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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MAY 27, 1983
PAGE 9
Unpublicized Political Causes
Reports coming into our News Bureau tell of other looming tragedies, such
as the worst drought in living memory in the southern Philippines, and a 10-
month long drought in nearby Indonesia which is threatening up to one
million people with famine.
The severe drought in much of the Southern Hemisphere underscores once
again the horrible imbalance in world food production and consumption.
Much of the world's population is precariously dependent upon a shrinking
number of food (principally grain) exporter nations such as the United
States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina.
(Observe how many are Israelite countries!)
When some of these critical
countries are affected by drought--look out, world!
Over 100 nations
depend to one degree or another upon just one producer--the United States-
for grain supplies!
One of the first casualties of the headlong rush to political independence
in the post-colonial world was agriculture.
New leaders in one emerging
nation after another concentrated on showy industrial projects such as
steel mills, while ignoring the agricultural sector.
Mistreated farmers
were often forced to sell their produce to government agencies for little
more--sometimes even less--than the cost of production in order to keep
prices low for the emerging urban classes.
The farmer, in effect, was
exploited to "buy" social peace with the teeming millions in big cities.
This policy only depopulated rural areas more, driving disheartened farm
families into the cities, or rather into hovel-like shanty towns around
them.
These shortsighted "development" policies are now bearing bitter fruit.
The world is now less able than ever, because of faulty political decisions
as much as anything else, to struggle through cyclical bad weather periods.
Meteorologists are now predicting, for some regions, up to seven years of
drought--an interesting number, reflecting upon events in Egypt recorded in
the Book of Genesis. Sadly there have been few, if any, "Josephs" who have
laid in store during the good years in order to ride out the bad ones.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau