ESSAY ON THREATS TO GLOBAL FOOD SUPPLIES
In the twenty-first century, because of the swift development of technology the living conditions and lifestyle have refined. Whereas the complication of food security has not yet been addressed, especially in some poorer countries.
The food crisis is, above all, a warning sign of the strains that face a planet of 6.6 billion people. "We've essentially been asleep at the switch in this country, not thinking of what it means to be on a crowded planet, with rising demand, scarce natural resources, more climate change," says Sachs. If nothing else, those supermarket prices now sending shock waves across the world will be a wake-up call of the need to look hard for solutions to a food crisis that the world shares.
This essay will look into these problems, and aim at providing proper solutions and evaluate the implications of implementing these solutions.
The increasing world population and the growth of the environmental problems such as depletion of the ozone layer is a huge problem as in the upper atmosphere, without the ozone layer, the high concentration ultraviolet rays that radiate from the sun and space, would wipe out all the life that exists on the planet earth. As the ozone layer is being affected tremendously day by day, it is reasonable to expect that the plants we grow for food may not produce the variety, quality and the quantity we desire for.
The Acid rain is another problem, the chemicals which are the main cause for the formation of acid like smelting and chemical manufacturing have known to have a very harmful effect on a variety of plants and trees. These acids are spread in the form of rain, snow and sleet and it is expected that the acid rain will have a shattering eff...
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... the food production to meet the growing demand. This can be done by the use of advanced technology. Recently, the genetically modified crops involving relatively simple manipulations, has become popular in many countries. This biotechnology may increase the food field, but also raises the issue of whether it will be able to sustain it in the longer run or not.
Another measure that we can take to solve this problem is to reduce the wastage of food. Effective ways of reducing the food waste is by raising the food prices and advocating balanced diet in the developed countries around the world. According to Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), about one-third of cereal production is fed to animals worldwide. This is to say amounts of food have wasted. If these cereals could be changed into food supplying to the hunger, the problem might be solved in some extent.
Walsh, Bryan. “America’s Food Crisis.” NEXUS. Eds. Kim and Michael Flachmann. Boston: Pearson, 2012. 166 – 173. Print.
The book The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food, by Wayne Roberts introduces us to the concept of “food system”, which has been neglected by many people in today’s fast-changing and fast-developing global food scene. Roberts points out that rather than food system, more people tend to recognize food as a problem or an opportunity. And he believes that instead of considering food as a “problem”, we should think first and foremost about food as an “opportunity”.
The correlation between over-population and growing world hunger has become a controversial topic in today’s society. Concerns of population expansion, world starvation, and environment destruction are matters of debate and are of much concern for their outcomes affect everyone of society. The world is home to an estimated 6 billion people with more than 80 million additions every year. With this astonishing growing rate of population it is necessary to address the matter of world hunger before it is too late. The three main theories of world population and the correlation to world hunger are debatable; however, it is ultimately left to an individual to determine the truth/ answer to such theories of world hungers origin.
Food production has many challenges to address: CO2 emissions, which are projected to increase by two-thirds in the next 20 years, as the global food production increases so does the number of people going hungry, with the number of urban hungry soaring. The environmental issues are not the only ones to face; politics and economic globalization take also the big part in the food world. These days agriculture and food politics has been going through many changes but mostly under the influence of its consumers; back in the days people wanted as little as safety, variety and low costs of food. Now consumers demanding way more – greater freshness, nutritional value, less synthetic chemicals, smaller carbon footprint and less harm to animals. And that’s the time when urban agriculture emerged quite rapidly delivering locally grown and healthy food. Within the political arena, there are a few still in charge of defending the conventional food industries and commercial farms to retain the upper level. Against the hopes of nutrition activists, farm animal welfare defenders, and organic food promoters, the food and agriculture sector is moving towards greater consolidation and better sustainability. Although in social and local terms, food-growing activists know their role is under attack. Caught two words in the middle, is it possible to satisfy both?
The last 20 years, hunger rates have abated by almost half, however with increasing food prices, global hunger is expected to accrue as well. (Anderson, 2007). About 40 to 60 million people, mainly children, die every year because of hunger. (Robbins, 2012). Close to 200 million children under five years old are malnourished. (Robbins, 2012). Many people may ask how hunger, in developing countries, such as Africa, can be stopped or even solved. The question seems to be; does more food need to be more food produced or is there enough for everyone on earth? If there is enough food, why does not every one have plenty to stay healthy? Hunger, in Africa and other developing countries, could be significantly mitigated or even wiped out if the people in the world worked together using technology and resources available.
There are many problems confronting our global food system. One of them is that the food is not distributed fairly or evenly in the world. According “The Last Bite Is The World’s Food System Collapsing?” by Bee Wilson, “we are producing more food—more grain, more meat, more fruits and vegetables—than ever before, more cheaply than ever before” (Wilson, 2008). Here we are, producing more and more affordable food. However, the World Bank recently announced that thirty-three countries are still famine and hungers as the food price are climbing. Wilson stated, “despite the current food crisis, last year’s worldwide grain harvest was colossal, five per cent above the previous year’s” (Wilson, 2008). This statement support that the food is not distributed evenly. The food production actually increased but people are still in hunger and malnutrition. If the food were evenly distributed, this famine problem would’ve been not a problem. Wilson added, “the food economy has created a system in w...
