Food

There has never been so much food on our planet. In purely quantitative terms, there is enough food available to feed the entire global population of 6.4 billion people. And yet, one in nearly seven people is going hungry. One in three children are underweight. Why does hunger exist?

Extreme hunger exists not because there isn’t enough food in the world but for a range of other reasons from poverty and lack of agricultural infrastructure to war and natural disasters.

It is the most extreme form of poverty, where people cannot afford the basic need for food. More than 852 million people go to bed every night, hungry. Every five seconds, one child dies from hunger-related causes. However, this is a problem that can be solved. We have the technology and resources to end hunger.

The United Nations World Food Program estimates that the health and hunger problems of the world’s poorest people could be solved for just $13 billion a year. There is enough food in the world to feed everyone, yet the unequal distribution of wealth also means the unequal distribution of food. However, poorer countries are not equipped to deal with the causes of hunger and poverty.

Drought is now the most common cause of food shortages. For example, recurring drought in Ethiopia has caused crop failures and livestock losses, which mean people, do not have any food security in the region. Climate change and war are also contributing factors – in 2004, conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan displaced more than a million people, resulting in a major food crisis.

In the long term, improving agriculture is the best way to deal with hunger and poverty. Educating farmers about preventing over-exploitation of their land and poor farming practices all help in the long run. However, the majority of developing countries lack the infrastructure required to support an agriculture-based economy, such as roads, irrigation and warehouses. Subsidies to farmers in developed nations also pose a big threat to those in poorer nations. The farmers in poor nations are ill equipped to take on subsidized competition from those in developed nations.

Take Malawi, for example. Its economy is in shambles: The EU’s Common Agricultural Programs (CAP) tariffs and quotas keep its chief exports, corn and sorghum, out of European markets; CAP export subsidies help European producers crowd out Malawi sales in third-country markets; and CAP price supports drive down the prices that Malawi crops can fetch abroad by driving up European production.

‘The average cow in Europe, thanks to subsidies, earns about $2 a day’, which is more then the majority of people on the African continent.

To permanently reduce hunger, we need to support the efforts of people in developing nations to provide for their families. We need to give them opportunities to find decent jobs, obtain an education and find adequate healthcare in order to maximize their productivity. The combination of hunger, poverty, disease and war needs to be addressed with more determination by the world’s wealthier countries.