Countless Trucks Are Bringing Needed Food--But Not Just To Gaza

One of numerous trucks supplying the "food distribution center" at the Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community. 

We've all been shocked by photos of hundreds of eighteen wheelers lined up to bring desperately needed food to Gaza. There's something about this that seems unsustainable and unacceptable. Surely the world can't keep up this kind of effort and on such a scale.

But on second thought I reflected on the multitude of trucks on US highways and interstates bringing in exotic foods our more affluent communities feel entitled to. In the past century we've gone from shopping at  modest size family-operated grocery stores to having huge supermarket chains like A & T, Krogers and Safeway appearing in every community, accompanied by the need for ever more trucks to keep them stocked. 

Prior to that, the majority of food items on US tables were either home grown or were harvested, milled and marketed within relatively short distances. Ships and railroads of course brought in more varied fare over time but from the 1920's to the 2020's the US saw huge changes in food production and marketing that have required major expansions in the trucking industry. So both conditions of extreme poverty and of excessive wealth have created an over dependence on planet-polluting systems of truck transportation.

According to one Israeli source, an average of 73 food and aid trucks were brought into the Gaza Strip daily before the war for its two million people, many of them already having lived in refugees camps for decades. As a result of the unimaginable devastation inflicted by Israel's military, UN agencies estimate that 500-600 trucks are now needed daily to meet even the most basic needs of Gaza's population. Fewer than half that many are currently being allowed in, however, according to the Los Angeles Times and other sources.

Let's urge individuals and nations everywhere to renounce war and engage in just, sustainable and compassionate ways of seeing that everyone on earth has enough to eat.

This is a view of Gaza today, looking much like the aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing.