WORLD HUNGER MAGAZINE FONTE, STM16

WorldHunger WHY IS WORLD HUNGER STILL A PROBLEM? Have you ever stopped to think about the food you eat on a typical day?

IS THERE NOT ENOUGH FOOD TO GO AROUND? "They will hunger no more, and thirst no more."

Issue 20 | April 2020 hungermag.com

CONTENTS WORLD HUNGER 02

WHAT IS HUNGER ?

03

MEASURING HUNGER

CAUSES HUNGER 04

POVERTY, FOOD SHORTAGES, CLIMATE CHANGE

05

POOR PUBLIC POLICY, UNSTABLE MARKETS, WAR AND CONFLICT

WHERE DOES HUNGER EXIST? 07 U.S. AND DEVELOPED COUNTRIES, ASIA 08

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

09 NORTH AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST

EDITOR'S NOTE 10 EDITOR'S NOTE

WORLD HUNGER | 01

What is hunger?

Although hunger is on the rise, many people in the developed world don’t really understand what it means to go hungry.

Hunger can manifest itself in different ways–undernourishment, malnutrition and wasting.

According to the World Food Programme, undernourishment occurs when people do not take in enough calories to meet minimum physiological needs. Malnutrition is when people have an inadequate intake of protein, energy and micronutrients. Starved of the right nutrition, they can die from common infections such as measles or diarrhoea.

Wasting, usually the result of starvation or disease, is an indicator of acute malnutrition with substantial weight loss.

Hunger causes immense suffering and sometimes death. The dead are most commonly young children – thousands every day, year after year. Those who survive early childhood malnutrition face lifelong health and learning problems.

They are robbed of their God-given potential.

Adults – workers and parents – can’t be fully productive without enough nutritious food. Countries where many people are hungry have weaker economies. And as long as people are hungry, the world is less secure.

But with access to opportunity and the right tools, people can create change.

They can do it no matter where they live.

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MEASURING HUNGER

To measure progress, the UN calculates the proportion of people in a country’s population who are undernourished. This means people whose food consumption is continuously below a minimum level of dietary energy requirement for maintaining an acceptable minimum body size and leading a healthy active life.

Every year, the FAO estimates the proportion of people who do not have access to enough food by using national agricultural and trade statistics from each country to estimate how much food is available and survey data to determine how food consumption varies among families.

In addition, it uses a Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), a survey that asks about people’s ability to access food, to top up the data. Respondents are asked whether, in the past 12 months, because of a lack of money or other resources, there was a time when they were hungry but did not eat or went without eating for a whole day.

Causes Hunger Worldwide, the number of hungry people has dropped significantly over the past two decades, but 821 million people continue to struggle with hunger every day.

Many factors contribute to the state of hunger both in the United States and abroad. The reasons are complex and varied, and often interconnected.

POVERTY

Poverty is the main cause of hunger in the world. This is true in rich and poor countries alike. It is true no matter whether people live in urban or rural areas.

Most people who are hungry are living in extreme poverty, defined as income of $1.90 per day or less. The largest group of people in the world in extreme poverty are smallholder farmers in developing countries.

They do not have the land to grow enough food to supply themselves with enough to eat year round, and they earn so little income from what they sell that they cannot afford to purchase food from other sources once their own supply runs out.

FOOD SHORTAGES Food shortages in developing countries are common. The people most affected are smallholder farmers and their families who depend on their own surplus to survive between harvests.

The period leading up to a harvest is known as the “hungry season.” Food from the previous harvest runs out and families cut back on meals. This period of time may last for months depending on the size of the previous harvest.

Similarly, in the U.S., families with very low incomes run out of money at the end of the month. Families cut back on how much they eat and then eventually skip meals altogether on some days.

Another reason for food shortages is up to 40 percent of food grown in some countries is spoilage. Smallholder farmers do not have adequate storage facilities to protect their supplies against pests and weather.

CLIMATE CHANGE Countries like Zambia enjoy relative peace and political stability. However, they are also plagued by hunger due to climate extremes. Too much, or too little, rainfall can destroy harvests or reduce the amount of animal pasture available.

These fluctuations are made worse by the El Niño weather system, and are likely to increase due to changes in climate.

Extreme climate patterns also tend to affect the poorest regions of the world the most. The World Bank estimates that climate change has the power to push more than 100 million people into poverty over the next decade.

WORLD HUNGER | 04

POOR PUBLIC POLICY Systemic problems, like poor infrastructure or low investment in agriculture, often prevent food and water from reaching the world populations that need them the most.

Poor infrastructure causes hunger by making it difficult — sometimes impossible — to transport food to areas of a country where there are shortages.

People have died of hunger in one region of a country while there was plenty of food in another region. The roads were so poor it was not possible to reach all who needed the food to survive.

