You'll find this article incredible — almost unbelievable.
These stark facts will chill you; they'll stagger your imagination — but they're TRUE!
Read here the TRUTH about the haunting specter of famine and starvation
now spreading around the world and what your Bible says about OUR peoples facing terrible drought and famine!
HUNGER is the world's number one problem. Even as you read this, thousands are starving. Before another five years from now, unless some totally unexpected reversal in present trends occurs, MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of humans will die of starvation and disease!
Dr. Raymond Ewell, professor at State University of New York in Buffalo recently stated, "It is hard for us sitting in rich, comfortable, overfed America to realize that the GREATEST DISASTER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD is just around the corner!" (Emphasis mine throughout article)
"We are fast approaching the greatest catastrophe in world history," he said, "Great areas of the earth are on the threshold of famine."
And before a Senate subcommittee, Thomas M. Ware, head of the Freedom from Hunger Foundation recently testified, "Very few grasp the magnitude of the danger that confronts us . . . The catastrophe is not something that may happen; on the contrary, it is a mathematical certainty that it WILL happen!"
Overshadows All World Problems
Senator George McGovern, who was U.S. Food for Peace director before his election to the Senate in 1962 said, "Mass starvation will be the most painful fact of life on this planet within 10 years."
Every other problem of the world, no matter how immediate, how critical, how desperate, is overshadowed by famine now beginning to envelop the earth. If there were no wars, no racial tensions, no political differences — the daily march of the specter of famine would continue to haunt world leaders.
Most world leaders are beginning to recognize the stark dangers of world famine. A group of Nobel Prize winners said, in a joint declaration, "Unless a favorable balance of population and resources is achieved with a minimum of delay, there is in prospect a dark age of human misery, famine, under-education and unrest which would generate a growing panic, exploding in wars fought to appropriate the dwindling means of survival."
Dr. Ewell showed how problems of increased crime, juvenile delinquency, water pollution, air pollution, urban deterioration, noise, dirt, waste disposal, racial friction and others fade into "relative insignificance" compared with the food problem in many countries!
He mentioned specifically Asian countries, Africa, and Latin America, where the threat of mass starvation hangs over the heads of two and one-half BILLION people!
Said Dr. Ewell, "This is the biggest, most fundamental, and most nearly insoluble problem that has ever faced the human race!"
Where Famine Is Striking NOW!
At this moment, thousands starve! The Food and Agricultural Organization estimates a "low" figure of ten thousand deaths occur daily due to starvation! Dr. Georg Borgstrom said, "Half of the one billion children alive right now throughout the world will never reach adulthood!"
Recently, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that one person in every two in the world is badly nourished, and that one in three is chronically hungry. Nearly two-thirds of the human beings on earth know some form of hunger — barely subsist from day to day.
William L. Ryan, Associated Press Special Correspondent who wrote a series of articles on the population explosion, said, "Frightening specters haunt . . . the world today. These are the specters of widespread famine, pestilence, violence and ultimately war, less than a generation from now!"
Said one expert, "It is five minutes to midnight in the battle against hunger. When the clock strikes twelve, we may find ourselves uttering the saddest of all refrains: 'too little and too late.' "
Among the problems that cannot wait for leaders to talk over is India. The worst famine in half a century is coming upon India Now!
A report published by the Central Food Technological Research Institute in Mysore, India, said India loses 9.66 BILLION dollars' worth of food each year, twice as much as the Indian government's annual budget! Insects, rats and bad storage destroy HALF of all the food produced in India!
Think of it! At least twenty-five percent of all food grown for human consumption is destroyed each year by rodents alone! If India could prevent such losses from pests, and losses due to inefficient processing and storage, she could not only become completely self-supporting in food, but would have an annual surplus!
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DPA Photo
A totally emaciated beggar lying in a street of Benares.
His greatest desire is a bowl of rice to satisfy an aching hunger.
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The stark facts of the enormous crisis in India are appalling! Presidential aides have worked out a paper to present to President Johnson warning that India will need the ENTIRE U.S. WHEAT CROP to make up for its food shortages within another five years.
Pests alone consume MORE than the 6 million tons of grain we send annually to India — and this year EVERY THIRD BUSHEL OF WHEAT goes to India!
Yet such extensive aid from the United States will not solve the problem. Rather, it further depletes surpluses within the United States, while not even making up for the amount of foodstuffs lost in India through rodents and poor storage.
How would you like to live in a city of three million people — and know only 650,000 ration cards were being issued for the purchases of staples? The people of New Delhi find themselves in this exact condition. One pound of wheat sells on the Black Market for approximately $21! At least two families offered their children for sale in exchange for food. Government officials, trying to apprehend those guilty of hoarding, found one cache of wheat weighing one ton! That's about 42 thousand dollars' worth on the New Delhi Black Market!
India is in serious trouble!
But India is not the only nation being afflicted by famine. In little Haiti, in the Caribbean, conditions are so appalling so as to be virtually indescribable! A newspaper reporter, returning from another visit to Haiti after an absence of some years, tried to explain about the tragedy there. He said, "Here are a few stark facts I learned on my latest visit: one of every five children dies before it is 90 days old; only one of every two Haitian children lives until its first birthday; life expectancy here is 35 years."
He went on to describe the terrible illiteracy and superstition (90 percent cannot read or write), and said doctors report more than 95 percent of Haitian children are afflicted with intestinal parasites.
