Bread for the World

Paulist Press, 1975. Presumed first edition/first printing. Mass-market paperback. Good. Inscription sign by then Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz. Previous owners name on front cover.. x, 179, [3] p. Questions for Group Discussion. Notes. Selected Biblical References. The author was the Executive DIrector of Bread for the World. From Wikipedia: "Earl Lauer Butz (July 3, 1909 February 2, 2008) was a United States government official who served as Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. His policies favored large-scale corporate farming and an end to New Deal programs, but he is best remembered for a series of verbal gaffes that eventually cost him his job....Butz was Assistant Secretary of Agriculture in Washington, D.C., from 1954 to 1957 under President Dwight Eisenhower. In 1971, President Richard Nixon appointed Butz as Secretary of Agriculture, a position in which he continued to serve after Nixon resigned in 1974 as the result of the Watergate scandal. He was Secretary of Agriculture from 1971 to 1976 under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. In his time heading the USDA, Butz drastically changed federal agricultural policy and reengineered many New Deal era farm support programs. For example, he abolished a program that paid corn farmers to not plant all their land. This program had attempted to prevent a national oversupply of corn and low corn prices. His mantra to farmers was "get big or get out, "[this quote needs a citation] and he urged farmers to plant commodity crops like corn "from fencerow to fencerow." These policy shifts coincided with the rise of major agribusiness corporations, and the declining financial stability of the small family farm. Butz took over the Department of Agriculture during the most recent period in American history that food prices climbed high enough to generate political heat. In 1972, the Soviet Union, suffering disastrous harvests, purchased 30 million tons of American grain. Butz had helped to arrange that sale in the hope of giving a boost to crop prices in order to bring restive farmers tempted to vote for George McGovern into the Republican fold. He was featured in the documentary King Corn, recognized as the person who started the rise of corn production, large commercial farms, and the abundance of corn in American diets. In King Corn, Butz argued that the corn subsidy had dramatically reduced the cost of food for all Americans by improving the efficiency of farming techniques. By artificially increasing demand for food, food production became more efficient and drove down the cost of food for everyone." From Wikipedia: "Bread for the World is a non-partisan, Christian citizens' movement in the United States to end hunger. The organization describes itself as a collective Christian voice urging nation's decision makers to end hunger at home and abroad. By changing policies, programs, and conditions that allow hunger and poverty to persist, it provides help and opportunity far beyond the communities in which they live. In October 1972, a small group of Catholics and Protestants met to reflect on how persons of faith could be mobilized to influence U.S. policies that address the causes of hunger. Under the leadership of the Reverend Arthur Simon, the group began to test the idea in the spring of 1974. By year's end, more than 500 people had joined the ranks of Bread for the World as citizen advocates for hungry people. In September 1991, the Reverend David Beckmann succeeded Simon as president. Bread for the World is a founding member of The ONE Campaign a movement to rally Americans to respond to the global emergencies of extreme poverty, hunger and AIDS. Each year, Bread for the World invites churches across the country to take up a nationwide Offering of Letters to Congress on an issue that is important to hungry people. Since 1974 the Offering of Letters campaign has focused on a different hunger issue each year; 2007's campaign was called Seeds of Change: Help Farmers End Hunger and aimed to provoke the reform of the U.S. Farm Bill."