Food security is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations (FAO) as “a condition in which all people, at all times, have physical and economic
access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences
for an active and healthy life.” According to Mustafa Koc’s presentation, food security
should be viewed as both a societal objective as well as a discourse where the need to for
looking at the bigger picture is an evident theme. He explores reasons as to why there is food
insecurity and alludes back to the fact that food is often seen as a commodity, not as a human
right. This rights-based perception of food security relates to that presented in Oxfam’s
Handbook of Development and Relief where it stresses that every human being has the right
to adequate and affordable food, and that both hunger and malnutrition are forms of injustice
that must be eliminated by every possible means. That being said, food security has a direct
link to the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to eradicate extreme
poverty and hunger. However, producing a sufficient quantity of food to feed our expanding
global population while trying to stabilize our climate system, presents some great challenges.
Food system, as defined by Mustafa Koc in his guest lecture presentation, is a “complex
web of social relations, processes, structures and institutional arrangements that cover human
interaction with nature and with other humans throughout the food cycle from production to
consumption and even further.” Our current global food system is not sustainable. It does not
provide adequate nutrition to everyone worldwide, yet it allows for some populations to
over-consum...
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...cause and effect relationship of climate and human activity, and climate and human need, the ability to redesign the way we produce and cultivate food staples can be created. With this ability the longevity of agricultural systems can influence a decrease in food prices, in turn increasing the number of food secure populations.
Works Cited
1 http://www.climatechange-foodsecurity.org/africa.html
2 http://www.wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2012/05/24/000426104_20120524164749/Rendered/PDF/690860ESW0P1050Climate0Change0Risks.pdf
3 http://www.farmingfirst.org/2010/07/climate-change-risks-and-food-security-in-bangladesh/
4 http://www.farmingfirst.org/2010/07/climate-change-risks-and-food-security-in-bangladesh/
5 http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/materials-based-on-reports/reports-in-brief/Systems-Ag-Report-Brief.pdf
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Michael Pollan, an American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism (Michael Pollan), writes in his book In Defense of Food, the dangers of nutritionism and how to escape the Western diet and subsequently most of the chronic diseases the diet imparts. In the chapter “Nutritionism Defined” Pollan defines the term nutritionism. Pollan’s main assertion being how the ideology of nutritionism defines food as the sum of its nutrients, and from this viewpoint Pollan goes on to write how nutritionism divides food into two categories, with each macronutrient divided against each other as either bad or good nutrients, in a bid for focus of our food fears and enthusiasms. Finally, Pollan concludes that with the relentless focus nutritionism places on nutrients and their interplay distinctions between foods become irrelevant and abandoned.
Humans are damaging the planet to live comfortably, we must change the way food is distributed worldwide, support local farmers and switch to a healthier diet in order to stop global warming. The current global has been getting better for us humans over the years, from eating bread and eggs 3 times a day in the XV century, now we can eat better than the kings of those times, however the much of the food in not healthy and the global food system still fails in getting food to every individual in the planet and in addition it contributes to the destruction of our world. Ms. Anna Lappe explains how the food system contributes to around 1/3 of the global warming issue in her essay “The Climate Crisis at the End of Our Fork”, while a group of Plos one explains the issues about the export and import of food growth over the last 50 years in the
Pollan states that food is not just a necessity to survive, it has a greater meaning to life. Pollan explains how food can cause us happiness and health by connecting us to our family and culture. Warren Belasco, in “Why Study Food”, supports Pollan’s idea that food is something social and cultural. In Belasco’s description of a positive social encounter food is included, whether it involves a coffee date with a colleague or a dinner date with a loved one. Belasco states that food forms our identity and brings our society together.
"Food is a medium for life, a dynamic of life, and an expression of the whims, joys, terrors, and histories in life. Food, more than anything else, is life."
In our fast pace society, we base everything on time and money. This need to save money and time has transformed the way we see food and purchase food. Food is an essential part of all cultures. It plays a role in every person’s life. The population has the power to choose what we eat and how the food industry is shaped. There are many important questions that we need to ask ourselves in order to keep the food industry in check. These questions are: How do we know our food is safe? What should we eat? How should food be distributed? What is good food? These are simple yet difficult questions.
In Wendell Berry’s “The Pleasures of Eating,” this farmer tells eaters how their separation from food production has turned them into “passive consumers” who know nothing about the food they eat, or their part in the agricultural process (3). They are blindsided by a food industry that does not help them understand. Berry argues that the average consumer buys available food without any questions. He states consumers that think they are distanced from agriculture because they can easily buy food, making them ignorant of cruel conditions it went through to get on the shelf. Humans have become controlled by the food industry, and regard eating as just something required for their survival. Berry wants this to change as people realize they should get an enjoyment from eating that can only come from becoming responsible for their food choices and learning more about what they eat. While describing the average consumer’s ignorance and the food industry’s deceit, he effectively uses appeals to emotion, logic, and values to persuade people to take charge, and change how they think about eating.