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In Haiti, both hunger and hookworm contribute to the national inertia. Starving adults and children alike are seen actually eating dirt — scooping raw soil and dirt into their mouths — in an attempt to stave off pangs of starvation! The dirt is loaded with larvae of parasites, which infest the bodies of Haitians. Naturally, their resistance to any disease is low.
Unbelievable as it sounds, more than FIFTY PERCENT Of the population suffers from active tuberculosis! Women give birth to babies in fields, or roadside ditches. Only five to ten percent of Haitian people take in anywhere near a normal amount of food. The condition of the other 90 and more percent is pitiable — wretched!
Where DROUGHT Promises Even MORE Famine
South Africans of all religions, in a completely unprecedented move, gathered in their churches to pray for rain recently. The reason: prolonged drought that was threatening their very national security!
As if miraculously, scattered rains came — but caused flooding in some areas, including cave-ins and eroding of highway and railway embankments.
For years, South African ranchers and farmers have been desperately afflicted by drought. Massive truck lifts of cattle were begun. Ten thousand cattle were to be moved by road and rail away from parched Transvaal, in an effort which was described as the "salvation of the cattle . . . and ultimately the country's meat supplies for many years to come."
The drought was described by THE STAR, Johannesburg, as "The WORST FOR A CENTURY!" The levels of South African dams have never been lower — some reduced to mere inches. Even hardy game is dying. Mile after mile of stricken country lies under a huge dust cloud which "blots out the sun."
Only the largest farmers are having their overdrafts extended by the banks, and many smaller farmers are sinking into bankruptcy.
Australia is suffering, too! A vast pall of red dust covered ONE-SIXTH OF THE AUSTRALIAN CONTINENT recently, finally sweeping out to sea, leaving thousands of suffocated sheep in its wake. Birds hovered on the ground, unable to fly. Aircraft were grounded, and entire townships slowed to a standstill as the huge clouds of dust covered more than a half-million square miles of Queensland and northern New South Wales.
The dust storm resulted from a five-state drought which has held its parched grip on Australia for the past year — and which resulted in an "alarming drop in farm production" according to Charles Adermann, Australian Minister for Primary Production.
Australia can't be called upon for helping the rest of the hungry world, when more than ONE HUNDRED MILLION BUSHELS LESS WHEAT will be produced this year!
And in Rhodesia, already under economic siege from Great Britain and the United States, DROUGHT was described as a greater threat than the trade sanctions! Crops there were withering in the summer sun. Grazing lands were so bare that the government attempted to move 200,000 head of cattle from Matabeleland northward.
Said Lawrence Fellows, in a special article to the New York Times, "unless the drought is broken this month many thousands of Rhodesian families may face starvation!" So SERIOUS is the situation that it is taking more of the time and energy of the Rhodesian government than their defensive measures against the economic warfare being waged against them by much of the world.
And in Canada, it was announced India would get an additional 15 million dollars' worth of foods, increasing to nearly 70 million dollars the total value of outright gifts and credits extended India since 1965 began.
In the midst of it all — with famine stalking Asia, Central and South America, parts of Africa — much of the world looks to the "great surpluses" of the United States to keep the food coming! But how long can America feed the world?
Here are the stark facts!
Surpluses Disappearing
Today, large shipments of wheat to India, Japan and South America are gobbling up American wheat reserves at a frightening rate.
Said warehouse owners in Topeka, Kansas, "The awesome farm surplus is NEARLY GONE!" Grain warehouses in the sprawling American Midwest, once filled to bursting with ripe grain, are being drained, and drained FAST, for export!
Officials report the huge storage facilities in Kansas, heart of the nation's wheat country, are only about 40 percent filled. As you read this article, they were predicted to be down to about 20 percent. If conditions continue at the present rate — they will soon be EMPTY!
The growing problems in Kansas echo those of every other wheat-belt state. Warehouse owners worry that unless a change in government policy comes, prospects forever filling their huge storage bins again are very dim.
Accenting the problem is the fact that, from July to November, more than ONE QUARTER of the national reserves were drained from the bins, and about ninety percent of that was for export — mainly under the "Food for Peace" program.
The attempt to feed the hungry world is defeating. One staff economist of the Department of Agriculture says, "Food shipments from developed countries can help" (alleviate the conditions in India, Latin America, etc) "but they cannot account for more than a very small fraction of the projected increases in (world) food needs over the next several years."
The cold facts are, that if the United States were to donate its entire surplus for one year to feed the world's hungry people — it would mean only two handfuls of food once each 17 days for every person.
You may not realize the U.S. has shipped food to FIFTY food-short nations over the past 11 years, amounting to a gross investment of FOURTEEN AND ONE-HALF BILLION DOLLARS! In an article asking, "How Long Can America Feed World's Hungry?" The Los Angeles Times said, ". . . even as they [send food abroad] that means daily bread to millions on three continents, officials know that something more than U.S. surpluses is needed if the specter of famine is to be stilled."
Pointing out the really GRIM and FRIGHTENING part of the problem, the Times said, "Even if money and pressure and cooperation from local governments succeed in producing real advances in the underdeveloped world's food production, the prospect will still be grim if populations keep exploding."
The POPULATION explosion is the overawing danger now looming in the near future!
And remember one vital fact! The attempt of the U.S., Canada, and some other countries to feed the world's hungry millions is based on the assumption WE WILL NOT BE STRICKEN BY DROUGHT — that we will be able to produce at least as much food this year as last, and even MORE and MORE foodstuffs in the future!
That is a mighty dangerous assumption!