Pricey gas and food:
We’re in it together
Few people have failed to notice the high price of gasoline lately. Less dramatic to middle-class consumers is the rising price of food. If they’re able to buy cheaper, off-brand foods to balance their finances in the face of pricier gas, poorer families may not be. Already buying the cheapest foodstuffs, they increasingly choose between gas for the car to get to work, and food. The global food crisis is beginning to pinch our country.
For more than 850 million people in the world, the high price of food doesn’t mean cutting back, it means going without. It’s why food riots broke out this year in 14 countries. A spike in prices — up 80 percent in the last three years — has caused some developed countries to limit the food they export. Such policies seek to keep food in a country for its own people, even as demand for food outpaces global production.
Now the crisis is hitting close to home. According to Nutritional Development Services of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, local families struggling with gas prices to get from home to work at minimum are forced to buy less nutritious food, and less of it. Community food cupboards, of which there are 500 in Philadelphia (up from 100 less than 20 years ago) face higher prices in obtaining and distributing such staples as bread, cheese and milk that children receive in school lunches or after-school feeding programs. State funding for the community food programs has remained flat, even as the cupboards seek a $22 million increase in assistance this year.
Behind the rising prices are complex factors including government subsidies to food producers, high petroleum prices that affect the cost of fertilizer and fuel for farm equipment and transportation, and diversion of corn and other crops into ethanol production for the world’s insatiable cars and trucks.
Deeper than the economic causes lies a disconnectedness that drives our society to consume ever more with little regard for our neighbor, either in the community nearby or across an ocean.
A striking contrast to the global food crisis is next week’s celebration of a different sort of food: the International Eucharistic Congress in Quebec City, Canada.
The congress allows us the opportunity to join spiritually with our brothers and sisters in the Eucharist and consider the connections all people share as consumers and producers of the world’s goods. The Bread of Life and sacrament of unity brings Christ’s Real Presence to a world that hungers in body and soul. Christ alone satisfies the hungry heart, and He challenges all at the Eucharistic table to confront the uncertainties of the present by sharing more of our own blessings with each other.