Occasionally, even something as politically charged as food can rise above the politics of money, power and advantage.
These flashes of non-partisan humanitarianism are moments to savor. They remind us, above all, that food is more than a commodity, an economic unit or a political weapon. It is the stuff of life.
The world’s response to starvation, malnutrition and death in North Korea is an example. Starvation stalks the land after two years of floods and almost half a century of political isolation.
After months of hesitation, even enemies of the hard-line communist state now are responding with food.
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In Canada, farmers and the churches have led the way. Better late than never, the government finally has joined the movement to save lives.
During the next few months, 15,000 tonnes of prairie wheat will be shipped to North Korea to help combat the famine.
The Canadian International Development Agency is spending up to $3.6 million on the project, joining forces with the Winnipeg-based Canadian Foodgrains Bank, which has warned about the crisis and sent food for more than a year.
Rick Fee, a Canadian Presbyterian representative in North Korea, calls it a response of compassion. As many as 25,000 already have died and thousands of children are sick or weak.
“North Korea and its people have been cut off from the rest of the world for a very long time,” he said in a statement released by the Foodgrains Bank, which is supported by farmers and churches.
“We see our response as an opportunity to not only alleviate hunger but also rebuild relationships and show solidarity with North Korea.”
Federal cabinet minister Don Boudria, responsible for CIDA, talked about the suffering and Canada’s “urgent moral responsibility to respond.”
This is not the normal language of the food trade, where value often is conferred by shortage of supply rather than benefit to people.
It is conventional wisdom among politicians and traders to view food as one of the world’s most political commodities.
Politics typically determines where it is grown, how much it is worth, where it can be sold and who benefits from its trade and sale.
Throughout history, food has been a powerful political weapon to be withheld from enemies and given to friends.
Canada’s participation in a food embargo against Iraq, which reports say is killing children and the weak, offers a glimpse of food as power.
Yet the stories from North Korea, and the lobbying by aid groups and the UN, have made this famine a case in which humanitarian instincts rise above politics, advantage and greed.
Even the United States, sworn enemy of communism and North Korea, has sent more than $33 million worth of food aid to the country since 1995. A U.S. spokesperson last week called it an effort to “save the children” of North Korea.
It is a rare moment of brother’s-keeper politics in a world usually less noble.
Prairie grain farmers and churches are there in the thick of it.
