Hunger, Essay Example

According to statistics provided by World Food Programme organization (WFP), 1.02 billion people in the world do not have enough food to eat, which is more than the populations of USA, Canada and the European Union. The data also shows that the number of malnourished people in the world is constantly growing (75 million growth in 2007 and 40 million growth  in 2008). If looking at 2009 Hunger Map, one can observe that nearly 70 percent of the world’s hungry inhabit only seven countries: China, India, Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Ethiopia and Pakistan.

What do scientists mean by hunger though? In short, hunger is described as the uncomfortable or even aching feeling generated by lack of food. For long periods of time those who suffer from hunger are forced to survive on much less than the essential 2,100 kilocalories per day that the common person is recommended to consume in order to stay healthy. Thus the body has to recompense for an insufficient amount of energy, which eventually leads to slowing down of human physical and mental activities. Person loses the ability to concentrate and to perform successfully in whatever activity being engaged. Moreover, daily malnutrition causes the immune system to weaken significantly. Children, who are particularly vulnerable to the harmful consequences of permanent hunger, become too weak to resist diseases and can even die from ordinary and widespread infections such as measles and diarrhea. 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.” (World Food Programme, 2010)

“In purely quantitative terms, there is enough food available to feed the entire global population of 6.7 billion people. And yet, one in nearly seven people is going hungry. One in three children is underweight.” (World Food Programme, 2010) Why is this happening? Specialists name a number of factors, which are believed to result into a hunger as a global phenomenon. These are nature (natural disasters such as floods, storms and droughts that result into disastrous consequences for poor, developing countries); wars and conflicts that devastate lands and make millions of people face numerous food crises; lack of key agricultural infrastructure (lack of roads, warehouses and irrigation causes high transport costs, poor storage facilities and defective water supplies); over-exploitation of environment (exhausted fertility as a consequence of harmful farming practices, deforestation, overgrazing and excessive cropping); and, of course, poverty, which prevent millions of people from getting food which is available, but which they however cannot buy.

Even though discussing the problem of hunger one usually refers to poor developing countries, the true essence of the problem is much more global. “It is a tragic reality that the United States, one of the richest nations in the world, is also plagued with a poverty-driven hunger crisis.” (The Hunger Site) The famine in America is mostly represented by people’s lacking abilities to acquire enough food for their families. “Some people may find themselves skipping meals or cutting back on the quality or quantity of food they purchase at the stores. This recurring and involuntary lack of access to food can lead to malnutrition over time.” (Food Research and Action Center, 2009) The statistics provided by FRAC states that in 2008 there were 49.1 million people in US living in food insecure households, of which 17.3 million people lived in households that were regarded as those having “very low food security.”

While in a number of poor nations hunger is represented by a heavy and evident clinical undernourishment, hunger in United States is much less visible and much less severe. Generally, the causes of malnourishment are also different.  While poverty lies at the very core of it, America is more about dealing with economic and political issues, rather than with food scarcity. “People are hungry not due to lack of availability of food, but because people do not have the ability to purchase food and because distribution of food is not equitable.” (Shah, 2002)

Abolishing world hunger is, in fact, directly related to solving the world poverty. While focusing on improvement of food production system seems to be an effective venture, in reality it can only heal the symptoms of the hunger yet not eliminate the true causes of it. The problem of hunger is primarily caused by poor distribution policy and ineffective use of land resources, by shady dealings of political forces playing games to win the power. It should be admitted that fighting the causes of poverty that naturally result into hunger would allow improved utilization of resources in the long term. Moreover, these days it is necessary to recognize that ignoring core grounds of poverty while being mostly concerned with fighting hunger is an ineffective and in fact harmful practice, which will only “be costly in the long run as people will continue to be hungry and resources will be continually diverted to remedy hunger in a superficial manner without addressing its cause.” (Shah, 2002)

References

Food Research and Action Center. (16 November, 2009). Hunger in the U.S. Retrieved February 5, 2010, form http://www.frac.org/html/hunger_in_the_us/hunger_index.html

Shah, A.  (2002, June 15).  Global Issues. Solving World Hunger Means Solving World Poverty. Retrieved February 5, 2010, from http://www.globalissues.org/article/8/solving-world-hunger-means-solving-world-poverty

The Hunger Site. Hunger in the U.S. Retrieved February 5, 2010, fromhttp://www.thehungersite.com/clickToGive/hungerintheus.faces?siteId=1&link=ctg_ths_hungerintheus_from_home_sidetabs

World Food Programme. (2010). Hunger. Retrieved February 5, 2010, from http://www.wfp.org/hunger