Feeding the Hungry Focus of Oct. 16 Teleconference
Date: Oct. 13, 1997
Editor: D'Lyn Ford (505) 646-6528, dlford@nmsu.edu
LAS CRUCES -- A World Food Day teleconference will air locally Oct. 16, giving southern New Mexicans a progress report on efforts to feed 800 million hungry people worldwide, including 30 million in the United States.
"World Food Summit: Promises and Prospects" will be carried live from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in New Mexico State University's Corbett Center auditorium. Admission is free. Students, faculty, staff and the public will be able to call in questions during the teleconference. Instructors are encouraged to incorporate the teleconference in their classes.
Broadcast in English, Spanish and French to a worldwide audience, the teleconference will provide an update on goals set at last yearās World Food Summit. NMSU's College of Agriculture and Home Economics is sponsoring the teleconference site locally.
The broadcast will focus on food security, which is different from traditional food aid programs, said Joel Diemer, NMSU associate professor of agricultural economics and agricultural business.
"Many of the world's food problems are pure logistics," he said. "We produce and waste an incredible amount of food. Food security involves ensuring that food is produced and distributed where it is needed, that political barriers are overcome, that land is available to produce food and that people have jobs to be able to buy food."
Diemer added that food security involves not only having enough to eat but also having food that meets basic nutritional needs.
"This is not just an issue in developing countries," he said. "We have 30 million people in the United States who donāt have access to adequate nutrition."
The teleconference will open with a short message from Jacques Diouf, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization. Advocates from Africa, Asia and Latin America will review what is being done to alleviate hunger.
Programming originates from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The program will be shown on Capitol Hill for the first time this year. In addition, it will be carried at U.S. embassies and hundreds of North American colleges and universities.
The teleconference is held on World Food Day, which began in 1981 and is observed in 150 countries. The day marks the founding of FAO of the United Nations in 1945.
Next fall, Diemer plans to use the teleconference as the basis for a one-hour class in which students plan and carry out projects to combat hunger. "Ideally, these would be projects that would go beyond collecting cans of food for a day," he said. The class will be cross-listed for departments across campus so that students majoring in agriculture, nutrition, nursing or engineering could work together on projects.
For more information, contact Diemer at (505) 646-1044 or send an e-mail to iirm@nmsu.edu. Online information is available at www.nmsu.edu/~iirm/.