Friday, June 26, 2009

One child, one family, one farm at a time

A friend of my sister's is involved in a new program to feed kids at a Namibian school. Food seems to be the central thought this month for me. I finished reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, then watched the documentary Kingcorn and heard about the new documentary Food, Inc. I picked up the companion book, but haven't been able to see the movie yet.

In my zeal, I had a chat with my 7-yr old one day about the fact that we have 900 million people in the world that are not sufficiently fed each day and yet in the States (and some other countries), we use 1/4 to 1/3 of our land to grow biofuel for cars and/or cows instead of people. I didn't think she would get it.

Then, she brought me this letter she wrote -- she says I should send it to "whoever" is doing this so they will stop:

"Our quot: all people cold have corn but farmers are using half for rich people and cold use the other half for poor but enstead useing for gasoline." [sic]

It is signed by her and the members of her "spy" gang of first grade girls. She got it.