The Plowboy Interview: Frances Moore Lappe

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PLOWBOY: I can't imagine anyone's disagreeing that there is great injustice in the manner in which food and power are shared in the world. But many people would still argue that the primary cause of hunger is simply the existence of too many people for the resources of our limited planet to serve.

LAPPE: Then how do such individuals explain the fact that there is enough grain produced—right now—to provide everyone in the world with more than 3,000 calories a day . . . and that estimate doesn't even include the other foods—such as beans, root crops, fruits, nuts, vegetables, and grass-fed meats—that are grown? Even in Bangladesh, a country which is often considered a hopeless "basket case", locally produced grain alone could provide each person with over 2,600 calories a day . . . and that country has amazingly rich agricultural assets that, because of the inequality of control there, haven't been tapped. Likewise, during the infamous famine in the African Sahel region in the early 1970's, every country involvedwith the possible exception of Mauritania-produced enough grain to feed its total population. In fact, a number of Sahelian nations actually increased their production of such export crops as cotton, peanuts, and vegetables during this awful period.

PLOWBOY: But if you feed poor people without limiting their birth rate, isn't it possible that you'll exacerbate, rather than improve, the situation?

LAPPE: Men and women aren't going to be motivated to practice any form of birth control until they know that most of the children they do bear will survive! As it is now, the only way poor people can provide for their old age is to have several children who will care for them . . . and the only way they can be sure of having enough living offspring is to have many, many births. People must be sure that they can meet their own basic security needs, and that the children they bear will have a reasonable chance to survive, before birth control can be considered a realistic option. Only then, when people have freedom from famine, can conscientious efforts to teach and encourage family planning be successful.

PLOWBOY: Would you accept the point of view that one of the primary causes of world hunger is that rich countries exploit poor ones?

LAPPE: It's not a case of the wealthy world ripping off the impoverished world . . . that's another basic myth, and one that I admit I believed for many years. Instead of thinking of countries as homogeneous units, we have to focus on the people who control the wealth in our society, and of those who control the wealth in the Third World.

In most cases, the leadership in the Third World doesn't represent the people there. Even if those politicians were granted all the high-sounding concessions they ask for from the industrialized powers, the majority of their people would still go hungry. For instance, many leaders of underdeveloped countries push for better terms of trade for their exports . . . on the grounds that the income derived from increased sales will improve their people's economic situation. Well, suppose the price of coffee, say, goes up. If nothing else changed, the small farmers-individuals who were growing food for themselves—would be forced off their land so that richer growers could plant more and more coffee to take advantage of the export income. In fact, in many Third World countries the poor do best when prices for their nation's major crops are depressed . . . because big plantation owners are then less likely to seize land belonging to the "little guys".

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