Understanding Global Hunger: Causes and Solutions
Factors Affecting World Hunger
The world produces 17% more calories per person than 30 years ago, enough food for 2720 kcal/day. However, hunger persists.
Why Hunger Exists Despite Sufficient Food Production
The answer is poverty. The richest 20% of humanity controls 85% of all wealth. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations (UN) identify three groups of hungry people, all suffering from food insecurity:
- Rural Poor: This is the largest group. They lack resources, access to food, and the infrastructure to receive or produce ample amounts of food. Aid is difficult to reach them.
- Urban Poor: They live in cities and have access to food but lack the financial resources to buy it.
- Disaster Victims: Natural disasters damage infrastructure (roads, homes), reducing access to food and limiting the ability to buy it.
Food security recap: “All people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy lifestyle.”
Factors Contributing to Food Insecurity
- Land rights and ownership: Land grabbing (countries selling land to other countries for monoculture crop growth).
- Diversion of land use: Using land to grow non-commodity crops (tobacco, coffee), building dams, fast food and beef companies buying overseas land, and biofuels.
- Insufficient agricultural practices: Lack of agricultural education in impoverished nations, no access to credit, and inability to purchase what they need to grow.
- Famine/War: Struggles for political power cause the death of millions.
- Impact of global financial crisis.
- Drought: Reduction in yields (e.g., India, Australia).
- Over-fishing.
- Poor crop yields.
- Lack of democracy or rights.
Types of Food Aid
- Program food aid: This is not free; it’s a government-to-government transaction. Some governments borrow money to buy food aid at reduced prices. This is the majority of food aid provided by the US.
- Relief/Emergency food aid: For emergency services (war, natural disasters). This is free.
- Project food aid: Delivered as part of a specific project (agricultural development, economic development, food security, nutrition).
Long-Term Solutions Beyond Seeds
Seeds represent a short-term payoff.
Long-term solutions include:
- Investing in soil: Rebuilding and improving soil health.
- Investing in water: Reducing tillage and improving irrigation.
- Changing to local food varieties: Switching to local food production (urban gardens, supporting local economies).
- Avoiding spoilage and waste: Better silos, solar drying.
- Improving food distribution: Reducing fuel reliance.
- Working in schools: Providing meals in school and take-home rations.
- Buying food from local countries for aid instead of shipping from overseas.
- Supporting farmer advocate groups for education.
Ecosystems
An ecosystem is any collection of organisms that interact or have the potential to interact with the physical environment in which they live. It’s a dynamic and interacting combination of all living organisms and nonliving elements (matter and energy) of a geographic area.
- Producers convert raw energy to organic molecules and nutrients.
- Decomposers liberate nutrients from dead consumers and producers.
- Consumers eat the producers.
The dynamics of energy through ecosystems have important implications for the human population.
Soils: The Heart of Terrestrial Ecosystems
Soils are:
- A natural resource
- An ecosystem
- Crucial to life on Earth
- Determinants of the nature of plant ecosystems
- Determinants of the capacity of land to support animal and human life
Soil properties control water supply. Soils affect water loss, utilization, contamination, and purification. Nearly every drop of water in rivers, lakes, estuaries, and aquifers has traveled through the soil or flowed over its surface.
Biotechnology
General Definition: The application of technology to improve a biological organism.
Detailed Definition: The application of technology to improve the biological function of an organism by adding genes from another organism.
Biotechnology and World Hunger
Potential benefits include:
- Increased crop yields.
- Development of crops that can be grown in marginal soil.
- Reduced strain on nonrenewable resources.
- Development of drought-resistant crops.
- Development of salt-tolerant crops.
- Development of crops that make more efficient use of nitrogen and other nutrients.
Genetically Engineered (GE) Benefits
- Reduced use of pesticides and herbicides.
- Development of pest-resistant crops.
- Better for the environment.
- Reduced costs for farmers.
Examples of Genetic Engineering
- Bacteria: A synthetic version of the human insulin gene was inserted into E. coli to produce synthesized insulin.
- Phenylalanine, the sweetener in most diet sodas, is made by GE bacteria.
GMO: Genetically Modified Organism
Food Security and Malnutrition
Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
65% of the world’s hungry people live in 7 countries: India, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Ethiopia.
Children are the primary victims.
Undernutrition worsens the effects of other diseases, contributing to related deaths:
- Malaria (57%)
- Measles (45%)
- Pneumonia (52%)
- Diarrhea/Dehydration (61%)
The principal problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, sufficient food.
Nearly 1 in 4 children is at risk of hunger. Among African-Americans and Latinos, 1 in 3 children is at risk of hunger.