To the Editor:

During the time it will take you to read this, 51 people around the world will die of hunger-related causes, and 35 of them will be children younger than 5.

Nothing kills more human beings on earth than hunger: not war, not AIDS, not floods, not disease, not terrorism. This is the world’s biggest problem — and it can and must be solved.

The elimination of hunger would so reduce the levels of desperation, deprivation and despair around the world that a real and lasting peace would follow, and no more would there be people who hate so much that they are willing to die to kill someone else.

We must ask ourselves, where do terrorists come from in the first place?

World hunger persists because people like you and me do not possess the political will to end it.

The planet produces enough food to feed the current world population; it’s just not distributed equitably.

Right now it is a question of money, and only the world’s 23 industrialized nations have the resources to do the job.

As the world’s only remaining superpower, and as the richest nation on earth, the United States must lead the way. But, in fact, the foreign aid budget of the United States is next to last as a percentage of Gross National Income.

Until or unless we can move the United States to first place on that list, hunger will continue to kill human beings in large numbers every day, and world peace will elude us.

There is a quote from the Hunger Project that goes, “We are not in danger of choosing the wrong pathway to the end of hunger. We are in danger of choosing no pathway at all.”

So let us choose a pathway and resolve to end hunger in the world once and for all. Because for the 25,000 people who will die of hunger related causes in the next 24 hours, there is no tomorrow. If you want to help solve the world’s biggest problem, call me.

Ted Bradbury
Bath