The world is hounded with the challenge of hunger. There is an extravagant number of the world’s population suffering from hunger, but yet the problem does not seem to have a permanent solution. Today, hunger has been experienced all over the world due to drought, famine, and bad governance as well. A glance at a 2009 hunger map, almost anyone can observe that nearly “two thirds of the world’s undernourished live in just seven countries — Bangladesh, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia and Pakistan.” (925 million in chronic hunger worldwide). World Food Program organization statistics signify that over a billion people in the world do not have enough food to consume, which is more than Canada, the European Union, and United States of America populations not combines. The numbers are steadily increasing every year which indicates that some action must be taken in order to reduce the number in any way shape or form.
Hunger is described as the feeling of comfort or weakness caused by a lack of food, and possibly leading to aching as well. After an extensive period of time, those who bear the pain of hunger are made to survive on much less than the essential number of calories the healthy person is recommended to consume in order to stay healthy. Consequently, the body has to suffice for an insufficient amount of energy which leads to the degrading process of human physical and mental activities.
The person also loses the skill to focus and to finish successfully in whatever activity they are engaged upon. Children, that are specifically open to the deadly consequences of permanent hunger can result in the efficiency decrease of the immune system that fights off diseases in which ultimately leads to the death of the child. As a result, “each year, almost 11 million children die before reaching the age of five; malnutrition is associated with 53 percent of these deaths” (Goal: Reduce Child Mortality). Overall, daily malnutrition causes the immune system to weaken significantly.
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“The world produces enough to feed the entire global population of 7 billion people. And yet, one person in eight on the planet goes to bed hungry each night.” (What Causes Hunger?). Numerous factors that specialists can name are ‘ climate change, with severe drought and flooding having devastated crop yields and decimated livestock; the lack of education, which prevents people from getting good jobs; and child marriage and gender inequality, which keep females suppressed and poor. Conflict has also displaced millions of people, preventing them from cultivating their land” (On World Hunger Day, a look at why so many people don’t get enough food). Natural disasters such as storms, floods, and droughts can result into disastrous consequences for developing countries.
Wars and conflicts that devastate the land and make millions of people face numerous food crises, and in some cases soldiers staying in citizens’ homes being fed off of the little food the family already has owned. Land use wise by lack of key agricultural infrastructure by deficiency of roads, warehouses and irrigation cause high transportation costs, substandard storage facilities and unreliable water supplies, and overuse of the environment by worn out fertility as a consequence of deforestation, harmful farming, and overgrazing. Lastly by poverty, which prevents millions of people from obtaining food which is accessible, but do not have access to since they cannot buy the product.
Almost everyone knows that world hunger is an issue that should be dealt with immediately, but do not know how to combat the problem. One way that can help is donating can goods to the local soup kitchen or to an organization that send food to deprived people in other countries. Another solution is to “use [a] process to replace a segment of a plant’s genetic sequence entirely” to grow in conditions where plants could not normally grow (GMO SCIENTISTS COULD SAVE THE WORLD FROM HUNGER, IF WE LET THEM).
GMOs, genetically modified organisms, could rapidly reduce the numbers from millions to thousands in only a few years. To face hunger, a conference held at Harvard University, the Green Revolution model was created to “focus on increasing yields using improved rice, wheat, and maize varieties” (AFRICA NEEDS A NEW APPROACH IN ITS BATTLE AGAINST HUNGER). This plan was implemented by the United States during the Cold War to improve rations and worked successfully, so if this plan worked during a War then the outcome should be the same for world hunger.
One of the many ways that hunger is present throughout the world is war, in countries such as South Sudan “without civilians, those fighters won’t have a place to stay, receive food, receive popular support” towards the government against rebels (20 million starving to death: inside the worst famine since World War II). To gain support form civilians, the government of South Sudan allows soldiers to enter homes to be housed and fed from already deprived citizens in terms this is basically the quartering act in which was one of the causes of the Revolutionary War.
Many poor nations’ hunger is almost visible by a large and obvious medical undernourishment, but hunger in United States is barely seen anywhere and much less severe because of the surplus amount of food throughout the nation which results in “food loss and waste amounts to about $680 billion in industrialized countries and $310 billion in developing countries” (On World Hunger Day, a Look at Why so Many People Don’t Get Enough Food).
The amount of food wasted to be cleaned for the total to be in billions of dollars is extravagantly more than enough to provide support to the countries that are in dire need of food and water. Poverty is the center of malnourishment, but in the case of America there is more importance about allocating with political and economic issues rather than with food scarcity of the other parts of the world. The population is not hungry because there is not much food in the world, but due to the fact that they do not have the capital to purchase it and that the delivery is unfair to them.
Eliminating world hunger is truly in fact directly in relation to solving world poverty. Focusing on improvement of food production system seems to be an effective method, but in reality it will only slow down the symptoms of the hunger, not eliminate the true roots of the problem. The problem of hunger is predominantly caused by poor distribution rules and insufficient use of land resources, by suspicious dealings of political parties playing games to win the power. “In 2016, the number of chronically undernourished people reached 815 million, up 38 million from the previous year. The increase is due largely to the proliferation of violence” (Alarm bells we cannot ignore’: world hunger rising for first time this century).
Almost everyone in the world agrees that wars and conflicts ravage the land and make it more inadequate to utilize, but when utilizing it more proficiently, to grow food, the end result will be beneficial to everyone rather than to only one country or side. In other words, in today’s time it is necessary to realize that ignoring central grounds of poverty while being mostly troubled with fighting hunger is an ineffective method, which will cost more money with more citizens of the world to be hungry. The resources will be used in a manner that will only slow down the process instead of eliminating the lingering threat.
The moment where we stop fighting for each other is when we lose our humanity. No human should be without the most basic needs in the world. Food is something that should be accessible to everyone without the need to discriminate of whether the person can afford the product or not. As humans, we need to take care of each other and help each other thrive, not bring each other down in a way that could be crippling.
