Changing the Face of Hunger

"Tony was a long time Congressman from Ohio and, again, it’s an individual setting sail against the forces of political indifference and ignorance about the hunger problem. It’s about the importance of focusing on the need for raising agricultural productivity in all parts of the world, of not ignoring the potential of places like Africa to help feed the world. Tony represents the story of how in his time in Congress he tried to bridge political differences and to keep the hunger issues on the front burner, sometimes more successfully than others, trying to raise the clamour to get people to pay attention to this. This is one of the things we try to do in our book – to raise the clamour and to say enough is enough. So this is Tony doing that in the political realm. After leaving Congress he became the US Ambassador to the UN food agencies based in Rome, so he became an advocate to create political will to end hunger, to bring the green revolution to Africa. In his book, Tony describes going on a fast to get the attention of his colleagues in Congress and his constituents. He writes about his trips to hunger spots and he tells about being out in Ethiopia with doctors and going through a crowd looking for the most frail, the nearest to starvation, the most malnourished, and having to choose which ones will be treated with the limited resources. That anecdote, given the lack of funding we have, having to make those choices in refugee camps, is so tragic."