Sun Myung Moon
March 1, 2009
As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen, Pages 312-316 and 317-318
The situation in impoverished countries is far worse. When I look at the world situation, I feel that securing sufficient food supplies is the most pressing problem. Solving the food crisis cannot be put off for even a moment. Even now, some twenty thousand people around the world die of hunger-related causes every day. We cannot afford to be apathetic just because we and our immediate families are not facing hunger.
Simply distributing food supplies by itself will not resolve hunger, though. A more fundamental approach to the problem is needed. I am considering two fundamental and concrete methods. The first is to provide ample supplies of food at low cost, and the second is to share technology that people can use to overcome hunger on their own.
The issue of food will present humankind with a very serious crisis in the future. We cannot build a world of peace without first resolving the food issue. Sufficient food supplies for all the world's population cannot be produced on the limited amount of land area that is currently available. We must look to the ocean for a solution. The oceans hold the key to solving the food crisis of the future. This is the reason I have been pioneering the oceans for the past several decades.
*****
The oceans contain limitless food supplies, but the best method for saving humanity from the food crisis is fish farming. I foresee that there will be buildings, similar to the skyscrapers we see in our cities today, devoted to fish farming. By using a water pipe system, we can farm fish in tall buildings or even on the tops of mountains. With fish farming we can produce more than enough food to feed all the world's people.
More Than Giving Bread, Teaching How to Make Bread
To solve the problem of hunger we must have a patient heart that is willing to plant seeds. Seeds are planted and wait unseen under the soil until they are able to germinate and break through their outer cover. Similarly, it is better in the long term to teach a person how to plant and harvest wheat and then turn it into bread than it is to give a piece of bread to a person who is about to die. The former may be more difficult and not result in as much public recognition, but it is the only way to arrive at a fundamental and sustainable solution to world hunger. We need to begin now to study the climate, the soil, and the character of the people in areas that suffer from hunger.
There is no quick fix to the problem of world hunger. People in each country have different tastes for food and different customs, and the plants and animals are different. The important point is concern for our neighbors. We first need to develop the heart that, when we are eating enough to fill our own stomachs, we think of others who are going hungry and consider how we can help them. True peace will not come as long as humanity does not solve the problem of hunger. If the person next to me is about to die of hunger, peace is a mere luxury.
It is as important to teach the skills needed to become self-sufficient in producing food as it is to distribute food directly to those in need. To teach such skills, we need to build schools in remote areas to combat illiteracy. Technical schools will need to be established in order to give people the ability to support themselves.