Global hunger is a problem so enormous, addressed by so many charities with aggressive marketing, that, despite how grave the problem is, it has become a cliché. It is even a punch line, as we tell each other to clean our plates “when children are starving elsewhere.” As if stuffing in that last bit of crème brulée is going to help anything. In essence, the problem is so widely acknowledged that it has become almost invisible. Children are starving, and the sky is blue. Tell us something we don’t know. It isn’t so much apathy that is the culprit, as it is a feeling of utter helplessness in facing a problem of such magnitude. One that has always existed, therefore, always will exist. Right?

Fortunately, some people are not giving up just yet. With a billion people starving, and a billion people overweight, simple math suggests that the problem is not a lack of food but a problem of distribution. While this, too, has become widely acknowledged, the solution is not readily apparent. We can suppose that famine and food shortages will continue for a long time. The solutions will accordingly be complex and not take hold overnight, but to begin, there must be attempts to keep people nourished and give them a fighting chance. Lauren Bush and Ellen Gustafson are two young women with a small business, a simple but powerful concept, and big plans to feed the world as it gets on its feet. Their wildly successful FEED Project has already provided over 55 million meals globally. Attendees at the Sorrento Hotel’s latest Penthouse Symposium were fortunate to meet these dynamos and learn about their work firsthand.

The Setting

First, a little about the event: The Sorrento began a series of events called Night School in the middle of last year. The philosophy informing these events is what Night School curator and planner Michael Hebb calls Radical Hospitality, which in essence seeks to reinvigorate people to exchange culture over food and drink and pull the lecturer off the stage. Other events include Drinking Lessons, where attendees learn tricks of the bar trade from a master mixologist while imbibing delicious, fresh concoctions, and Chamber vs. Chamber, which invites indie rock musicians and classical musicians to perform live and discuss how these different musical realms remain intertwined. The newly rechristened Penthouse Symposium (formerly the Midnight Symposium) invites experts from various fields to the Sorrento’s penthouse to share with a room full of guests their expertise while everyone enjoys wine, scotch, and simple but delicious stews under the care of Brian Petoletti, the Sorrento’s gracious Food and Beverage Director. Mr Petoletti comes from a household where true hospitality was the standard, where “Everyone who came was kissed and fed.” The meal on this night was a choice of a creamy Potato Leek Soup and a luscious Tomato Bisque with bowls of fresh pesto for DIY drizzling, alongside crunchy croutons and freshly baked rolls with individual pads of warm butter. This sort of simple but comforting food allows guests to choose their portions and eat at their leisure during the event.

This event was, in fact, quite impromptu. Curator Michael Hebb only met Lauren and Ellen a week prior during a dinner in Washington DC through the Gates Foundation, where they discovered their shared interest in world hunger and sustainable business practices. Hebb immediately contacted Barbara Malone, co-owner of the Sorrento, to ask if a symposium could be planned, and the indefatigable and ever savvy Malone said it absolutely would be planned. It is a testament to the genuine hospitality and community interest that nothing felt slapdash about the event, which was well-attended by professionals, artists, and art aficionados, including Mark Baumgarten of City Arts Magazine, and of course Fair Trade and fine food aficionados, such as Debra Music of Theo Chocolates, Sharelle Klaus of DRY Soda, and Mike McConnell of Caffé Vita.

Barbara Malone and Michael Hebb on the Sorrento's Penthouse Terrace

 

The Speakers

Lauren Bush is a Princeton grad in Anthropology, but also studied design at Parsons. The former aspect of her education gave her the background and the passion to pursue her cause while the latter aspect gave it its peculiar shape, shall we say. While at Princeton, she learned about and became involved with the UN World Food Programme, which provides food to 90 million people per year on average, making it the largest humanitarian organization addressing hunger in the world. Bush met communications officer Ellen Gustafson there, and shared with Gustafson her idea for the FEED Bag as a potential fundraiser for the organization. The two became fast friends as they hatched the plan. The design was simple—a large burlap bag which is designed after the ration bags used by the WFP and which includes in its cost a donation sufficient to feed a child for a full year. Bush expounded lightheartedly that she chose this design because, “a patent leather bag to stop world hunger seems inappropriate.”

Children are especially the target for Bush and Gustafson, who believe that the healthier and better educated the next generation is, the safer and more self-sufficient the country will ultimately become. Bush witnessed in Guatemala how malnourishment can cause physical stunting so stark that children of 7 years old may appear 3 or 4 in height and constitution. IQ also drops when essential nutrients such as iodine are absent from children’s diet in their formative years. Gustafson cited recent studies that have demonstrated a decrease in violent behavior when a population consumes sufficient Omega-3 fatty acids. In short, the health of a society and a culture is inextricably bound to its ability to feed itself not merely because there is less competition to find subsistence. A healthy diet simply makes more functional human beings.

