THE THIRD FREEDOM: Ending Hunger in Our Time; by George McGovern; Simon & Schuster, 173 pages; $22.00.
George McGovern, the Democratic candidate for president in 1972 who ultimately lost to Richard Nixon, is now U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Agencies on Food and Agriculture. His principal interest, therefore, is ending hunger worldwide.
It's a worthy goal, and McGovern, who by training is a history professor, makes his case with both clarity and idealism. He takes the term "Third Freedom" from Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous 1941 State of the Union address, in which he asked the people of the United States to dedicate themselves to four freedoms — freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.
According to McGovern, freedom from want is a political condition that can be resolved. He suggests a five-point program to end world hunger:
1. A universal school lunch program.
2. A supplemental nutrition program for low-income women, infants and children.
3. Food reserves around the globe.
4. Improved farm production, food processing and food distribution for developing countries.
5. The encouragement of genetically modified crops.
McGovern argues that in 1972, 35 percent of the world's population went hungry, while in 1996, the figure had dropped to 17 percent. He argues that a goal of cutting in half the world's figure of 800 million hungry people by 2015 and eliminating it altogether by 2030 is realistic.
One of the most important things that needs to be accomplished, he says, is the improvement of education of women. He estimates there are "565 million illiterate women around the world, mostly in poor rural regions of the developing countries." McGovern argues that "half of the young humanity of the Third World are functioning below their capacities because of favoritism toward boys and discrimination against girls."
Boys are directed toward higher education, while girls are directed toward marriage and having children — "many of them before they have even reached their teenage years." Since mothers spend the most time with their children, they pass on their ignorance to their children.
McGovern also points out that discrimination against girls results in excessive mortality among women. Whereas women live longer than men in Europe, Canada and the United States, it is the opposite in China, India and Africa. Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen calls this the problem of "the missing women."
Not only that, but two-thirds of the Third-World workforce is in agriculture, and it is primarily women who provide that work. In Africa, for instance, 80 percent of the food consumed is produced by women. Yet it is the male-dominated cash-export crops — cotton, coffee, hemp and grains — that have received nearly all the foreign aid.
Finally, banks will not loan money to women because they own only 1 percent of the farm land. Ironically, girls and women also make up most of the world's hungry people.
In a convincing and heartfelt conclusion, McGovern quotes numerous authorities and cites many anecdotes to help prove his point — that hunger is a serious world problem that can be resolved if we tackle it with determination. That will represent, he says, "the greatest victory in world history." He labels the world hunger problem a chronic one for "nearly 800 million people who bear this affliction throughout their miserable, short existence on Earth. There is no excuse for this kind of massive lifelong torture, ending only with an agonizing early death."
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