World Hunger or World McDonald's?

I've written about the Gates Foundation's efforts to help improve agricultural systems in the developing world. Gates concludes that his Foundation's investments should empower poor farmers to grow more crops and get them to market, which will help them pull themselves out of poverty.

Hey, U.S. farmers have been growing more and more crops and gotten them to market. They've even created new markets for them. Some of these farmers have gotten rich. So shouldn't Bill Gates be trying to replicate this shining example for the rest of the world?

Well, think about the output of that ingenious system we've created. Everything's made of one crop and the rush to the bottom means everything is as cheap and low-quality as it possibly can be. Our taste buds have become accustomed to cheap and low-quality, and the market bears out some unfortunate results — such as areas where fast food joints far outnumber supermarkets or other healthy eating places.

This is the case in Prince George's County, Maryalnd, where, as I wrote this morning, a state Senator is trying to limit the number of fast food restaurants in his county to make everybody healthier. Our food system, propped up by subsidies and driven by our never-ending quest for "more" and "cheaper," has dedicated itself to creating food that local governments are now trying to restrict.

So it doesn't seem to be such a shining example after all. Should we really be spreading our own ideas about how to improve food systems to other countries? Shouldn't we instead be putting those ideas in a hole and burying them?

There are surely other ways of doing things. But let's for a moment take the attitude of the corporate forces that shape our food system or, say, Bill Gates, who seems to have been captured by that way of thinking. From their perspective, there are but two alternatives: Our way or starvation.

Suspend your disbelief for a moment and and ask yourself the following: In a battle between eradication of hunger and a safe Earth unravaged by monster food systems, which wins?

Before you start throwing local organic tomatoes at my head, indulge me for a moment. Here's another way of putting it, a serious hypothetical question along the lines of the impossible-choices game I used to play as a kid: Would you rather inhabit a world where everybody only had access to McDonald's or a world where hundreds of millions of people suffered from chronic hunger?

This is obviously an academic question in regards to many places in the world, but if the McMap of the U.S. is any guide, it could be a meaningful question in this country. In many U.S. cities, fast food outlets are the cheapest and most convenient method of filling a hungry belly. Taking them away without engineering a more desirable alternative could leave many people with fewer and worse options, not better ones. (For the record, Maryland will be actively encouraging the placement of healthier restaurants in new building projects.)

The sustainable food debate focuses much ire on the likes of McDonald's, but is a McDonald's hamburger worse than hunger? If there was some way to engineer a distribution system that would allow all those millions of hungry people in the world to eat a Big Mac, would you make that devil's bargain?

Photo: pointnshoot on flickr