
- According to a 2006 Christian Aid report, the production of local rice in Haiti dropped 41 percent from 124,000 tons in 1981 to 78, 000 tons in 2004. Meanwhile imports skyrocketed from 15,000 tons in the early 80s to 350,000 tons in 2004. This makes Haiti, with a small population of 8.5 million, the 3rd largest importer of U.S. rice. Meanwhile, an estimated 830,000 Haitian agriculture jobs have been lost as a result of this trade liberalization that was required by IMF and World Bank loans.
- Social spending has grown by 75 percent in those countries that have already received debt relief.
- Haiti’s new Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy prioritized the development of a sustainable agriculture system based on: environmentally sound agricultural practices: increased clarity on the ownership and use of land; watershed protection; and ensuring the broader availability of basic foodstuffs through the stimulation of agricultural production (including livestock farming; poultry production)
— Compiled by Jubilee USA Network (sources available on request)
Haitian Food Riots Unnerving But Not Surprising
By Mark Schuller
the Americas Policy Program,
Center for International Policy (CIP)
April 25, 2008 — The excerpt below illustrates the insidious effects of food aid on Haiti. Read the full article.
The food riots in Haiti were also a result of policies and actions of the international community. Haiti has lost its food sovereignty as a result of decades of foreign-imposed neoliberal measures (see Neoliberalism in the glossary). This is a concrete example of what longtime Haiti advocate Paul Farmer calls "structural violence" — the long-term underdevelopment and inequalities in the world system. [Read more]
Sunday: breaking the fast and responding
It's important to break a fast carefully. Eating too much too soon will overload your digestive system, causing uncomfortable and disruptive reactions.
Sunday Waking Prayer
God of my going out and my coming back, I thank you for the gift of this day. As I choose to fast this day, remind me of my sisters and brothers who have no choice about what to eat or even whether to eat. Help me reflect on all the choices I make and the impact those choices have on others. I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Breakfast-time prayer
This is the day that you have made, gracious God. I rejoice and give you thanks for the miracle of life experienced anew. As Jesus blessed many with the five loaves and the two fishes, may I too, know your blessing as I break my fast. May I experience afresh your peace in my spirit, your love in my heart, and your justice guiding my life that I may work for a world in which your gifts are shared so that everyone has enough and all your children are fed. Grant me the strength and courage to follow Jesus and work for that day.
Break the Fast with Holy Communion
A majority of Presbyterian congregations have communion on the first Sunday of each month, but some do not. If your congregation doesn’t celebrate the Eucharist on the first weekend of the month, you could break the fast with a breakfast or a lunch before or after worship. Alternately, another time of the month can be chosen to do the fast.
Worship Materials
Bringing it home
The global food system will vulnerable to food price shocks as was experienced in 2008 on an ongoing basis. It would be wise to put better systems in place to respond to them. Reserves and inventories need to be accumulated at the local, national and international levels to relieve temporary shortages, especially since persistent export bans cannot be ruled out. It is more efficient to build these buffer stocks on a multinational basis with suitable assurances of access and availability.
Community grain reserves in Cameroon. Photo by Christi Boyd A meaningful grain/food stocks program needs to be put in place in the years ahead. The establishment of community grain reserves and international reserves, in addition to enhancing agricultural stability, would go a long way toward preventing a recurrence of the food crisis. When grain prices are lower, as they are now, we have the opportunity to fill such reserves.
Some suggest the establishment of two reserves — an international humanitarian reserve that could be drawn upon by the World Food Program (WFP), and an international market reserve that would need to be adequately sized to moderate supply and/or demand driven price disturbances. Similarly, the U.S. Working Group on the Food Crisis calls on the government to establish and strengthen publicly-owned domestic, regional, and international strategic food reserves.
The following responses are steps towards solutions. They are ways we can engage in our food system and learn ways of working toward the deeper changes needed. Consider choosing one or two to do during the month as part of your faith practice.
Personal responses
Communal responses
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Glossary of Terms Used in Materials
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