This seems an obvious point to make, but like the problem of world hunger itself, some things are so obvious that they almost seem to go unnoticed, particularly in a country where fast food chains and food conglomerates have successfully divorced one’s health and one’s diet in the minds of many people. When Gustafson and Bush first approached Whole Foods as a potential distributor of FEED Bags, the reply was, in short, that their focus was on the obesity epidemic in America. Gustafson has seen struggles with obesity and anorexia through members of her extended family, “watching people literally killing themselves because of food.” Undaunted by the initial rejection by Whole Foods, the pair pressed on, promoting the product themselves. As a former investigative reporter on terrorism, Gustafson’s keen eye has helped FEED Projects expand into new territories, and following the sell-out success of their initial orders, the team was able to reach a deal with Whole Foods for an order of 420,000 bags. To put that in perspective, this order alone effectively paid for Rwanda’s rations for an entire year. Even Bush and Gustafson did not realize that this was quite a momentous sale for a new product, but perhaps this is for the best, for it never even occurred to them to rest on their laurels.

The first bags were produced in China, where Bush and Gustafson toured the factories to ensure that the facilities were clean and the workers were treated fairly. On a side note, Gustafson pointed out that despite criticism about manufacturing in China, its industrialization helped the country go from being a net recipient of the World Food Program 40 years ago to a large net donor. Ideally, though, as other countries begin to develop new industries and factories, they will learn from some of China’s mistakes. Newer lines of FEED bags and products are made in the countries that they benefit, including Kenya and Guatemala. Haiti is also a beneficiary of FEED Projects. A FEED Haiti bag provides 50 meals in relief efforts, and the cost of one was included in admission to the event. The 40 plus attendees thus provided over 2000 meals by attending that night. It goes to show how a simple concept can yield amazing results.

With all of these projects and new territories to help, Bush and Gustafson co-founded the FEED Foundation, which supplies schools in developing countries with necessary rations for children. This program helps ensure that children are fed healthy, energy rich foods as they are educated. The standard rations, such as the WFP’s corn-soy blend or the peanut-based paste known as Plumpy’nut, may not be too appealing to most people, but they keep children nourished and vibrant.

FEED is also aiding schools in America through FEED USA, which provides the means for healthier school meals in cafeterias. Underfunded schools can apply for a Key Intervention, such as a school garden, salad bar or industrial blender and FEED and partners will work to supply it.

Lastly—at least for now—FEED Health is a new project that benefits community health workers in Africa. Each purchase of the FEED Health backpack designed by Bush supplies one worker with an identical backpack and sterile pad, which allows them to carry their tools and supplies to those who need help. Many of them cannot find or afford even a bag to do their work, so the FEED Health backpack saves them time, and thus, when the situation is critical, saves lives.

Ellen Gustafson (second from right) and Laura Bush (far right) answering questions after the lecture

 

The Problem Expanded

All of this is inspiring, but Gustafson and Bush make clear that even their work and the work of the WFP but scratches the surface. To effect lasting change and create truly sustainable farms and distribution chains, much will have to change domestically and abroad. Institutional forces, such as the iron triangle of aid agencies and shipping and farm lobbies, press solely for continued aid, which ensures that farm surplus is purchased by the government and shipped to needy countries. This system has many ill consequences: the institutionalized dependency it creates in developing countries on foreign aid, the dependency on and consumption of petroleum in transporting rations, and the continued and controversial subsidizing of farms that are producing for greatest yield rather than diversity and quality. If developing countries begin independently producing their own food, the need for foreign aid and thus the need for government subsidized surplus is decreased. Hence, education and improved agricultural practices abroad are sadly not promoted by many aid agencies with ties to agribusiness and shipping interests.

The problem grows more large and complex upon the least examination, and to get a slightly better grip on the issues, I spoke with local businesses who deal with farmers abroad. Curator Michael Hebb is a spokesman for Caffé Vita’s Farm Direct program, which works solely with environmentally and socially responsible coffee producers, and he explained that while these problems remain widespread, farmers are slowly beginning to see the benefits of investing in sound, sustainable practices. Growers and local cooperatives must be paid more than Fair Trade standards, and in turn workers must be provided with sanitary conditions, health services, fair wages and education. The farms must manage land responsibly and produce diverse crops. This is a key point, and is counter to the practice known as monocropping, which has often caused devastating food shortages for communities.

