The Press and Hunger: Why Is It Ignored?

In 1975, everyone was talking about the great "world food crisis." A Crimson opinion page that year featured an article headlined "World Food Crisis: Political Maneuvers Keep Food From Starving Millions." Conferences were held. Books were written about the "millions" from underdeveloped countries scrambling to board the only "lifeboat"--America and Europe--and we were warned we would have to be ruthless.

But already in 1975, the food crisis was a dying issue.

And in 1979, it appears dead. Opinion pages in recent issues of the Independent range from the gold mine crimes of Charles Engelhard to the true definition of a "liberal arts education." The Harvard Gazette recently asked some of Harvard's "wise men and women" (Harvard professors) to discuss the important issues of 1979. Not one mentioned food.

Why the change? Is all well? Have the "starving millions" been fed? Is no one hungry, or has the media simply stopped writing about the food problem?

To find out what happened requires a little research. The answer: the food problem has not gone away, but those who are talking and writing about it are fewer in number and have less of an immediate public impact than they did five years ago.

People are familiar with the circumstances that produce "world food crisis" headlines in the early 1970's: several major crop failures, problems in the Green Revolution, program cutbacks in grain production in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. The U.S. dollar was devalued, causing increased demand for exports of feed grains and soybean meal. OPEC was formed, oil prices tripled, and fertilizer prices went up. The American consumer felt the pinch. Food costs more.

To judge by the news media, there wasn't much of a food problem before 1972, or after 1975.

The source for evaluating newspaper coverage of any issue is the newspaper Subject Index. Each major newspaper has its own index and its own cataloguing methods for subjects. In the New York Times Index, the main subject heading under which articles about the world food situation are found is "Food and Grocery Trade." For the Washington Post Index, the Los Angeles Times Index, and the Chicago Tribune Index, the main subject heading is "Food Supply."

The overall pattern turns out like this: In the 1972 Index of the New York Times, 23 columns, or over seven pages, are devoted to food-related articles. In the 1973 Index, 44 columns, or over 14 pages are. For the next four years, the corresponding figures go as follows: 1974-71 columns, or 23 pages; 1975--34 columns, or over 12 pages; 1976--16 columns, or over five pages, 1977--nine columns, or three pages.

The pattern: In the Washington Post Index for 1972, three articles appear under the "Food Supply" heading. In 1973, there are 100 "Food Supply" articles. In 1974, 120 articles. In 1975, 36. In 1976, 46. In 1977, 28. In the Los Angeles Times Index, two articles appear under "Food Supply" in 1972. In 1973, there are 62 articles. In 1974, 123. In 1975, 43. In 1976, 20, and in 1977, 12.

The Chicago Tribune follows the same pattern. In its 1972 Index, there are two "Food Supply" articles, 47 appear in 1973, 80 in 1974, 26 in 1976, and 13 in 1977.

A pattern emerges: sudden accelerated interest followed by a sudden decline ininterest, with a clear peak in the year 1974.

What changes in the world food condition account for this pronounced media trend? Why the peak in references to "world famine" in 1974?

We know the present food needs of the world are not being met. But the greatest instability in food supply is in the poorest countries, not in the developed countries. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute, "the term 'food crisis' still has meaning"--in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa "where the effects of the food crisis in 1974 were most severe." But, the Institute concludes, "for the world at large" grain is abundant, has declined in price, and is being stock-piled.

The United Nations lists 44 "most seriously affected" countries--MSAs--in its food-shortage statistics, the world's poorest nations. These 44 countries contain more than half the population of the "developing market economies," the developing nations.

What, then, is the "world at large?" It is the world where money is available to trade cereal. The world at large does not include the "most seriously affected" nations. Grain stockpiles are increasing in "the world at large." We need not fear a sudden monumental famine--but the citizens of much of the world can't get a hold of that grain.

And, in fact, the media coverage in the early 1970s was sparked, not so much by the Sahelian famine along the southern rim of the Sahara, as by a huge purchase of U.S. grain by Russia. As Nick Eberstadt of Harvard's Center for Population Studies noted in the New York Review of Books, Feb. 19, 1976, "India could never have made this kind of purchase: it would have cost 3 per cent of its gross national product, almost 25 per cent of its annual government revenue."

The point is that concern about a "food crisis" of the early 1970s was not sparked by the appetites of millions in Asia and Africa, but by the huge grain purchases of the Russians and the subsequent pressure on food prices in America.

And in the recently published Food First, Francis Moor Lappe and Joseph Collins argue that production is not the ultimate issue in the world food problem. Lappe and Collins calculate that the world already produces enough food to provide every human being with the theoretical requirement of 3000 calories a day. Focusing on increased production is not enough, the two argue.

We refer to this production focus as narrow precisely because it ignores the social reality of hunger--the problem of releasing the vast untapped human potential of local people developing local resources and skills. Reducing the problem of agriculture to one simply of production increasingly divorces agricultural progress from basic rural development. Such a mirage of rural development undercuts the interests of those within the rural community in order to serve those outside--landowning elites, moneylenders, industrialists, bureaucrats, and foreign investors.

In lieu of increased production in the sense U.N. officials advocate, Lappe and Collins advocate rural reform on a world-wide scale. In "What Does Food Self-Reliance Mean?" they propose conscious planning of economic self-reliance of the less developed world. Whether we accept this argument or not, the fact remains that a "food crisis" still "threatens millions." U.N. officials agree with Lappe and Collins: food is not getting to many, many people.

Considering the prominence of Asia in discussions of present world hunger, the two Asian articles that marked the pages of the 1977 Washington Post seem a token gesture: "Indonesia's Population Problem Discussed." "Laos...Seeks International Aid to Prevent Famine."

Can we speculate on the future? At this moment in media history, the issue of food had clearly lost the cataclysmic character it had only four years ago. Obviously, today, if we read in our morning Crimson that "Political Maneuvers Keep Food From Starving Millions" we would either wonder what happened in "the world" since we went to bed, or else turn the page as bored "informed" readers who had already read enough about the not-so-current issue. My prediction is that when there is another coincidence of visible large scale famine in less developed societies and sudden food supply threats in developed ones, the issue of food will again seem to ssume the Malthusian dimensions it had before; that when the "price we pay for bread and steak" hits home as hard as it did after the wheat deals, we will get public coverage on the same scale.

Priscilla Hart is a senior interested in world food problems.