Feeding the World’s Poor

As soaring food prices threaten to push more than a hundred million people deeper into poverty, charities

are trying to galvanize public and political support for a stronger approach to the global crisis.

Some international aid groups are creating fund-raising appeals and embarking on advocacy campaigns to meet immediate needs as well as to support research and policy changes they say could improve the global food system and help avoid future price shocks.

Food banks and other groups working to feed poor people in the United States are also concerned about the effects of rising food prices at a time when they’re seeing increased requests for assistance. Most, however, say they have not yet issued specific solicitations in response to the rising costs.

Charities’ recent efforts include:

• Oxfam America, in Boston, last month established a Global Food Crisis Fund to raise money to help people affected by rising food prices. While the charity says it’s too soon to determine what the response from donors will be like, it has raised more than $145,000 through a separate fund that will advance policy efforts to mitigate the crisis.
• Mercy Corps, in Portland, Ore., also created a Global Food Crisis Fund, which will seek donations for people who are going hungry and support the development of long-term solutions. The group has so far raised $30,000. Later this year, it will also open a center in New York to educate Americans about steps they can take to ameliorate the food crisis.
• Friends of the World Food Program, a charity in Washington that supports the work of the U.N. World Food Program, revamped its Web site to focus exclusively on the food crisis.

  That effort, combined with recent news-media attention, helped the group raise about $250,000 in online donations during the month of April. The charity usually raises $30,000 to $50,000 online in a month.

Foreign-aid groups say the people they serve have been hit hard by spiraling food costs. Sixty-one percent of the people reached by a Mercy Corps program in Tajikistan are down to one meal a day. And in Niger, up to two-thirds of people are now in danger of going hungry.

“People that Mercy Corps works with are spending 50, 60, 70 percent of their income on food already,” says Penelope S. Anderson, director of food security for Mercy Corps. “So if food prices double, you have to sell off whatever assets you have, go into debt, do whatever it takes.”

Some groups warn that they won’t be able to feed as many people this year unless they receive an influx of donations.

World Vision, in Federal Way, Wash., has said that it might be forced to drop 1.5 million people from its food programs, a 23-percent decrease from the previous year.

Some charity officials say they’ve seen strong initial responses from donors. Mostafa Mahboob, a spokesman for Islamic Relief USA, in Buena Park, Calif., says his group brought in $30,000 — an encouraging amount for his charity — through its Web site during the 24 hours following an online appeal sent last week.

Stephanie Bowen, a spokeswoman for International Medical Corps, in Santa Monica, Calif., says her organization has also seen a strong initial response to its appeal.

Catastrophe in Myanmar

But many groups are concerned that the recent cyclone in Myanmar could make it difficult to raise money for the food crisis.

Oxfam America hasn’t put as big a push behind the Global Food Crisis Fund as it anticipated because of the Southeast Asian disaster.

While the charity had been featuring the food crisis and the fund on its Web site, last week it supplanted news about the food prices with an update on the Myanmar cyclone. Likewise, officials at Mercy Corps said their fund raising for the food crisis had lagged since the cyclone.

“This is unfortunate because the food situation is a long-term crisis that deserves a long-term and robust response,” Joy Portella, a spokeswoman for Mercy Corps, said in an e-mail message. “We’ll keep plugging away and will likely revisit the issue with another fund-raising push in the future.”

Policy Solutions

In addition to raising money for immediate needs, several large charities are soliciting support for sustainable solutions.

Mercy Corps’s Global Food Crisis Fund has been designed to simultaneously support short- and long-term efforts. For example, the fund might give immediate cash assistance to farmers so they will not be forced to deplete their seed stock in a financial crunch, as well as provide seeds and tools during planting season. Local staff members will apply to the fund based on needs they see in the places they work.

Oxfam America is fund raising for its advocacy efforts. Raymond C. Offenheiser, the group’s president, and other charity leaders have testified before Congress and done countless news-media interviews in recent weeks, calling for structural changes in the way the world produces and delivers food.

Increasing investment in agricultural production overseas, finding ways to produce food on nonarable land, and decreasing subsidies to U.S. farmers are among many of the changes he says need to take place if the world is to feed its growing population in the decades ahead.

“This crisis now is a good wake-up call to the world,” says Mr. Offenheiser. “We need to take a very serious look at how the global food system works, and what are the key challenges and constraints to agricultural productivity going forward, and what are some of the key investments we have to make in the next few decades if we’re to avert a crisis.”

He also says foundations can play an important role in supporting advocacy and increased agricultural production.

“The scale is so large that grants of $200,000 or $300,000, while making something of a difference in meeting short-term needs, might not be the best use of their money,” he says. “Where I think they can make more of a difference is in the area of policy change.”

Buying Food

As foreign-aid groups grapple with how to respond to the crisis, food banks across the United States have been hit as well.

Many charities say the people they serve are struggling to cope with higher food prices. At least 1.3 million more people have enrolled this year in the federal government’s food-stamp program compared with the previous year.

“We’re seeing more clients in need of food because their budgets are stretched thin,” says Marguerite Nowak, advocacy and education manager for the San Francisco Food Bank.

However, few groups are sending out specific appeals. And responses to general fund-raising efforts have been mixed. Some food banks say they’ve seen donations fall because of the sagging economy, while others say attention being paid to hunger has helped their fund raising.

Average gifts to the San Francisco Food Bank, for example, have dropped from $70 to $64 compared with the same period the previous year. But the Maryland Food Bank, in Baltimore, says the number of donors to the charity has grown by 5 percent and giving has risen by 30 percent.

Charities are worried that their budgets will be hard hit, however, because of a trend that’s overtaken food banks in recent years — namely, the growing reliance on purchased, rather than donated, food. Five years ago, food banks spent about $48-million to purchase food, and now they spend $127-million, says Ross Fraser, a spokesman with America’s Second Harvest, in Chicago.

Mr. Fraser says the farm bill would provide some relief to U.S. food groups if passed.

But as news-media and donor attention begins to shift to the recent cyclone, charity leaders are warning that the food crisis is only deepening, not disappearing.

“This food crisis isn’t going to get solved overnight,” says Bob Bell, director of the food-resources coordination team at CARE, in Atlanta. “It’s a much longer-term problem.”