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Poor Haitians Resort to Eating Dirt

By JONATHAN M. KATZ - Jan 29, 2008

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau.

The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.

"When my mother does not cook anything, I have to eat them three times a day," Charlene said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking even thinner than the slim 6 pounds 3 ounces he weighed at birth.

Though she likes their buttery, salty taste, Charlene said the cookies also give her stomach pains.
"When I nurse, the baby sometimes seems colicky too," she said.

Food prices around the world have spiked because of higher oil prices, needed for fertilizer, irrigation and transportation. Prices for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat are also up sharply, and the increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets as well.

The problem is particularly dire in the Caribbean, where island nations depend on imports and food prices are up 40 percent in places.

The global price hikes, together with floods and crop damage from the 2007 hurricane season, prompted the U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency to declare states of emergency in Haiti and several other Caribbean countries. Caribbean leaders held an emergency summit in December to discuss cutting food taxes and creating large regional farms to reduce dependence on imports.

At the market in the La Saline slum, two cups of rice now sell for 60 cents, up 10 cents from December and 50 percent from a year ago. Beans, condensed milk and fruit have gone up at a similar rate, and even the price of the edible clay has risen over the past year by almost $1.50. Dirt to make 100 cookies now costs $5, the cookie makers say.

Still, at about 5 cents apiece, the cookies are a bargain compared to food staples. About 80 percent of people in Haiti live on less than $2 a day and a tiny elite controls the economy.
Merchants truck the dirt from the central town of Hinche to the La Saline market, a maze of tables of vegetables and meat swarming with flies. Women buy the dirt, then process it into mud cookies in places such as Fort Dimanche, a nearby shanty town.

Carrying buckets of dirt and water up ladders to the roof of the former prison for which the slum is named, they strain out rocks and clumps on a sheet, and stir in shortening and salt. Then they pat the mixture into mud cookies and leave them to dry under the scorching sun.

The finished cookies are carried in buckets to markets or sold on the streets.

A reporter sampling a cookie found that it had a smooth consistency and sucked all the moisture out of the mouth as soon as it touched the tongue. For hours, an unpleasant taste of dirt lingered.
Assessments of the health effects are mixed. Dirt can contain deadly parasites or toxins, but can also strengthen the immunity of fetuses in the womb to certain diseases, said Gerald N. Callahan, an immunology professor at Colorado State University who has studied geophagy, the scientific name for dirt-eating.

Haitian doctors say depending on the cookies for sustenance risks malnutrition.

"Trust me, if I see someone eating those cookies, I will discourage it," said Dr. Gabriel Thimothee, executive director of Haiti's health ministry.

Marie Noel, 40, sells the cookies in a market to provide for her seven children. Her family also eats them.

"I'm hoping one day I'll have enough food to eat, so I can stop eating these," she said. "I know it's not good for me."
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Congregational Reading: God of Justice for the Poor
Leader: Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees
People: Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied

Leader: Woe to those who deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless.
People: Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy

Leader: What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your riches?
People: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Based on Isaiah 10:1-3 and Matthew 5:3,6,7

Iraq’s 100-Year Mortgage

By Linda J. Bilmes

Reprinted from Foreign Policy Magazine, March/April 2008

The price tag for caring for the Americans who fight this war could exceed what it costs to wage it.


March 19 marks the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The American death toll—nearly 4,000 soldiers in Iraq and almost 500 in Afghanistan—is well known. Much less attention has been paid to the enormous number of troops who have survived and returned home with serious injuries. Here, the numbers are truly staggering. More than 70,000 have been wounded in combat, injured in accidents, or airlifted out of the region for emergency medical care. More than a third of the 750,000 troops discharged from the military so far have required treatment at medical facilities, including at least 100,000 with mental health conditions and 52,000 with post-traumatic stress disorder. According to a recent U.S. Army estimate, as many as 20 percent of returning soldiers have suffered mild brain injuries, such as concussions. More than 20,000 troops have survived amputations, severe burns, or head, spinal, and other serious injuries.