Monocropping is the practice of planting only one kind of crop, year after year. In the US, it is infamous for the soil depletion it is known to cause over time, and abroad the effects can be worse as the chosen crop is usually a lucrative non-food commodity such as cocoa or coffee. When prices are good, farmers earn more and ideally have more than enough money to purchase food from other farms. When commodity prices fall, paying for one's subsistence can be a challenge. Large financial institutions, including the IMF and WorldBank, have been accused of bullying countries and communities into relying on monocrop practices, but internal economic forces within countries and the demand from the involved industries are perhaps the biggest culprits.

Joe Whinney, founder and CEO of Theo Chocolates, spoke to me about his experiences in the cocoa industry and the way they reflect these larger issues. In West Africa especially, where exotic woods are a major export, entire forests are routinely cleared out, and in their place commodity crops are often planted. Despite the intense labor it requires to maintain these farms, growers subsist on less than a dollar a day, and so it is difficult to encourage them to remove part of their cocoa crop for the sake of diversity even though it might help them yield a better quality product, grow food for subsistence or create a long-term investment, as in the case of farmers who plant hardwoods. This has become a more successful and common practice in Latin America, Whinney explained to me.

“The farmers view it as a sort of college fund for their kids. They will have to wait 20 or 30 years to see any profit from growing these trees, so it takes a leap to make that initial investment and lose a portion of the crop, but in the end it can be very profitable for them.”

Vita’s Farm Direct eligible farms are also required to not engage in monocropping. Hebb related, “Each farm I have visited grows substantial amounts of diverse foods for the laborers.” Like Farm Direct coffee through Vita, Theo chocolates makes a point to only purchase from growers who produce high quality product in responsible ways. Like Bush and Gustafson, Whinney insists that the key is education and allowing growers to learn from the examples set by others.

"Farmers like to look over the fence and see what other farms are doing successfully,” he says, and not all of them are willing to trust in sustainable practices until they see results in their community. The tightly knit nature of these communities is apparent to all who have seen them firsthand.

Bush and Gustafson shared a touching anecdote from their trip to Kenya, where they toured the factory that produces the FEED 2 bags, which feeds two Kenyan children for a year. They were surprised to learn that the group that was providing the finely detailed beading on the bags was in fact a deaf cooperative. A bag takes many hours to bead, but the workers did it with joy, and through sign language one was able to communicate to the two girls, “This bag will feed two children in Kenya for a year,” with a proud and triumphant smile.

The overarching lesson is that projects such as FEED prove beyond doubt that most people fundamentally want to help each other and see their communities flourish. If hunger is ever to cease to be a global problem, it will certainly be a long time coming, but Ellen Gustafson has what she thinks is a realistic mark.

“1980 was a big year for the world in terms of food and hunger. That was the year that Supreme Court case ruled in favor of genetic patenting of foods. The year before that, high-fructose corn syrup was released.” In the years that followed, she explained, there was an exodus of small-scale farmers in America as larger conglomerates assumed the lands, and new farm subsidies won by lobbies with new corporate muscle caused the first rifts between anti-obesity and foreign aid proponents. In 30 years, the way that America and much of the world gets its food and the kind of food that it consumes has changed drastically—and disastrously. Gustafson hopes that within 30 more years, we can roll back many of the unhealthy changes and put in place sustainable farming practices worldwide that could eliminate hunger in ways that now seem unimaginable.

FEED Projects and companies like Theo Chocolates and Caffé Vita are making small but substantial strides to improve the health of communities and the world at large, but there is always the trouble of growing pains. Can a small business committed to helping change this system maintain its ethics as it grows? Joe Whinney is optimistic.

"Small businesses are good at providing the model...offer solutions to problems that require new practices that larger businesses may find too risky...But larger businesses have greater leverage to turn successful new practices into standards for the industry."

Bush and Gustafson don’t seem to be running out ideas or new avenues to explore as they help feed the next generation abroad, and one can feel confident that whatever growing pains the project may have, this team is ready to face them and turn them into new opportunities.

“We’re two strong women who love and believe so much in what we’re doing,” Bush said after the lecture. Their chemistry as friends and business partners was evident from the moment that Gustafson saw Bush’s FEED bag prototype and pushed her to pursue it when others didn’t quite understand its potential. “We see eye-to-eye on almost everything,” Bush continued. “We have our disagreements, but in the end we know we both know that both our hearts are in the right place.”

Yes, there’s no doubting that.