Round Table on Food Security and Sustainable Development Goals Lori Post, PhD Yale University May 16, 2016

“… All that we are and will and do depends, in the last analysis, upon what we believe the Nature of Things to be.” Aldous Huxley, 1945

Lie #1 - you can starve to death on corn? No, but you certainly will die from malnourishment Starvation is different than malnourishment Bariatric clinics are springing up in Africa while a large proportion, often the same population is dying from malnourishment.

Lie # 2 – Food producing resources are already stretched to their limits requiring agricultural led transformations. The FAO defines hunger only as caloric deficiency which is misunderstood by the public. Most people are only episodically deficient concealing the problem at large. Medical research demonstrates that going without calories for short periods of time can be devastating to people with illness and children. After decades of population decreases, there is every reason to believe that population increases will halt before surpassing world capacity. Stunting is used that is poorly understood to describe hunger in children. It means the immune system is depressed and the child is cognitively impaired. Farmers and other workers are calorie deficient between harvests or jobs concealing their at risk times. The world population doubled between 1961 and 2013 while food production increased more quickly until today there is 50% more food for every living human. The world needs some better hunger metrics beyond calories. One quarter of the worlds children are stunted. Stunting means to the general population a child who is short.

Lie # 3 – Climate change makes hunger inevitable Climate change is not a myth It is destroying lives and ecosystems. However, in no way makes hunger and famine inevitable. Changes in food and farming practices that address climate change will benefit the most hungry people, health, environment.

Lie # 4- Climate smart agriculture cannot feed a hungry world Alternatives to industrial agriculture and GMOs, conjure romantic hippie notions of a model that won’t work. However, it is the industrial model that has failed to work and failed to end hunger. Evidence that redefining human actions with ecosystems. People living in the Global South who adopt ecological approaches are experiencing increases in food production and are sometimes quite dramatic.

Lie # 5- Only GMOs and Industrial Agricultural can supply the world with sufficient amount of food The industrial model is to produce while ignoring food relationships which are grown, who eats, if the land is degraded or enriched. Disconnects farming from 10,000 years of knowledge. Industrial model is episodic disconnected events. Determine who has food and environmental and societal downsides and is outside the industrial model.

Lie # 6 – Only a free market can end hunger Governments are increasingly incompetent , corrupt, and dealers. Dogma destroys the solution to hunger. We need a market to end hunger that has openness, competition and transparency. What is the market good at? What can the public sphere best accomplish? How does society create conditions that enable both market virtues and government to succeed?

Lie # 7 – US Foreign Aid can end hunger Ending hunger requires profound changes and gives people voices - - especially women. AID goes to nations whose political and economic elites are threatened and kick back. They are not necessarily aligned with emergency care. The need for American security is aligned with those that relied aid. EG. Ethiopia response to famine.

Lie # 9 – Hunger is not our problem The Global South has problems of a magnitude far greater than ours. Roots of hunger and poverty is unlike what the West faces. The US Benefits at some level from food security privilege. The US is not only food insecure but we are exporting bad diet. However, developed countries 1/6 Americans are food insecure American IMR rates are 56th Life span is shortened. US Rates the US as worst in world for food quality, micronutrient deficient, poor diet.

Lie # 10 – Its too late – Power is too concentrated to change Income and power are held by the top 1%. This translates into political power not democracy. Wealth is concentrated in USA Everybody’s future is at stake that energizes the masses – not stulifies. Question: Why did feudalism die? People stopped believing in it.