These numbers are largely due to the extraordinary advances in battlefield medicine in recent years. Far more soldiers are surviving even grievous injuries than in previous conflicts. The ratio of wounded in combat to killed in Iraq is 7 to 1; in Vietnam, it was 2.6 to 1, and in World War II, 2 to 1. If all injuries are included, such as those from road accidents or debilitating illnesses, Iraq has produced 15 wounded for every single fatality. This higher survival rate is, of course, welcome news, but it leaves the United States with a legacy of providing medical care and paying disability benefits to an enormous number of veterans and their dependents for many decades to come. During the past six years, more than 1.6 million troops have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Even in the most optimistic scenario, assuming that the majority of U.S. troops are withdrawn by the end of 2009, the cost of providing for Iraq War veterans will match what we have spent waging the war: approximately $500 billion. If U.S. forces remain deployed at a higher level, the cost of caring for veterans will eventually exceed $700 billion.

When we think about the costs of war, we tend to focus on the here and now. But in what is already the second-most expensive conflict in U.S. history, after World War II, the costs of Iraq will persist long after the last shot is fired. Benefits were still being paid to World War I veterans until January 2007, when the last veteran receiving compensation died, nearly 90 years after the war ended. The United States pays more than $12 billion each year in disability benefits to Vietnam veterans, a figure that continues to climb, 35 years after the U.S. pullout. If these past wars are any guide, Americans will undoubtedly be paying for Iraq for at least the next 50 years.

The purpose of U.S. policy toward war veterans is, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan.” To do this, the government provides two main benefits: medical care and financial compensation to those who have disabilities incurred or aggravated during active military service. The consequence is that the United States faces a daunting financial burden, as well as a steep logistical challenge, in providing medical care and disability benefits to all who need or are entitled to them.

Part of the challenge is that the Department of Veterans Affairs’ medical system simply lacks the capacity to cope with the demand of returning troops. The government expects 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to seek treatment this year alone. If the current conflict follows the pattern of the first Gulf War in 1991, about 800,000 returning veterans will eventually require medical care—more than a few for the rest of their lives. Moreover, the government is ill-equipped to handle the near epidemic of mental health cases resulting from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Even using conservative estimates, the long-term cost of providing medical care alone to Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans over their lifetimes could approach $285 billion, depending on how long the soldiers are deployed.

After the 1991 Gulf War, some 44 percent of its veterans applied for disability benefits; today, nearly 17 years later, the United States pays more than $4 billion each year in disability compensation to 169,000 veterans from the 1991 Gulf War. We have already paid five times as much in disability pay for that conflict as we did to fight it. Even under the conservative assumption that veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan apply for disability benefits at the same rate as those from the first Gulf War, the cost could reach $390 billion during their lifetimes.

Other parts of the government will also pay a long-term price for the war. Veterans who can no longer hold down a job, due to physical or mental injuries, are likely to qualify for Social Security disability compensation (adding another $22 to $38 billion to the bill). For others, the injuries they have suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan will eventually swell the rolls of Medicare, as the long-term effects of injuries and chronic illnesses appear.

Staggering though they are, these costs only represent the impact of the war on the U.S. federal budget. The many social and economic costs that the government does not pay, such as the loss to the economy of so many young, productive Americans and the costs paid by state and local governments, communities, and private medical providers, could add another $415 billion to the total cost to the economy.

Americans have so far focused only on the ballooning short-term price of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we have not yet counted the cost of caring for veterans, replenishing military equipment, and restoring the armed forces to their pre-war strength. This war will prove one of the costliest in U.S. history—one whose bill we pass to the generations that follow.


Linda J. Bilmes, a lecturer at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, is coauthor, with Joseph E. Stiglitz, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008).

Ethanol subsidies push up the price of corn tortillas

(Reprinted from caller.com)
Mexico this week removed the last tariffs on U.S. and Canadian farm products as called for by the North American Free Trade Agreement. The removal of the tariffs is a gamble by Mexicans that the positives of globalization will outweigh the negatives, especially in the case of corn, the historical food staple that has fed the people of Mexico for centuries.

