Did you know?

Argentina's Poor Turn to Gardening for Food

That's the headline of a recent Reuters story. In it, we read:

With unemployment at a record 21.5 percent after a crippling recession forced a devastating public debt default and currency devaluation, thousands of families must find new ways to survive in what was once known as the world's breadbasket -- a country that, according to private estimates, has the capacity to feed 300 million people.

About one out of every four children do not have enough to eat in Argentina -- a major producer and exporter of grains, oilseeds and meat, where half of the population now lives in poverty. Groups of unemployed sporadically block highways to demand food and work.

Which leads to the question of what, if anything, the United States should do about it.

Can Argentina be helped? Does the United States have a program where farmers grow more food than the market demands, a program that could be harnessed for good?

Of course there is. And it was extended, and expanded, when Bush signed the $170 billion Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002.

Not only would shipping the excess food feed the starving poor, but it would stabilize that country and help avoid another foreign policy headache. It would burnish the U.S. reputation abroad and allow Bush to point to his first genuine case of being compassionate.

Now here at uggabugga, we didn't particularly like the Farm Bill, but as long as we're shelling out big money for excess butter, corn, and peanuts, let's get something in return and use it.

Here's another example of a situation where Bush has a program in place, little or no extra money is needed, but he doesn't use it to help people (the other notorious instance was his refusal to push FERC to stop electricity price scalping).

Feeding starving people (especially children) is the first rung on the compassionate stepladder. Yet Bush won't even do that.
posted by Quiddity at 8/18/2002 09:44:00 AM