People Don't Starve Because of the United States

Yesterday, I heard Jim Quinn refer to an event that the school district (Pine-Richland) in which I reside held about two weeks ago on Friday, May 1. The event was sponsored by and raised money for Oxfam America and had the purpose of "raising awareness" of world hunger. The event was publicized in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on April 30 and was described as follows:

More than 100 participants will attend the Oxfam America Hunger Banquet at
Eden Hall Upper Elementary School, 3900 Bakerstown Road in Pine to experience a meal as a low, middle income or upper income global citizen. This event is one
of the thousands taking place across the country.

This is typical liberal symbolism over substance, but don't worry, the coverage gets worse. Today, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has published a summary of the event:

On a recent Friday night, Pine-Richland senior Cassie Muzzonigro enjoyed a
sumptuous dinner at Eden Hall Upper Elementary School, where servers waited on her hand and foot.

Superintendent James Manley spent the evening on the cafeteria's cold tile floor eating rice with his fingers...

Sophomore Samantha Shipeck, who sat on the floor with her poverty-stricken
peers, said the experience was eye-opening. She played a Vietnamese farmer
surviving on loans from local money lenders who charged 30 to 40 percent
interest a month.

"It's not living another person's life, but getting a glimpse at what it's like," she said. "Even if I don't get into international relations or see any of these different countries, it's important to be aware of what's going on in the world."

The event was organized by high school students in Matt Roberts' Asian studies class. Senior Emily Sisk introduced her teacher to Oxfam America, an international relief and development organization founded in 1970 that creates lasting solutions to poverty, hunger and injustice.

Last summer, while attending a program sponsored by Americans for Informed
Democracy, Sisk participated in a hunger banquet. "I wanted to recreate it in this area because I know there are a lot of students who are politically active," she said. "I wanted to show them that they should go out and do things because it is possible to pull things off like this, to get an event together if you really try."

Raising awareness? No, the purpose of this event is to make us feel guilty for our prosperity.

Now, let's examine some facts:

First, some foundational information on population:
Estimated US Population, February 2009: 306 million
Estimated World Population, 2008: 6,707 million (6.707 billion)
Total non-US Estimated Population: 6,401,000,000

The United States Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service has published summary statistics for the United States' agricultural trade. The statistics for calendar year 2008 paint a very interesting picture:

United States Food Exports: $115,437,000,000
United States Food Imports: $80,465,000.000
United States Net Food Exports: $34,972,000,000

So you don't have to do the math yourself, our net food exports are $114 per every person in the United States, and $5 per every non-US person in the world. Now, I know what you're going to say: "We're the richest country, and we're only exporting $5 per person of food to the rest of the world? That's a disgrace."

Well, let's look at the issue from the perspective of quantity, not cost.

I used the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service's statistical query engine to find out how much the United States exported of four key staple agricultural products to the rest of the world during calendar year 2008: corn, wheat, soybeans, and rice. This is what I found:

US exports of corn: 51,897,526 tonnes = 114,414,459,845 pounds
US exports of rice: 3,588,160 tonnes = 7,910,538,707 pounds
US exports of soybeans: 32,162,159 tonnes = 70,905,423,304 pounds
US exports of wheat: 29,099,778 tonnes = 64,154,028,874 pounds

Total US exports for those four: 116,747,623 tonnes = 257,384,450,731 pounds.

Two-hundred and fifty-seven billion, three-hundred and eighty-four million, four-hundred and fifty thousand, seven-hundred and thirty-one pounds of just four agricultural products were exported by the United States in 2008.

By the way, that works out to 841 pounds of exports for every man, woman, and child in the United States, and 40 pounds of exports for every man, woman, and child in the rest of the world. And again, that's just for corn, rice, soybeans, and wheat.

The United States already feeds the world. There are not starving people in the world because of our largesse, or wastefulness, or selfishness, or consumption. There are starving people in the world because many are enslaved in poverty by the tyrannical governments that rule over them. There are starving people in the world because starving, not to mention unarmed, populations can not rise up and challenge the power of the tyrants.

Perhaps our schools should be teaching our children how many more would be starving if it was not for the greatness of the United States, you think?