Beans for Hungry Kids

I'm sharing this article for a couple of reasons. First of course is to highlight the suffering caused by the inflation of food prices. The second is to comment on the Rainbow Network that has been doing good deeds here in Nicaragua for some time. Special to The Star (Kanasas City Star) West West

This letter is directed to all readers who harvest soybeans.

Let me introduce myself. I am an 83-year-old, retired farmer, agriculture teacher, U.S. Marine, pastor and mission worker. I am on the board of Rainbow Network, a faith-based humanitarian group that is in mission with the rural poor of Nicaragua, where family incomes often run from $400 to $600 a year.

Rainbow Network partners with these families with projects in education, nutrition, health care, housing and mini-loans.

These families are in a daily battle with poverty, disease, malnutrition, poor housing and infrastructure. Related events have recently put them in serious danger of widespread starvation — the dramatic rise in the price of food, complicated by a month of heavy rains that have destroyed as much as 80 percent of their current food crop.

An October report states that bean prices rose from 37 cents a pound to $1 a pound in one month. The price of bread has doubled. The price of rice followed the upward trend.

Beans are the most important ingredient in the diet of the poor — beans, rice and bread. Beans provide the basic protein, iron and calcium needed. But the poor can no longer afford beans, and without beans, malnutrition and starvation are showing their ugly heads.

Jessi Wolz from Springfield, Mo., is a Rainbow intern in Nicaragua. She recently sent a disturbing e-mail reporting her observations. “The food of the poor, rice and beans, is now too expensive for them; the poor can now eat only rice.” She gave a vivid story of the malnutrition she is already seeing, which will affect tens of thousands of the poor.

Our renter will harvest 33 acres of soybeans on a small piece of land that we own in southwest Missouri. All indications are that the harvest price will be at an all-time high.

My wife and I realize that some of the conditions that caused bean prices to rise here also caused them to rise in Nicaragua. We cannot in good conscience rejoice in our big bean check here without sharing generously with the poor families of Nicaragua.

This fall we will write a generous check to “Beans for Hungry Kids,” Rainbow Network, 3834 South Ave., Springfield, Mo., 65807. Rainbow Network feeds 12,000 children one nutritious meal a day, five to six days a week. The bean price for them has also shot upward. Our check will enable more kids to eat beans as well as rice, or nothing. I will personally monitor the program to make certain this happens.

My wife, Barbara, and I invite and urge readers to be generous to the “Beans for Hungry Kids” program. You will sleep better at night knowing you did so. Check out Rainbow Network on the net at www.rainbownetwork.org.

Melvin E. West lives in Columbia.