The playing field for Mexicans in the corn markets would be fairer, however, if the United States didn't continue to ladle outrageous subsidies on corn producers even as corn prices soar. Those prices are a direct outgrowth of the demand for corn-based ethanol, which itself is a creation of the farm lobby and presidential politics.

Only the most plain-speaking presidential candidate would have taken on the corn subsidy before this week's caucuses in Iowa, a heavy corn growing state, either to suggest that the subsidy is an anachronism from the Depression era or that U.S. tariffs on sugar-based ethanol from Brazil should be removed to drive down fuel prices. Not likely.

Protestors who blocked the international bridge at El Paso this week were wrong about globalization being the bogey man of Mexican farmers. Other Mexican farmers, such as those who grow tomatoes, winter vegetables and avocados, have found a new market in American supermarkets because of NAFTA.

Likewise, American consumers get the benefit of fresh produce and more food choices. The demonstrators, who dispersed after a few hours, do have a valid point regarding corn. American vegetables and fruits don't get federal farm subsidies, but corn does and will continue to get federal support in the recently passed farm bill. That makes for an uneven playing field that leaves poor Mexican farmers further out in the cold.

The subsidies undermine faith in the power of free markets and open trade. Globalization already has fewer friends in Congress than it had when NAFTA was negotiated in 1993. Democratic presidential hopefuls are acting more like Lou Dobbs, the cable television free trade alarmist, than Bill Clinton who signed NAFTA and called it essential to America's ability to compete across the world.

In Mexico, those same views are heard by those who say that Mexico is on the short-end of the globalization stick.

Ironically, Mexico has done more, in many ways, to erase barriers to free trade than the United States. Mexican administrations removed the price supports for corn that protected small corn farmers and artificially kept prices low for tortillas. As a result, tortilla prices have soared, putting political pressure on President Felipe Calderon. But Calderon, aside from some action on putting a ceiling on tortilla prices, has resisted demands that Mexico tinker with NAFTA.

Mexico will have to do more. A protected market has kept Mexican corn producers from being more efficient and from leaving behind the tiny plots that simply can't match the production of American corn farmers. But anti-NAFTA critics mostly say that if American corn producers are protected by subsidies, so should Mexican farmers. The losers there would be consumers in Mexico and the United States.

Defenders of subsidies point out that Americans produce yellow corn, not the white corn that Mexicans produce for domestic consumption. But markets make no differentiation; all corn prices are distorted by subsidies and the demand for ethanol.

One fear is that Mexican corn farmers, unable to compete, will be forced to leave rural areas and eventually wind up as illegal immigrants. It would be tragically ironic if Iowa corn subsidies result in more undocumented workers in a Des Moines meat- packing plant.

Globalization, despite NAFTA critics in Mexico and the United States, can't be stopped; overall, more people benefit when trade is allowed to flow fairly and freely. There's nothing fair, however, about American crop subsidies.

http://www.caller.com/news/2008/jan/06/ethanol-subsidies-push-up-the-price-of-corn-in-a/

Highlights of Jubilee National Prayer Breakfast

Joe Stiglitz on George Bush

In this month’s Vanity Fair, Joseph Stiglitz has written a powerful critique of the economic policies of the Administration of President George Bush. Stiglitz, as you may recall, was the Chair of Bill Clinton’s Economic Advisors, then Chief Economist for the World Bank, Nobel Economics prize winner, and now a professor of economics at Columbia University.

The article was entitled "The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush." Here is an excerpt from that article. For the entire article, click here.

When we look back someday at the catastrophe that was the Bush administration, we will think of many things: the tragedy of the Iraq war, the shame of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, the erosion of civil liberties. The damage done to the American economy does not make front-page headlines every day, but the repercussions will be felt beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this page.

I can hear an irritated counterthrust already. The president has not driven the United States into a recession during his almost seven years in office. Unemployment stands at a respectable 4.6 percent. Well, fine. But the other side of the ledger groans with distress: a tax code that has become hideously biased in favor of the rich; a national debt that will probably have grown 70 percent by the time this president leaves Washington; a swelling cascade of mortgage defaults; a record near-$850 billion trade deficit; oil prices that are higher than they have ever been; and a dollar so weak that for an American to buy a cup of coffee in London or Paris—or even the Yukon—becomes a venture in high finance.

