Food Scarcity Essay

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other (Berger). It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Right now, it seems as if society is blind to the fact that we are causing a major food scarcity simply by overusing the resources that we have. There are different factors that are contributing to the issue of food scarcity. According to Lester Brown, “we are entering a time of chronic food scarcity, one that is leading to intense competition for control of land and water resources- in short, a new geopolitics of food” (Lester Brown). The world food situation is slowly degrading. Grain stocks have dropped to a dangerously low level. The World Food Price Index has doubled in a decade. The ranks of the hungry are expanding. Political unrest is spreading. On the demand side of the food equation, there will be 219,000 people at the dinner table tonight who were not there last night. And some 3 billion increasingly wealthy people are moving up the food chain, consuming livestock and poultry products that are so dependent on grains. At the same time, water shortages and heat waves are making it more difficult for farmers to keep pace with demand. And with temperatures changing, the seasons are getting shorter. As those countries that are grain exporting begin to ban exports to keep their food prices down, countries that typically receive those exports are panicking. In response, they are buying large tracts of land in other countries to grow food for themselves. Ultimately, the biggest problem is trying to make sure that society is aware of the concept of food and the affect that climate change has on food and whether it is more imp...

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...will die hungry every day. The issue of food scarcity is a cycle that can’t seem to be broken. Not only is the environment is being damaged and the things that we need to make food are slowly decaying, we are also using what little food we have left for other things such as biofuel or waste. This issue is not something we can ignore and if we don’t come together as a group, we’re just going to keep headed in the same direction we’ve been in the last 20 years. Change doesn’t happen overnight and what people have failed to realize is that the biggest problem is trying to make sure that society is aware of the concept of food and the affect that climate change has on food and whether it is more important to have food to eat or food for fuel. With that being said, we need to get our heads out of the sand and do something before there is nothing left to save.