Jul. 15—Food deprivation and food price inflation are coming into sharper global relief as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, now in its fifth month.
For Tony Hall — former congressman from Dayton and former United Nations ambassador for food and agriculture — hunger has always been an urgent issue.
Hall, 80, believes he may have a chance at the end of August to travel to Ukraine, where the war has halted shipments of grain by the Black Sea, consigning grain exports to rail travel, a method that allows the transport of far less grain at a slower pace.
“I will address that issue, if I go to Ukraine,” Hall said in a new interview at the University of Dayton Fitz Center for Leadership. “But one of the biggest problems is the Black Sea is mined, and it has to be cleared.”
The problem affects not just grain, but feed for cattle and cooking oil, Hall said. “That increases the prices of food all over the world. It’s a mess,” he said.
“It’s all a challenge,” he added.
According to the U.N., the number of food-insecure people has doubled in two years, from 135 million before the pandemic to 276 million today. Hall says there are famines happening now in Yemen, Kenya, Ethiopia and beyond. And higher food prices are felt right here in Dayton. Grocery prices rose 1% last month and 12.2% on a year-over-year basis, according to recent federal data.
If Hall has an opportunity to visit Ukraine, he said he will attempt to address the issue, with the imprimatur of lifelong attention to the subject. Hall served as a U.N. ambassador on the issue for nearly four years starting in 2002. He still has plenty of global contacts.
His attention has been directed to Dayton as well. He launched the Hall Hunger Initiative in late 2015 to focus specifically on hunger in the Miami Valley.
The local Hall initiative is a multi-directional effort. With just four employees, the program boosts fundraising work, can award small grants or help non-profits apply for larger grants. It has helped create an ID program, making available IDs that allow migrants and others to obtain food from pantries and food banks.
On Friday, the Healthy Family Market had a fundraising launch at 2118 Germantown St., Dayton. The market is an effort to offer quality food options in West Dayton, where a lack of large groceries has been a problem for years.
Hall said he tells staff and volunteers who work for him that they will never attain wealth in laboring against hunger.
A different reward is possible — the possibility of helping others.
“You’re going to go to bed at night, some nights, and you’re going to say, ‘It’s been a good day,'” Hall said.
“We see opportunities in all these challenges,” said Mark Willis, director of the Hall Hunger Initiative.
Hunger remains a not easily understood problem, Hall contends, affecting people in African deserts and the next neighborhood over.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky cancelled two previously scheduled Hall visits to Ukraine, including one as recently as three weeks ago, the former congressman said, leaving this next scheduled visit somewhat in doubt. He puts the odds of a trip happening in August as 70-30 in favor.
“I got a phone call the other day saying, ‘Definitely it’s going to happen this time,'” he said. “You never know. It’s a war.”
The parliament of Romania asked Hall to visit neighboring Ukraine, he said. Hall received the Order of the Star of Romania, that country’s highest honor, in a ceremony at the Romanian Embassy in Washington, D.C. July 13.
He represented Dayton in the Ohio Statehouse for 10 years, then in the House of Representatives for nearly a quarter-century, from 1979 through 2002, before serving at the U.N.
A Kettering native, he is the son of Dave Hall, former mayor of Dayton.