And it gets worse. After almost seven years of this president, the United States is less prepared than ever to face the future. We have not been educating enough engineers and scientists, people with the skills we will need to compete with China and India. We have not been investing in the kinds of basic research that made us the technological powerhouse of the late 20th century. And although the president now understands—or so he says—that we must begin to wean ourselves from oil and coal, we have on his watch become more deeply dependent on both.

Up to now, the conventional wisdom has been that Herbert Hoover, whose policies aggravated the Great Depression, is the odds-on claimant for the mantle “worst president” when it comes to stewardship of the American economy. Once Franklin Roosevelt assumed office and reversed Hoover’s policies, the country began to recover. The economic effects of Bush’s presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting. There is no threat of America’s being displaced from its position as the world’s richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush.

Suicides Immigration and the Farm Bill

If you've had trouble wrapping your brain around the complicated Farm Bill being debated in Congress right now, this might help. Just think of two things: Suicides in India and Mexican migration to the US.

You've probably heard something of the suicide story. Grizzly, stories of farmers in the rural areas of Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Madhya Pradesh, who lose money on their crops year after year after year until finally in that very traditional, honor, shame society, they take their lives. Usually by eating their pesticides, sometimes falling on their hoe, sometimes worse.

It's an epidemic that has been growing for over a decade and is at least in the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands.

Now, there are a lot of causes for poverty in India, and not all of them relate to you and me, but one of them does. For years our country has been pushing India and other developing countries to lower their tariffs on imported goods and lower subsidies for their local farmers, while at the same time we have been increasing the subsidies we pay to our own farmers. Precise numbers are hard to come by, but in 2005, during World Trade Organization negotiations, the US offered to lower its overall subsidies to only $22 billion! That's a lot of money.

Those subsidies are an incentive for our farmers to over produce on a handful of select crops—mainly wheat, corn, rice, and soybeans—and then dump them on the world market at prices even starving farmers in India, Africa and Latin America can't compete with. Our over-production depresses world prices and literally lowers the incomes of farmers all over the world.

Then there's the case of Mexico. We pay big subsidies to our large conglomerate farmers to grow corn at costs far lower than what they should be and then that corn floods into Mexico and other countries at prices well below than what their more efficient small farmers can match.

Hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers have lost their farms. Some moved into the cities, some now work in sweat shops, some sell tee-shirts and chicklets to tourists at beach resorts, and thousands attempt to get into the US to find work. When that happens, as you know, some get in, some are deported, and hundreds die on the border.

Ironically, recently after our economic policies decimated the Mexican corn farming industry, and encouraged consumers to become dependent on cheap subsidized US corn, suddenly corn-based ethanol became the next big thing in the US and the price of tortillas soared beyond the reach of most poor people in Mexico. They were knocked down by our economic policies twice.

This fall the US Farm Bill will once again be debated in the Senate, for the first time in several years. People of faith, led by organizations like Church World Service and Bread for the World, will be urging Senators to find more equitable ways to help our domestic farmers and not punish foreign ones, but the first step is to realize that economic decisions here have consequences that reach far further than provincial political acts. There are a thousand reasons for global poverty, but its time we understand the connections between things like our Farm Bill and the well being of the rest of the planet. We are the biggest economy in the world and our behavior matters. When doling out subsidies to a handful of giant corporate farms for a handful of crops, our elected officials may think that they are just giving away money to buy votes and campaign contributions, but in reality they are also contributing to farmers committing suicide in India and families being split up and destroyed in Mexico. It's trickle down economics at its worst.