In the past ten years the world population exceeded six billion people with most of the growth occurring in the poorest, least developed countries in the world. The rapidly increasing population and the quickly declining amount of land are relative and the rate at which hunger is increasing rises with each passing year. We cannot afford to continue to expand our world population at such an alarming rate, for already we are suffering the consequences. Hunger has been a problem for our world for thousands of years. But now that we have the technology and knowledge to stamp it out, time is running short.
We live in an age in which we have come to expect everything to be instantaneously at our fingertips. We live in an age of instant coffee, instant tea, and even instant mashed potatoes. We can walk down the street at 5 in the morning and get a gallon of milk or even a weeks worth of groceries at our discretion. Even though it is great that food is now readily available at all times, this convenience comes at a price, for both the producer and the consumer. Farmers are cheated out of money and are slaves to big business, workers and animals are mistreated. And, because food now comes at a low cost, it has become cheaper quality and therefore potentially dangerous to the consumer’s health. These problems surrounding the ethics and the procedures of the instantaneous food system are left unchanged due to the obliviousness of the consumers and the dollar signs in the eyes of the government and big business. The problem begins with the mistreatment and exploitation of farmers.
According to Eric Holt Gimenez, the world already produces enough food to feed 10 billion people, yet over 22% of the Sub-Saharan population is undernourished. One of the main causes of this is due to food wastage. One-third of the food that is produced is never consumed (“What Causes Hunger?”). Not only is this food being wasted, it also releases over 3 billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (“What Causes Hunger?”). The wastage of food directly doesn’t put food on the plates of those who need it and also further prevents it by destroying the environment without a proper reason. Another cause of hunger is who the food is feeding. About 60% of crops are farmed to feed humans, while 35% is for animal feed (“Introduction to Food Insecurity”). Although animals can be consumed, they take a lot more than they give. About 30 kilograms of grain can produce only 1 kilogram of edible beef (“Introduction to Food Security”). For those who are struggling with food is Sub-Saharan Africa, and diet that shifts away from meat consumption would assist in consuming more food. Another flaw in the where the food goes is the imports and exports of Sub-Saharan nations. Several countries have a few main crops that they produce a surplus of to export, and then they rely on imports for the rest of their food supply. The citizens buy imported food because it is less expensive, and the local farmers become poorer. Buying locally would put the money back into one’s own community instead of losing it all to a distant nation. A system that does not waste food and focuses on producing it for local humans would help reduce hunger in needy
When the topic of world hunger is broached, the majority of people’s minds will automatically equate the two words with an impossible-to-solve problem affecting only Africa. However, to make that connection is inaccurate, and ultimately damaging to the actual efforts being made towards eradicating hunger. There are more than 870 million individuals in the world who suffer from chronic undernourishment, with the majority of undernourished individuals residing in Asia or the Pacific. While Africa understandably rises to the forefront of the mind when hunger is discussed, the statistics prove that hunger permeates into a plethora of regions, and affects a wide range of countries, cultures, and age groups. Despite its wide reach, global hunger is a solvable problem. The fact that a solution has not yet been implemented speaks loudly to the lack of cooperation being exhibited throughout the world. There is more than enough food to end world hunger; it is merely a lack of proactivity and cooperation among those in power that continues to allow the problem to grow. Solving world hunger may seem to be a daunting task, but a solution is within reach as long as a more cohesive semblance of cooperation throughout the globe (including both developed and developing countries) is achieved. This cooperation would embrace the sharing of excess goods to countries in need of them, as well the establishment of sustainable agricultural systems in countries currently lacking them—goals which are only achievable through recognition of the problem and an increased involvement by the entire globe.
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.
The majority of starving people live in developing countries, mainly located in Asia, the Pacific, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Starvation is also mostly found in low-income, rural areas. However, hunger has been on the rise in urban areas as well (“Frequently” 2). One of the major causes of world hunger is the significant lack of food security, or the ability of people to have access to healthy, nutritional food at all times, in many areas of the world (Marsh, Alagona 254). Due to this major lack of food security, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimated, “that 25,000 people die each day from hunger [, and]… between 1998 and 2000, there were 840 million undernourished people in the world—nearly a sixth of the world’s population,” (“Hunger” 2). Hunger is now a larger health risk than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined, and it has become a serious problem (“Frequently”
The growing world population is demanding more and different kinds of food. Rapid economic growth in many developing countries has pushed up consumers' purchasing power, generated rising demand for food, and shifted food demand away from traditional staples and toward higher-value foods like meat and milk.
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.
This can not be done with the same ineffective tactics that were used in the past, so that’s why people are developing new ways to eradicate hunger. When the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) was held, they discussed the nutrition component and how important it is that it is not overlooked. By paying attention to nutrient-dense foods and recognizing the different entry points for improving nutrition, the ICN2 argues the world will be one step closer in achieving the Sustainable Development Goal. Some of the entry points they discussed include “the promotion of crop diversification…, strengthening local food production and processing, and exploring regulatory or voluntary instruments for promoting healthy diets” (goals 2). Promoting the nutrition aspect of the goal can help achieve it because nutrients are what keep people alive and