Crops need water to grow. Irrigation infrastructure is unaffordable to most farmers in developing countries. A lack of water and sanitation infrastructure are leading causes of hunger and malnutrition.

UNSTABLE MARKETS People who live on $1.90 per day spend most of their income on food. Under stable conditions they can scarcely afford enough food to protect themselves and family members against hunger.

In 2009, prices of these grains spiked and hunger surged for a short time by an additional 50 to 100 million people.

Parents tend to cut back their portions during relatively brief periods of instability.

Over a prolonged time they may have to pull children out of school to earn income to pay for food.

WAR AND CONFLICT Hunger is both a cause and effect of war and conflict. Wide-scale poverty and hunger lead to frustration and resentment with governments that appear to ignore hungry people’s plight.

The poorest members of society suffer the worst during war and conflict. Homes are destroyed and communities of people are displaced. Peace when it comes is often tenuous. The physical infrastructure needed for reconstruction is damaged and might even be destroyed.

After years of civil war in Liberia, one man said he knew that peace was taking hold as he noticed the return of farm animals on people’s land.

Any fluctuation that pushes food prices up creates additional hardship. Basic grains such as wheat, rice, and corn make up the largest share of calories among people in developing countries who are hungry.

WORLD HUNGER | 05

WHERE DOES HUNGER EXIST?

U.S. and developed countries

For developed countries, hunger doesn’t come from not having enough food available.

There is enough food for everyone. The overwhelming cause of hunger in these countries is poverty.

Nearly 15 percent of U.S. households — more than 40 million Americans, including 12 million children — struggle to put food on the table. Here the measure of hunger is “food insecurity” — an ongoing uncertainty of where the next meal will come from.

Even with more than one in five U.S. children at risk of hunger (one in three among AfricanAmerican and Latino children), funding for these critical anti-hunger programs is being challenged.

ASIA

Asia is the most populous region in the world. In recent decades, as its economies have grown quickly, poverty has declined and food production has increased.

The number of hungry people in Asia has also declined substantially, by 217 million between 1990-92 and 2012-14, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Yet Asia still has to twothirds of the world’s hungry people.

In South Asia, there has been very slow progress against hunger. The population affected by hunger fell from 24 percent in 1990 to 16 percent in 2012-14. More than 40 percent of children in India are stunted (being too short for their age group) due to malnutrition, according to the Population Reference Bureau. The global food price and economic crises of 2007-2008 caused a spike in hunger in the region.

WORLD HUNGER | 07

sub-Saharan Africa

Just over a quarter of the world’s undernourished people live in the countries south of the Sahara Desert in Africa. Progress against hunger has been slow in this region. In 1990, one in three people in the region were undernourished. Today, one in four suffer from hunger, according to the Population Reference Bureau. War and chronic diseases (HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria) have slowed progress.

Most hungry and poor people in sub-Saharan Africa still live in rural areas and depend on the land for their livelihoods. Decades of underinvestment in agriculture has hampered their productivity. More frequent droughts and other weather shocks also hurt farmers’ ability to produce enough food.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Haiti’s economy and its ability to produce food has not fully recovered. This is one example of extreme hunger due to disasters, which the region is prone to.

At the other end of the spectrum from Haiti’s acute hunger that occurred as a result of a specific event is the type of hunger seen in Central America, specifically in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Hunger in these countries has been building steadily over the past several years and is coupled with extreme poverty and violence. These problems reached a climax in the summer of 2014 when they forced tens of thousands of children to flee their countries and enter illegally into the U.S.

WORLD HUNGER | 08

North Africa and the MIddle East This region generally does not experience hunger on a large scale. However, the 2007-2008 food price crisis, political instability, and years of war have led to an increase in hunger in the region.

Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq are called fragile states because long-term war and conflict have devastated systems and communities. There are millions who are experiencing hunger.

In Syria alone, civil war has destroyed nearly every farm. This has led to a total dependency on international food aid from donor countries like the U.S. Four million people there are being given food assistance each month — more than the population of Los Angeles. The world has not seen this kind of humanitarian crisis and resulting hunger since the 2009-2010 crisis in the Horn of Africa.

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Editor's Note World hunger has been an issue for us on over 4 decades now. Over 815 million people are now experiencing this calamity.

As hunger spread all over the world, many people tried to stand against it. The fact that there are so many hungry people in the world today is mind-boggling when you think about it. We're well into the 21st century. We can communicate instantaneously with people all over Earth.

There are now many volunteers, who help many places that encounter this calamity.

I want for us to connect to those who have more needs and to help them with what we have. There are now many ways to help, because of organizations that are now ongoing. These organizations are a great help for us to be in touch of those people in need.

In showing a little kindness to others, we can all start a difference.

DIANA FONTE Editor-in-Chief

WORLD HUNGER | Â 10