The Cancel Debt Fast

The following article by Kristin Sundell, of Jubilee USA, announces the national "Rolling Fast" campaign from September 6--October 15. The purpose is to raise awareness of the international debt crisis and encourage Congress to pass the JUBILEE Act for debt cancellation . It also gives a brief, but good outline of the extent of the crisis, the biblical basis for our response to it, and the origins of the Jubilee movement. Read it and respond if you can. Many good things have been breaking our way in the last few months, and your help is needed to push the issue forward one more step.
--Stan

Seven years after the beginning of the new millennium, we live in a world that is seriously out of balance. Every day, 13 percent of the worlds population goes hungry and more than 30,000 children die of easily preventable diseases.

The global gap between rich and poor continues to grow despite a global commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which would cut extreme poverty in half by 2015. This year we mark the halfway point to the MDGs, but most countries are nowhere near meeting these goals. In sub Saharan Africa the percentage of people living in extreme poverty has actually increased since 1990 (the baseline year for the MDGs).

Some of the money needed to address extreme poverty can be generated from aid, but new infusions of aid cannot be effective until the drain of debt payments is stopped. Pouring more aid into impoverished countries without debt cancellation is like trying to fill a bathtub with the drain open.

In addition to its current impacts, the origins of the debt are unjust. A large portion of the current debt burden was accrued under oppressive regimes or unfair terms. During the Cold War era, loans were often made more for ideological and political reasons than for reasons of assisting development or addressing human needs. In places like apartheid South Africa, much of the money that was loaned was used to oppress the majority of the population. As people of faith we must ask, Why should impoverished people endlessly pay for bad loans that never benefited them?

In the Hebrew scriptures and in the Gospels, we find a vision of life that is liberating and just, governed by Sabbath cycles--the Sabbath Day, the Sabbath Year, and the Jubilee Year (Leviticus 25 and Luke 4). Jubilee is a powerful expression of Gods intent that all creatures partake fully in the abundance of Gods world.

Sabbath Year observance requires that every seven years debts are cancelled and those enslaved because of debt are freed, restoring equal relations among community members and preventing a widening gap between rich and poor.

In the late 1990s, a broad network of people of faith and conscience came together under the banner of Jubilee 2000, engaging their communities and challenging policy makers to address the international debt crisis. This mobilization brought the issue of debt to the world stage in 1999 and again in 2005, and won significant levels of relief for many countries, but it did not end the debt crisis.

Moved by the continuing debt crisis, and inspired by the Jubilee vision, people around the world are calling their political leaders to observe a Sabbath Year in 2007, seven years after Jubilee 2000.

This September 6 - October 15, thousands of people across the country and around the world will demonstrate their commitment by participating in a 40-day, Cancel Debt Fast for debt cancellation and an end to extreme global poverty.

The fast will be organized in tandem with a public ministry of prayer and fasting led by UCC pastor, Rev. David Duncombe. Rev. Duncombes ministry will involve an open-ended fast, beginning on September 6^th. In the spirit of Isaiah 58:6, the Cancel Debt Fast will seek to loose the chains of injustice and to set the oppressed free. As he fasts, Rev. Duncombe will visit Congressional offices, urging the passage of the Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation (H.R. 2634).

People of faith and conscience are urged to participate in the Cancel Debt Fast by visiting cancel debt fast and publicly committing to fast for a day or more. During their fast, supporters should contact or meet with their Senators and Representative, urging them to support the Jubilee Act.

We know that debt cancellation works. Debt relief now has a ten year track record of freeing up resources to fight poverty. The documented impacts of the 2005 round of debt cancellation include thousands of new teachers hired, the importation of vital food supplies for those affected by drought, and the provision of health care for millions who could not afford it before. But only 1 in 10 of the worlds poorest will benefit from debt cancellation provided to date.

The imperative to finish what was started remains: to lift the excruciating burden of debt that continues to siphon resources from impoverished countries that should be used for health care, education, and clean water. What better time than the 2007 Sabbath Year to finally commit to the debt cancellation necessary to address the crisis of extreme poverty?

Kristin Sundell is the director of advocacy and organizing for Jubilee USA Network.

Fairness Amendment to Farm Bill Fails in House

Fight For Meaningful Farm Reform Continues

All year, Bread for the World's Seeds of Change campaign has focused attention on farm bill reform. Just last week, thousands of activists called Washington to support the Fairness in Food and Farm Policy Amendment in the House of Representatives. On Thursday, July 26, the House defeated the Fairness Amendment on a vote of 117-309.

