20 October 2008
McGovern, Dole Receive World Food Prize
Retired senators call for additional food aid
Des Moines, Iowa — World Food Prize winners Bob Dole and George McGovern said more money from more sources is needed to solve the problem of world hunger, which is exacerbated by today’s financial crisis.
Ending hunger is within reach, McGovern said at the October 16 World Food Prize award ceremony at the Iowa Capitol Building in Des Moines.
In a briefing with reporters on World Food Day (October 16), the two retired senators said that, in addition to pressing members of the new Congress for more money and commodities for food assistance programs, they would ask other countries to increase contributions.
“The United States can’t do it alone,” Dole said the previous night at a public forum.
The World Food Prize recognizes McGovern and Dole for their longtime work for global hunger assistance and for founding the McGovern-Dole international school feeding program.
The retired senators spoke about the importance of school feeding programs in reducing poverty, especially for girls.
“If we’re going to prepare children to learn, we have to feed them,” Dole said.
“The majority of the hungry children are girls, because of the favoritism to boys. When girls are hungry, they stay home from school, and when they stay home from school, they marry as early as age 10” and begin having children, McGovern said.
Education improves a woman’s opportunities, her chances for higher paying work, and the likelihood she’ll marry someone close to her age who is not likely to transmit HIV/AIDS to her, McGovern said. And, he said, that education simply reduces the chance that a female will be “pushed around by men and boys.”
South Dakota Democrat McGovern and Kansas Republican Dole credited each other for creating a bipartisan atmosphere in the Senate needed for “a lot of good legislation” dealing with hunger.
The award ceremony was the highlight of the World Food Prize week in Des Moines. The prize was established by Iowa native Norman Borlaug, the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize winner who launched a “green revolution” that reversed the growth of famine in poor countries. He is credited with saving 1 billion lives.
Due to illness, the 94-year-old Borlaug was unable to attend the ceremony for the first time in its 22-year history.
MORE RESEARCH NEEDED
Dole and McGovern said research is needed to find new sources for producing ethanol and biodiesel. They held out hopes for switchgrass and maize stalks in energy production and said other alternative sources of energy should be developed.
“It becomes a moral challenge not to use food for fuel if hunger exists,” McGovern said.
McGovern said international food programs should be shifted to being at least 25 percent in cash, with the remainder in commodity contributions. In the past, U.S. farmer groups have wanted to keep a higher proportion of aid in the form of contributions of U.S.-produced commodities.
Cash allows recipients to purchase agricultural-production supplies and fresh produce from local markets, and thus can be a form of economic development for local communities, they said.
See the related story “Some in Congress Want a White House ‘Food Czar.’”
