Feeding Our Hungry World

Part II 

Fisherman on Inle Lake, Myanmar/Burma

 

Afghanistan

 

The sea’s our field of harvest,
Its scaly tribes our grain;
We’ll reap the teeming waters
As at home they reap the plain.
- John Greenleaf Whittier

 

Pago, Myanmar/Burma

 

Barley Fields, Kandze, Tibet

 

Rice paddies, Tibet

 

 

Tawi-Tawi, Philippines 

 

 

Goa, Western India

 

 

Cultivating Potatoes, Bamiyan, Afghanistan

 

 
Weligama, Sri Lanka

 

It is estimated that 20% of the world’s population depend upon fish for their survival.

 

Half of the world depends on rice.
 

 

 

Myanmar/Burma 

 

 

 

 

Sri Lanka 

 

 

 

Yemen

 

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous
and the storm terrible,
but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
- Vincent Van Gogh

 

 

India

 

 

Cambodia

 

 

Japan

 

Mali

 

Philippines

 

The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the
terrestrial globe.  Its breath is pure and healthy.
It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely,
for he feels life stirring on all sides.
- Jules Verne

 

Sri Lanka

 

Dal Lake, Srinigar, Kashmir

 

Burma/Myanmar

 

In 40 years, the global population is expected to swell by
2 billion, so rice, today the fastest growing staple which
feeds more than half the world’s population, will become
increasingly important to global food security.
- Pamela Whitby, BBC, The Race for Rice, 2011

 

Rice paddy fields, Banaue, Philippines

 

 

 Nepal 

 

The first farmer was the first person.
All historic nobility rests on the possession and
use of land.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

Rice paddies, Thailand

 

Rice has fed more people over a longer period of time
than has any other crop in human history.
Rice: Then and Now”
by R.E. Huke and E.H. Huke

 

Java, Indonesia
Woman working in a field devastated by volcanic debris and flood waters

 

Farmer, Baluchistan, Pakistan

 

Nepal

 

Give fools their gold, and knaves their power;
let fortune’s bubbles rise and fall;
who sows a field, or trains a flower,
or plants a tree, is more than all.
- John Greenleaf Whittier

 

 

 
Niger 

 

 
Bamiyan, Afghanistan

 

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens.
They are the most vigorous, the most independant, the
most virtuous, and they are tied to their country
and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands.
- Thomas Jefferson

 

 Pakistan

 

 Luzon, Philippines  

 

 Shibam, Wadi Hadhramaut, Yemen

 

Afghanistan

 

 

 Lancaster, Pennsylvania

 

The Amish farm as they have for hundreds
of years.  They believe that working with the soil,
raising livestock, and growing their own food is
cooperating with God’s purposes.

 

  The bounty of harvests in Kashmir

 

 

Agra, India 

 

 
Niger

 

 

The Farmer

Each day I go into the fields

to see what is growing

and what remains to be done.

It is always the same thing: nothing

is growing, everything needs to be done.

Plow, harrow, disc, water, pray

till my bones ache and hands rub

blood-raw with honest labor—

all that grows is the slow

intransigent intensity of need.

I have sown my seed on soil

guaranteed by poverty to fail.

But I don’t complain—except

to passersby who ask me why

I work such barren earth.

They would not understand me

if I stooped to lift a rock

and hold it like a child, or laughed,

or told them it is their poverty

I labor to relieve. For them,

I complain. A farmer of dreams

knows how to pretend. A farmer of dreams

knows what it means to be patient.

Each day I go into the fields.
- W.D. Ehrhart

 

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance
and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

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