Is the impending food shock caused by the Iran war preventable?

Also this week, racial segregation, free-trade deals, music and the brain, Catholic saints

You explained howthe impending food shock caused by the Iran war is preventable(“A slow-motion tragedy”, April 18th). The parties to the conflict should of course allow fertiliser through the Strait of Hormuz. But preventing a food shock cannot rest alone on the diplomacy surrounding a single chokepoint. Somalia has proved this twice over. In 2011 famine killed a quarter of a million people despite months of warning. Our research with Oxfam, “Dangerous Delays”, documented the cost. In 2022, amid another drought, we repeated the study: better forecasts, same late response, one person dying of hunger roughly every 48 seconds.

The lesson is not that early warning of a food catastrophe fails. It’s that the financing and political systems around it fail. Where anticipatory action has been resourced—pre-positioning supplies, protecting livestock, scaling social protection before harvests fail—it works at a fraction of the emergency-response costs. But the international system still defaults to waiting for the body count from starvation before mobilising.

Disruptions from the Strait of Hormuz already threaten to push 45m more people into acute hunger. Every government and institution with the capacity to act should fund anticipatory measures now, not wait for the food shock to land and the cameras to arrive.

Janti SoeriptoPresident and CEO Save the Children USFairfield, Connecticut

Chapter 3 of your America at 250 series(March 28th) mentioned the saga of Homer Plessy, a black shoemaker from New Orleans who was arrested in 1892 for refusing to “retire to the coloured car” on a train. His case went to the Supreme Court; Plessy v Ferguson questioned whether racial-segregation laws at the time were constitutional (the court found that they were).

Sixty years earlier, in 1832, a little-known episode happened in Boston, when Emiliano Mundrucu, a Brazilian national, sued a boat captain for breach of contract for not allowing Mundrucu’s family to sit in a comfortable cabin because they were black, despite paying the highest fare. A jury in 1833 ordered the captain to pay $125 in damages to Mundrucu, but the decision was reversed by the Massachusetts Supreme Court. Some scholars consider it to be the first lawsuit challenging racial segregation in America.

Mundrucu was one of the military leaders of the 1824 secession movement in Brazil called Confederation of the Equator, a republican uprising aimed at forming a federation of provinces in the north-east. It was inspired by the American revolution. The movement was defeated and Mundrucu was sentenced to death, but he managed to escape and seek refuge in Boston.

Carlos AndradeSão Paulo

Your article onglobal trade post-Liberation Day noted that Britain signed its “most significant post-Brexit trade deal” with India(“Liberation Year”, April 4th). Although that is an important accomplishment, Britain joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is arguably more significant. It is more wide-ranging than the India deal and its economic integration more extensive.

Moreover, as you mentioned, the European Union and the CPTPP are soon to start work on developing new global standards and Britain will now be part of that process. The expansion of the CPTPP to include Britain, the first of probably many enlargements, underscores the main point of your article. The world will continue to seek out potential gains from globalisation with or without America. I’d certainly prefer “with”, but who listens to academics these days?

Michael PlummerProfessor of international economicsJohns Hopkins University, SAIS EuropeBologna, Italy

It may be complacent to believe that the libertine instincts of Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, will trump the Christian moral authoritarianism of his recent fellow travellers (Bagehot, April 4th). Hypocrisy is a factor in both religious and political authoritarianism and it is not unheard of for leaders to live high on the hog while urging austerity. The idea that the antipathy of the British people will protect us from Christian-nationalist moralism relies on the notion that these fringe beliefs need a majority to assume power. But under our first-past-the-post electoral system that is not true. We don’t exactly risk sleep-walking into “The Handmaid’s Tale”, but we should certainly be taking the threat of this transatlantic political trend more seriously.

Andrew CopsonChief executiveHumanists UKLondon

I want to offer a personal perspective onwhy playing music is good for the brain(Well Informed, March 28th). My father lives with dementia in Brazil, and I reside in Georgia. Despite the physical distance, music has become our daily meeting place. Each day, my mother sets up a video call. I place my phone next to the keyboard and play for him. What unfolds is remarkable. Music seems to reach parts of his memory that are otherwise inaccessible. On some days he cannot recall the names of songs, yet he engages emotionally, physically, and at times even sings along.

Music has become the essential bridge that preserves our connection, sustaining recognition, presence, and dignity despite both cognitive decline and our spatial separation.

GIOVANA BOSQUIROLI SLIVAJohns Creek, Georgia

Not all Catholic saints have to be martyred or live a gruelling and miserable life to be deemed worthy of their sainthood(“A boom in the canon”, April 4th). Some managed to make it on good deeds and charm alone. Take Saint Nicholas, born in 270AD and the original role model for Santa Claus. He was famous during his lifetime for helping children, dropping coins into their shoes and stockings and rescuing them from distressing situations. He was apparently a very sociable man.

He did not undertake an annual circumnavigation of the globe on December 24th, but he became the patron saint of sailors, merchants and repentant thieves. Perhaps more relevant in today’s socially splintered age, he is the patron saint of unmarried people. And also the patron saint of brewers. Sounds like the kind of saint I would prefer to meet.

Paul MooreAntwerp

You identify St Fiacre as the patron saint of syphilis sufferers. He is also the patron saint of gardens and gardeners, as demonstrated by the botanical gardens bearing his name in Tully, Ireland, and his statue in my garden in Brooklyn.

Robert HarleyNew York

I was delighted to learn that there is actually a patron saint of garden sheds and I now plan to have both of mine blessed. Calls have been made to make Britain’s very own Cardinal Basil Hume a saint. He was a lifelong Newcastle United supporter. The miracle of last season‘s victory in the League Cup can surely be attributed to his saintly intervention. Who says the Toon haven‘t got a prayer?

Peter CainTrier, Germany

Some 1,500 people pass through in an hour to view the skeletal remains of St Francis of Assisi, which you compare to a passport queue. I would like to know which passport queue has ever passed so quickly? Passport queues do have a religious feel about them. They are a form of purgatory, except I rarely experience a sense of blessing or enlightenment at the end, merely relief.

Stuart SmithMaastricht