Save Three Lives: A Plan for Famine Prevention

Offers a practical, action-oriented approach designed to alleviate famine through the use of organic gardening techniques, changes in crops, and the avoidance of pesticides

Prior to his death in 1990, publisher Rodale had worked through the Rodale Institute to improve agriculture in Third World countries, particularly Africa. Temperate-zone farming practices have been disastrous in the tropics, he writes, and famine relief is not the answer; he notes that 90% of all people who die from hunger do so outside of famine areas. Rodale proposes a return to traditional agriculture with special efforts to rebuild the land. He advocates alley cropping, in which food crops are planted between rows of fast-growing leguminous trees. The trees are cut back for firewood, while branches and leaves are used for mulch, fertilizer or livestock feed. Mixed crops, local species and nutritious plants such as amaranth and winged bean offer promising answers to hunger and famine. Rodale discusses water-harvesting, fish farms and salt-water tolerance in plants. Urging the reader to act to support sustainable agriculture and help prevent famine, Rodale offers a workable solution.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Consider: Third World people were better fed before we started interfering with their diets; most of the famine we see on TV is the direct result of international aid; by introducing inappropriate single-crop agriculture that invites disease, depends on chemicals that exhaust the soil, wipes out native plants, and disrupts native cultures, the Green Revolution has caused long-term damage; food aid is geared to the needs of the donors, not the recipients. In short, relief programs cause famine. None of these are new ideas. All or most have by now been acknowledged by the establishment organizations (World Bank; National Academy of Science) quoted here. But the late Rodale (Our Next Frontier, 1981), aiming at a popular audience, states the case directly and supports it with some persuasive points. (On roads, for one example: Food relief and high-tech equipment can't get to the rural poor for want of them. Forty-five billion dollars' worth of roads that international aid has built in 85 countries have been lost for lack of maintenance, while existing roads are controlled by soldiers who steal the supplies to sell on the black market.) Outside the loyal readership of the Rodale family's publishing empire, which has advocated sustainable organic farming for many decades, some might be put off by the patronizing first- and second-person prose here, which reads like those four-page fund- raisers with which various nonprofits stuff the mailboxes of targeted recipients. But that's just what Rodale (who died last fall in a car crash on a business trip to Russia) is up to: After outlining what should be done, he calls for twenty-to-thirty thousand people to provide the $100 per donor, in cash or time, that he says will do it. Readers who get that far may well be motivated to pitch in. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Rodale devoted his life to promoting sustainable agriculture and seeking an end to hunger and famine. In this book, completed shortly before his death in 1990, he laments the fact that hunger is prevalent in African countries that used to have the lushest agricultural land in the world. Replacement of indigenous farming systems, which sustained Africans for centuries, with chemical-based, highly technological, monocultural systems has destroyed the ecological balance and left a legacy of hunger and poverty. Rodale advocates an action strategy involving a return to sustainable indigenous farming systems, alley cropping with leguminous trees to save the dwindling wood supply, biological pest control, sensible use of available water, control of populations, and eliminating exploitation of women, who do most of the agricultural work. His clear descriptions of the problem and practical solutions should motivate all readers to action. Highly recommended.
- Irwin Weintraub, Rutgers Univ. Libs., Piscataway, N.J.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.