FOOD SECURITY
We Might Be Headed For a Great American Famine
If we don't change course, millions will starve
Many Americans are currently hungry. Organizations like the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimate that the number of food-insecure Americans is in the tens of millions. We are a culture comfortable with a large percentage of our population being hungry, with even more on the cusp of that reality.
What terrifies me is what happens when this already tenuous system is shaken to its core. We might like to believe that our society would adjust to prevent starvation on a mass scale, but I worry that the United States has become too slow and recalcitrant to do that and, as a result, that a Great American Famine might be on its way.
An Irish aside
My favorite piece of satire of all time is Jonathan Swift's “A Modest Proposal,” where he suggests that Irish people should cook their babies as a food source so that they can be of "use," writing: "…instead of [a child] being a charge upon their parents, or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall, on the contrary, contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing of many thousands." This piece mocked how the British treated the Irish in 1729— over a century…
