Is it food scarcity or imbalanced distribution? This question can sum up a lot about the hunger problem all over the world. Although statistics show that the world produces enough food to feed about 10 billion people, millions still suffer from hunger, especially in developing countries. So, it is not about food production; what makes hunger dominate the scene in many cases is economics and how food is distributed, not its scarcity.
Needless to say, it is a complex situation, as there are many factors contributing to it: an increasing population on one hand, decreasing lands, water, other resources on the other hand, all of which will increase in the near future with more people to feed and fewer resources to feed them. Yet, the problem seems to dwell in the inequity rather than the shortages.
A Matter of Economics
According to the United Nations “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” The Committee further holds that proper health care, child care, and sanitation are required to translate food security into nutrition security.
Although access to sufficient and nutritious food is a human right that should be available to everyone, the experience of real life shows that neither markets nor governments protect it for their people who need food. As a result, this privilege has been granted only to those who produce food and regulate society to achieve this protection. In many scenarios and in consequence to this problem, as the supply of food tightens, prices increase and fewer people are able to afford their basic food needs to survive.
Victims of Nutritional Deficiency
The most affected categories of malnutrition and food shortage are children and people living in rural areas. Children are fiercely affected by nutritional deficiencies as it dramatically affects their growth, physically and mentally, as access to adequate food during the first thousand days of life is vitally important for healthy future generations.
Statistics show that around 5 million children die each year because of poor nutrition during the crucial time of their growth, and that developing countries have a great share of the world’s hungry people with 98%. People living in rural areas who depend on crops they plant are also affected dramatically by this problem since their access to food is controlled by their access to natural resources, environmental destruction, and climate change.
Steps towards a Better World
Action should be taken to eliminate hunger by shifting from a developmental model based on charity and aid to one based on human rights, embracing the marginalized, disempowered, and excluded groups previously locked out of developmental planning. A major effort is needed to avoid practices that exacerbate the negative impacts of food production and consumption on climate, water, and ecosystems. This could only be achieved by making a healthy environment that internationally guarantees human rights, which could be achieved through:
- Encouraging governments to work towards policy coherence by setting compatible agricultural policies with environmental sustainability and trade rules consistent with food security.
- Placing human rights at the heart of all efforts targeting the elimination of hunger and setting a strong accountability framework and the will to enforce this.
Some Achievements
The sustainable development goal of “Zero Hunger” carried out by the United Nations General Assembly, which aims to end all forms of hunger and malnutrition by 2030, has achieved a number of goals, including:
- Dropping the number of undernourished people by almost half in the past two decades because of rapid economic growth and increased agricultural productivity.
- Many developing countries that suffered from famine and hunger can now meet their nutritional needs.
- Central and East Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean have all made huge progress in eradicating extreme hunger.
Still, extreme hunger and malnutrition remain a huge barrier to development in several countries. There are 821 million people estimated to be chronically undernourished as of 2017, often as a direct consequence of environmental degradation, drought, and biodiversity loss. Over 90 million children under five are dangerously underweight; undernourishment and severe food insecurity appear to be increasing in almost all regions of Africa, as well as in South America.
As the problem seems to be in inequity rather than shortage, to realize the goal of “Zero Hunger”, we should work hand in hand, exerting effort in promoting sustainable agriculture, supporting small-scale farmers and equal access to land, technology, and markets. On a larger scale, we need international cooperation to ensure investment in infrastructure and technology to improve agricultural productivity.
References
awfw.org
hsi.org
The Guardian
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