New face of global hunger

Kimberly Mega Food Scarcity 3/21/08 11:30 am

Food prices are rising higher than ever before and some experts believe these high costs are here to stay. Hunger and malnutrition is growing rapidly in developing countries and millions of people are at risk. We are trailing behind in our UN Millennium Goals, especially the first one which aimed to reduce the world’s proportion of hungry people by 50 percent by year 2015. Even basic food staples such as wheat, corn and rice cost almost twice as much as they did six months ago. These rising food costs are related to climate, weather related events (hurricanes, floods, droughts) and high fuel and fertilizer prices. This has caused major food riots in West Africa and South Asia as a protest to their high cost of living. Many of these countries have had to place bans and price controls on food in effort to feed all its people. This inflation of food prices is hitting the “bottom billion” , or the people who live on less than a dollar a day, the hardest. It is reported that families spend more than half their income on food. So as food prices increase families are forced to eat fewer, cheaper and less nutritious meals. The UN is trying to implement a number of efforts to reduce this hunger prevalence. First, they need to raise an additional 500 million dollars to cover rising food costs. Second, the UN is going to supply support programs for communities in need, for example school feeding to supplement nutrients a child might not be getting at home. Lastly, they are going to build drought and flood defense systems and improve distribution of agriculture to local families. The UN doesn’t know when they can actually start these protective measures, but hopefully it will be as soon as possible. Unfortunately, these measures don’t sound very promising due the large sum of money that needs to be raised. I believe the world needs to rethink its budget and spend more on its people than war and violence. There are people in Haiti who eat mud pies everyday and for almost all of their meals. They are made of yellow dirt, salt and a bit of vegetable shortening. These mud pies provide some source of calcium and antacid, but in the long run will result in severe malnutrition. Impoverished people have no choice but to resort to desperate measures unless someone steps in to help.

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