Odontologia

World Hunger and Poverty
We often hear about people’s desire to solve world hunger, or to be able to feed the world and help alleviate the suffering associated with it.
However, meaningful long-term alleviation to hunger is rooted in the alleviation of poverty, as poverty leads to hunger. World hunger is a terrible symptom of world poverty. If efforts are only directed at providing food, orimproving food production or distribution, then the structural root causes that create hunger, poverty and dependency would still remain. And so while continuous effort, resources and energies are deployed to relieve hunger through these technical measures, the political causes require political solutions as well.
Causes of Hunger are related to Poverty
There are many inter-related issues causinghunger, which are related to economics and other factors that cause poverty. They include land rights and ownership, diversion of land use to non-productive use, increasing emphasis on export-oriented agriculture, inefficient agricultural practices, war, famine, drought, over-fishing, poor crop yields, etc. This section introduces some of these issues.
Consider the following:
* Over 9 millionpeople die worldwide each year because of hunger and malnutrition. 5 million are children.
* Approximately 1.2 billion people suffer from hunger (deficiency of calories and protein);
* Some 2 to 3.5 billion people have micronutrient deficiency (deficiency of vitamins and minerals);
* Yet, some 1.2 billion suffer from obesity (excess of fats and salt, often accompanied by deficiency ofvitamins and minerals);
Food wastage is also high:
1. In the United Kingdom, “a shocking 30-40% of all food is never eaten;”
* In the last decade the amount of food British people threw into the bin went up by 15%;
* Overall, £20 billion (approximately $38 billion US dollars) worth of food is thrown away, every year.
2. In the US 40-50% of all food ready for harvest never getseaten
* Of the food that does eventually reach households, some 14% is wasted, resulting in something like $43 billion of wastage
* If food reaching supermarkets, restaurants and cafeterias is added to the household figure, that wastage goes up to 27%.
3. The impacts of this waste is not just financial. Environmentally this leads to:
* Wasteful use of chemicals such as fertilizersand pesticides;
* More fuel used for transportation;
* More rotting food, creating more methane — one of the most harmful greenhouse gases that contributes to climate change.
* Reducing wastage in the US by half could reduce adverse environmental impacts by 25 percent through reduced landfill use, soil depletion and applications of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides
4. Thedirect medical cost of hunger and malnutrition is estimated at $30 billion each year.
In a world of plenty, a huge number go hungry. Hunger is more than just the result of food production and meeting demands. The causes of hunger are related to the causes of poverty. One of the major causes of hunger is poverty itself. The various issues discussed throughout this site about poverty lead to peoplebeing unable to afford food and hence people go hungry.
There are other related causes (also often related to the causes of poverty in various ways), including the following:
* Land rights and ownership
* Diversion of land use to non-productive use
* Increasing emphasis on export-oriented agriculture
* Inefficient agricultural practices
* War
* Famine
* Drought
*Over-fishing
* Poor crop yield
* Lack of democracy and rights
Solving World Hunger Means Solving World Poverty
Solving world hunger in the conventional sense (of providing/growing more food etc) will not tackle poverty that leads to hunger in the first place. Further, there is a risk of continuing the poverty and dependency without realizing it, because the act of attempting to provide more...