Can we spare a loaf�� or a leaf? - cognitive dissonance and world food supply - Brief Article

We had roast chicken for supper tonight. Kind of a family tradition on Sundays. Last night it was steak. This week we'll enjoy lamb chops, when one of our lambs comes home from the butcher in a box. We are dedicated carnivores, and well-fed ones at that. But we have these things mostly because we raise them ourselves. On a typical farmer's net income, hamburger would be a more likely fare.

We also live in a part of the world where food is a surplus commodity. Newspaper headlines recently talked of a beef glut threatening prices in North America. Lamb prices have tanked this year. There is no sign that they will improve in the near future, as supplies are large and our best customer, the USA, has opened its borders to New Zealand and Australian product.

A few pages after the beef glut story came one about a different problem. This time the story was about the famine and impending starvation of one million people in the former Soviet republic, now the independent country of Tajikistan. A United Nations official said the need was urgent. With January coming, the people would not even have leaves to boil.

Leaves to boil. It rather makes our orgy of beef and lamb a bit obscene.

What is needed, said the UN official, is 341,000 tonnes of grain to overcome the problems caused by drought and civil war. For Canada, 341,000 tonnes of grain is a drop in the bucket. Perhaps two percent of Saskatchewan's grain production. It's an old story. The developed world writhes under the burden of surplus farm products and dismal prices. The less developed world struggles to feed itself in good times and famine looms with every weather disaster.

The whole situation can be summed up with two words I learned in a psychology class a few decades ago - cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the feeling of unreality that occurs when a person is confronted with two situations that exist simultaneously, while logic would tell you that they can't possibly do so.

We have a surplus of food in much of the world, while millions, some 800 million according to the UN, face daily hunger and are only a few calories away from starvation. And food producers could grow much more than they do if they could only get a better price for their products. The Liberal government, under the little guy from Shawinigan, cut Canada's contribution to foreign aid to a third of what it was under the much despised government of Brian Mulroney. More cognitive dissonance there.

I used to believe that world governments would one day decide to deal with hunger. I thought that the cognitive dissonance created by well fed, first world reporters taking television pictures of starving children would create an outpouring of compassion.

And perhaps it will, but I no longer think it will happen in my lifetime. And as American and British warplanes daily bomb one of the poorest countries on earth, I am forced to realize that civilization is still only an ideal. We haven't yet gotten far from the playground, where the biggest kids lord it over the little ones and where mercy is seen as weakness.

Perhaps the greatest piece of cognitive dissonance comes from realizing that we are basing our hopes for future security on our ability to frighten the terrorists, not on the goal of seeing that hunger and poverty are beaten back.

Perhaps the government of Canada could decide to purchase 341,000 tonnes of wheat from Canadian farmers to help save a million lives in Tajikistan. It's more likely though, that new helicopters, fighter aircraft and bigger and better bombs will dominate the spending agenda.

These are trying times, but what is most distressing is the lack of vision and compassion from the wealthiest people on earth.

Paul Beingessner is a farmer, columnist, and agriculture and transportation consultant. He is also a chronic troublemaker and the father of a bunch of great kids.

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