In Hunger, a story in Birds of Paradise Lost, Andrew Lam depicts a picture that numerous Vietnamese refugees were forced to escape from Vietnam to the United States due to the horrible living conditions during the World War period. In the story, Mr. Nguyen is a Vietnamese refugee who got away from Vietnam to the United States, and went through a shipwreck, a tragedy of cannibalism, and experience of living in the United States. His attitude towards his American life changes due to his tragic experience. In Hunger, Lam uses food to imply Mr. Nguyen’s attitude towards his American dream, show readers how Mr. Nguyen, a refugee who yearns for delicious food and more comfortable life, changes his attitudes towards
In the article by Wendell Berry titled “The Pleasures of Eating” he tries to persuade the readers of the necessity and importance of critical thinking and approach to choosing meals and owning responsibility for the quality of the food cooked. He states that people who are not conscious enough while consuming products, and those who do not connect the concept of food with agricultural products, as people whose denial or avoidance prevents them from eating healthy and natural food. Berry tries to make people think about what they eat, and how this food they eat is produced. He points to the aspects, some which may not be recognized by people, of ethical, financial and
There are many causes to hunger in Africa and other developing countries some include; weather conditions, poor agriculture, limited resources, natural disasters, and economy. (Robbins, 2012). The hungry people are not censurable. Hunger isn’t just the issue, the gist of the issue in its self, is economy. Close to one billion people live in deep penury, in the world today. (Robbins, 2012). If you don’t have money then you don’t have food, it is as simple as that. Poverty, food prices, and hunger are inextricably linked (Anderson, 2007). So the real question is; how can poverty be solved to stop hunger? One sixth of the world does not have enough food to be healthy and active. (Robbins, 2002). It takes 30 billion dollars to feed the hungry for a year. (Boren Project, 2013). If every person in the United States gave ten cents, world hunger could be stopped for a whole year. (Boren Project, 2013 and USC, 2014). Eve...
In order for us to maintain our lives, we need to consume food to supply nutrient-needs for our bodies. As the global population increased, the demand for food also increased. Increased population led to mass production of foods. However, even with this mass production, in under-developed countries, people are still undernourished. On other hand, in developed and developing countries, people are overfed and suffering from obesity. In addition, the current methods of industrial farming destroy the environment. These problems raised a question to our global food system. Will it be able to sustain our increasing global population and the earth? With this question in my mind, I decided to investigate the sustainability of our current global food system.
patterns, the eventual destruction of ecosystems, and the rapid rising of sea levels, each event
There is widespread agreement in the scientific community that the climate is changing and it has likely received contributions from humans in the form of increased carbon emissions. The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated that there is ninety percent certainty that human activity has been the primary cause of temperature rises seen since 1950; if the climate rises by more than two degrees Celsius, scientists predict dire consequences to be faced by humans and the world (McMichael and Lindgren, 2011, p. 402). Changes in climate, no matter how small, bring with it changes in other seemingly unrelated aspects of life. As current research suggests, climate change will have negative effects on human health and nutrition, increasing disease states while having a negative effect on the world food supply. Both of these effects will have negative implications on the quality of life for people living around the globe. Climate change is a global matter, so policy on climate change should consider the health impacts it brings since climate change will ultimately affect the wellbeing of everyone living on this planet. It is therefore the responsibility of every individual to take measures that will help slow down the rate of global warming that is currently going on.
Mittal, Anuradha, and Frederic Mousseau. "Food sovereignty: ending world hunger in our time." The Humanist Mar.-Apr. 2006: 24+. Student Edition. Web. 3 Mar. 2014.
Progress Being Made Food security is a fundamental human right. Although still far from being generally accepted, significant progress is being made. Community and nongovernmental organizations are implementing successful programs against hunger. A number of governments have adopted national policies ...
One of the most complex issues in the world today concerns human population. The number of people living off the earth’s resources and stressing its ecosystem has doubled in just forty years. In 1960 there were 3 billion of us; today there are 6 billion. We have no idea what maximum number of people the earth will support. Therefore, the very first question that comes into people’s mind is that are there enough food for all of us in the future? There is no answer for that. Food shortage has become a serious problem among many countries around the world. There are many different reasons why people are starving all over the world. The lack of economic justice and water shortages are just merely two examples out of them all.