To the editor:
In a world where six out of every 10 children go to bed hungry every night, the problem of how to produce enough food to feed everyone adequately becomes a very pressing problem.By shifting the world's agricultural priorities from the production of meat to the production of grains, fruits and vegetables, there would be adequate supplies of food to feed the world's population.
Out of the fertile plains of the major continents of the world comes an abundance of wheat, corn, oats, rye and other edible grains. Even in the politically unstable areas formerly in the Soviet Union, the problem is not just a quantity of crops produced but the distribution of those crops to the people who need to eat them.
So the reason for hunger in the world is not that there is too little food produced, but the mass quantity of the wrong food is produced or is prevented from reaching the consuming public in adequate quantities.
Too much of the world's grain crops are used in the production of meat and meat products. It is estimated that on the land currently used to pasture three head of beef cattle, more than 40,000 pounds of potatoes could be cultivated each year.
Millions of tons of corn are raised each year in the United States alone for the sole purpose of feeding cattle, hogs and poultry. Until recent times, more oats were produced to feed horses than to feed humans.
If we were to start educating the public that using our farmland to produce grain and vegetable crops would not only be a wiser use of the land, but that it would also feed more of the hungry in the world and make us be more healthful, I believe that we would be on the road to solving the world's hunger problems.
Heather McFarland
Orem