“Is there still turkey in your refrigerator?  There’s certainly none left in mine.  But after the
excesses of Thanksgiving and the hearty meal served in homes across Southern Missouri, I want to bring up a topic we are sure to hear more about in the months ahead: food aid programs.

 

Last week I wrote about Thanksgiving dinner.  This week I want to discuss Thanksgiving leftovers.  And there is no such thing as leftovers to someone who is truly hungry.

 

This year, we have once again seen the bounty our farmers can produce, even under the most difficult circumstances.  It is the easily safest, most affordable food supply in the world.  In fact, February 7 is National Food Check-Out Day, when the average American has earned enough money to pay for his or her entire family’s food bills for the year.  Long before we have met our tax obligations, we have earned the nutrition we need.  In other countries around the world, citizens spend 30, 40 or even 50 percent of their disposable incomes on food for their families. Here in the U.S., that figure is only ten percent, a low among developed nations.

 

For all the food we produce in America, however, people still go to bed hungry at night.

 

Around the world, 840 million people go to bed hungry each night.  Twenty percent of them are under the age of five.  It is difficult to understand the magnitude of this problem from our perspective in the Heartland, where cropland is abundant and farming is a way of life.  Not all people are this fortunate, however, and not all land is as fertile as ours.

 

The Foods Resource Bank is an international organization dedicated to helping small
communities in the developing world become self-sufficient.  Bags of seed, tools, irrigation and education, instead of food, are used to improve the quality of life in villages in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe and South America.  The inspiration for this program is the rural farming communities across the U.S.  It is how we spread our agrarian philosophy to the corners of the globe.  As more community growing projects take root, local farms begin to support their neighbors, just as ours do at home.  The ripple effect of self-sufficiency is undeniable.

 

Even a thousand miles away, the American farmer plays a profound role in this effort.

 

In addition to the more than six million metric tons of grain we export as food aid every year, which is easily more than half of the food aid donated by the nations of the globe, U.S. farmers support the Foods Resource Bank by donating equipment, land, inputs and expertise to community growing projects.  Faith-based, civic and business communities have also become involved with the Foods Resource Bank, raising funds through local grain elevators.  The federal government often matches these donations.  It is yet another way we can work together to help fight the scourge of hunger in the world. 

 

In Southern Missouri, we are blessed to have active, effective food banks to connect the hungry with food donations.  We are even luckier to have generous families that reach out to those less fortunate, not just when the weather turns colder, but all year around.  Whether the hungry child lives at home or abroad, we are reaching out with sustaining, nutritious food.  In this gentlest of foreign policies, we are making friends around the world and advancing toward the peaceful world we pray for during our holiday season.

 

After cleaning our plates at Thanksgiving, the Foods Resource Bank gives us pause to consider how we might help a family halfway around the globe enjoy a similar feast.  Our farmers enable this effort and our families support it, but we must always be mindful of our obligation to others, so others, too, may give thanks.”