World food day

If you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday (Isaiah 58:10)

As hard-working families fret about the Eurozone crisis and its possible impact on their futures, hundreds of millions of people across the world are in the midst of a much starker challenge.

This Sunday, 16 October, World Food Day will remind us that almost a billion people are going to bed hungry each night as escalating commodity prices put staple foods beyond their budget.

Earlier this year, global food prices hit their highest level since they first started being measured in 1990. And the world’s poorest, who spend most of their income on food, cannot cope with even slight price rises.

As well as providing emergency aid and funding sustainable farming projects, Tearfund has lobbied donor governments for humanitarian aid for East Africa and the World Bank recently tripled its contribution to US$1.88 billion. Together with other agencies like Save the Children, we have also called for more investment in small-scale agriculture and reforms in food production and supply systems.

‘I’m personally committed to this because I’ve seen and worked on three severe food crises in the past six years,’ says Jo Khinmaung, Tearfund’s Food Security Policy Adviser. ‘It’s been frustrating to watch unfold, but now there’s potential for real change.’

Click here for more details about the causes and effects of global price rises.

• Lord, the scale of global poverty is beyond our understanding. Give bread to those who are hungry and a hunger for justice for those of us who have bread. Grant us the faith and persistence to sow seeds of righteousness that might take years or even generations to bear fruit.

One Voice

We pray because we're desperate for God - to walk with him... in step with his will for the world.

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