If your representative voted yes, please call and thank him or her.

The Fairness Amendment would have reformed the farm bill in significant ways to reduce hunger and poverty and help farmers of modest means in this country and in developing countries. Though the amendment didn't pass, the pressure we brought for reform forced congressional leaders to add provisions to the bill that increase funding for nutrition and conservation programs that will help hungry people and promote environmental stewardship.

Most importantly, pressure for reform of the farm bill is now stronger than ever. Bread for the World members played a key role in raising awareness about the inequities of the farm bill and the needs of hungry and poor people in our country and overseas. Without our voice, Congress would not have given serious consideration to the need for reforms in the farm bill.

The farm bill debate is far from over. There are still many steps in the process of finalizing this legislation. Major farm bill decisions also remain to be made in the Senate.

You can be proud of the intense and well-coordinated effort that our Bread for the World grassroots membership has poured into this challenging campaign. We have already had an impact, and the story is far from over.

Thanks for your hard work. Stay tuned!

Action Alert from Bread for the World

Congress Must Reform the Farm Bill

Call your representative and senators in Congress and urge broad reform of the U.S. farm bill.

Action

You may have already heard about the very important Farm Bill which (among other things) gives millions in subsides to very large farmers in the US and very little to the struggling small farmers. What's more, the large subsidies are an incentive for over production, which is then dumped on the international market at prices poor farmers around the globe are unable to match, throwing millions of already poor families into desperate hunger.

By July 17, please dial toll-free —which will connect you to the Capitol switchboard—and ask to be connected to your representative's office in order to leave your message. Call back and do the same for your senators.

Main Message

• Tell them the status quo on farm policy is not good enough.
• Urge them to ensure that the farm bill that comes to the House and Senate floors includes:

o Reform of commodity policies that hurt U.S. farmers of modest means and make it harder for farmers in poor countries to feed their families.

o Increased food stamp benefits so that U.S. families can afford a healthy diet.

o More investment in rural development, especially resources targeted to the U.S. communities in greatest need.

If your representative or senators are not on the Agriculture Committee (you can find out at www.bread.org), encourage them to talk with their colleagues on the Agriculture Committee and House and Senate leadership to see that these changes are made.

Why?

• We have reached a critical point in this year's Offering of Letters. The House and Senate Agriculture Committees intend to take up the farm bill in July. Our responses will need to come quickly as the bill takes shape in the committee, moves to the House floor and begins to move in the Senate.
• Every member of the House and Senate has a stake in the farm bill—not just members of the Agriculture Commit­tee. But so far, the House committee has signaled its reluctance to reform the farm bill. (The Agriculture Chair in the Senate plans to take up the bill in July.)
• We know that reform is crucial to struggling farmers and rural families in the United States, and to hungry people here and around the world. Your congressional representatives need to hear from constituents that improving this bill is critical.

• In particular, the commodities section of the farm bill should correct our current payments structure, which con­centrates payments in the hands of relatively few, relatively affluent people. Some who receive large payments do not actually farm. The farm bill should also change policies that distort trade, because they make it more difficult for farmers in poor countries to sell their crops and feed their families.
• Pushing for change in the farm bill is one of Bread for the World's most ambitious and challenging—and most important—campaigns. Progress has been very encouraging: there have already been many promising conversations with members of Congress. Editorials in major media have called for reform. You have moved the debate this far —now let's ensure that Congress passes the reforms we are seeking.

Want To Do More?

• Write a letter to the editor of your local paper. For help, contact Shawnda Hines, shines@bread.org.
• Ask five of your friends to call their members of Congress.
• If you would like to receive email updates, go to www.bread.org and click on “newsletter signup.” There you can join a Quickline (to be notified by email when there is an urgent legislative action involving your member of Congress) and register for Fresh Bread (our biweekly email update on what’s happening in Washington with hunger issues.)
• Visit www.bread.org to learn about other ways to help reform the farm bill, or contact your Bread for the World regional organizer.