Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century

College of Ag Fighting War on Hunger

Since their first meeting in fall 2005, the College of Agriculture’s Subcommittee of 19 has been involved in the War On Hunger student campaign. The United Nations World Food Programme, one of the world’s largest humanitarian agencies, selected Auburn University in 2004 to establish the worldwide model as a student-led program to increase awareness of global hunger and poverty.

“Hunger is a living world problem,” says Bill Hardy, former associate CoAg dean and faculty advisor. “It’s up to students to create objectives for the program, but public awareness and generating concern by everybody is the main goal.”

Nineteen students represent Auburn University’s 12 schools, colleges and major campus organizations in what’s called the Committee of 19. The name is symbolic of the 19 cents a day it takes the World Food Programme to feed a hungry child in a developing Third-World country. The committee is divided into subcommittees of 19 students that serve as a source of guidance and support for the Committee of 19. The College of Agriculture’s subcommittee is one such group.

Through a pre-existing relationship with the United Nations, in a joint sponsorship of the International Quality of Life Awards, Auburn University’s College of Human Sciences has led the War On Hunger campaign in association with the the College of Agriculture.

“It was a mutual decision between the College of Human Sciences and us,” says Hardy. “It’s a fitting decision because agriculture is food production.”

The World Food Programme asserts that there is plenty of food in the world to adequately feed every man, woman and child, but that the root causes of hunger lie in an inequitable distribution of food, a lack of access to education, a lack of access to basic resources, the conflict of war, trade policies and ethnic and religious discrimination.

“Providing food and an education to a poor child is the single most important thing we can do for the development of that individual and his or her nation,” says World Food Programme Executive Director James T. Morris.

Aid is distributed through the World Food Programme in three forms: food-for-life, food-for-growth and food-for-work. Food-for-life is meant to sustain life in emergencies that result from natural and man-made disasters. Food-for-growth serves to target the most needy individuals at the most critical times in life, such as babies, school children, the elderly and pregnant and nursing women. Food-for-work encourages self-reliance by paying workers with food rations in exchange for assistance in developing their communities’ infrastructure.

Hunger associated with women and children is an additional concern of the World Food Programme.

“Women are the first to suffer when crops fail or a nation is seized by violence,” says Catherine Bertini, former executive director for the World Food Programme who visited the Auburn campus as a featured speaker. “They should be the first in line when we invest our money.”

The College of Agriculture Subcommittee of 19 continues to improve the campus-wide program and show other colleges across the United States how to start and run their own program.