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World Food Day Marks Its 30th Year of Fighting Hunger

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In a famous speech in 1941, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt cited four essential human freedoms. The freedom from want was included, along with freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom from fear.

Two years later, during the darkest days of World War II, Roosevelt arranged a conference at Hot Springs, Virginia, where 44 nations committed to founding a permanent organization that would work to ensure the world’s population would not want for food. The result was the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), established in 1945 as an agency of the newly chartered United Nations.

In 1979, the FAO proclaimed an annual World Food Day to unite people in the struggle against hunger, poverty and malnutrition. Every year since 1981, the day has been observed by more than 150 nations on October 16, the anniversary of the founding of the FAO. The theme for 2010, the 30th observance, is “United Against Hunger” in recognition of the work by governments, organizations and individuals.

FAO’s celebrity Goodwill Ambassadors — American athlete Carl Lewis and Indonesian singer Anggun — will help spread the message about world hunger on World Food Day and beyond. But mostly, World Food Day is a local event, observed in thousands of communities through such activities as food drives, creation of neighborhood gardens and student poster and essay contests.

In the United States, some 450 organizations sponsor projects to mark the day. A 20-year tradition at Colorado State University is Cans around the Oval, a campus-wide event that began with the aim of collecting enough canned food to encircle the central campus area known as the Oval. In 2009, more than 150 campus groups collected 90,000 pounds of food — enough to circle the Oval 45 times — and $27,000 in financial donations for local food banks. “It’s a way for students to connect to the community, to open our hearts to people who are struggling,” said Colorado State sophomore Pilar Delgado, who is helping to organize this year’s event.

Kids against Hunger, a Minnesota organization that enlists children to package food to send to hungry people in 40 countries, urges its 80 locations to hold World Food Day packaging events. The goal is for each participating center to package 100,000 meals.

“It’s a bottom-up movement,” said Edgardo Valenzuela, coordinator of World Food Day for the FAO in Rome. “We just provide the global framework, and people do what they can.” Valenzuela sees the observance as “a day for reflection, a day to see that we have not done enough, a day for everyone to ask, ‘Am I part of the problem or part of the solution?’”

The 30th observance of World Food Day is especially significant because in 2009 the world reached a tragic threshold: A record number — 1 billion people, almost one-sixth of the human race — were living in hunger in 2009. (In an encouraging trend, the number dipped just under a billion in 2010.) FAO’s goal is to cut the toll in half by 2015.

To give people worldwide a chance to express moral outrage at the extent of hunger, the FAO launched a year-long online petition drive. Visitors to social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are urged to log onto www.1billionhungry.org and sign a petition calling on governments to make elimination of hunger their top priority. The FAO expects to collect more than a million signatures by the close of the campaign at the end of November.

At the opening ceremonies for World Food Day 2010 in Rome, the FAO will posthumously honor Norman Borlaug, creator of the World Food Prize, which is awarded for accomplishments in food and agriculture. The award is presented each year in conjunction with World Food Day.

A winner of this year’s prize, David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, commends the FAO for efforts to feed the hungry even during current economic difficulties. “In times of sudden shortages, it is important that we have effective safety nets in place, but they must work in concert with agricultural development programs that enable recipients to graduate to self-sufficiency,” he said.

“This World Food Day, we need to increase our efforts to halve hunger by helping poor famers produce more food, reducing maternal and child malnutrition, and making foreign aid more effective,” he said.