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One third of child deaths worldwide are attributed to malnutrition.
Currently, 854 million people go hungry around the world—more than the combined populations of the U.S., Canada, Japan and Europe. Ten million people die annually from hunger. Take a moment to think about this figure; let it sink in. This pandemic is primarily fueled by soaring food prices, which have doubled over the past three years. In fact, in the last year alone conditions have exacerbated as the cost of staple foods such as wheat, soybeans, corn and rice have continued to increase substantially: wheat prices are up 95 percent; soybeans are up 88 percent; corn is up 66 percent; and Thai B grade rice, the world’s trading benchmark, has more than doubled in the first quarter of 2008 and then tripled to $1,080 per metric ton less than a month later.
Despite alarming statistics that attribute 24,000 deaths each day to hunger or hunger-related causes (75 percent of which are children under the age of five), there is hope. Thanks, in part, to the world’s humanitarian efforts towards eradicating hunger and improving access to clean water, this number has actually decreased, down from 35,000 deaths 10 years ago and 41,000 deaths 20 years ago. Whether it is food delivered to 87.8 million of the world’s poorest people by the World Food Programme (WFP), the $60 million raised by American Idol’s “Idol Gives Back” or $50 donated after a local bake sale, the world is waking up and contributing to make a difference.
Unfortunately, this hard-earned progress is in danger of regression. The World Food Program recently described high food prices as “a silent tsunami” that has already pushed an estimated 100 million people deeper into poverty and which threatens “to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger.” In June 2008, Robert Zoellick, president of World Bank, explained that “if left unchecked, global food shortages could set the world back seven years in the fight against extreme poverty and global disease.” Shortly thereafter, Zoellick warned that the world is “entering a danger zone.”
It is considered doubtful that World Bank’s most recent plea for $10 billion in aid from the G8 countries—Canada, French Republic, Federal Republic of Germany, Republic of Italy, Japan, Russian Federation, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America, and the European Union—will be met, causing an even greater need for individual persons to unite against hunger, a treatable calamity, both internationally and domestically in the U.S.
Nowhere is the problem of hunger more severe than in developing countries where 5.1 billion of the world’s 6.55 billion people reside. A staggering 820 million of these individuals are undernourished with nearly one billion people living below the international poverty line, earning less than $1 per day. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 2006 statistics, of the millions of people who are chronically hungry each year, 212 million live in India, 206.2 million live in Sub-Saharan Africa, 524 million live in Asia and the Pacific, 52.4 million live in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 37.6 million live in the Near East and North Africa.
Similarly, more than one billion people lack a basic supply of clean water and 2.6 billion people, more than 40 percent of the world’s population, do not have access to basic sanitation. Of these one billion people, approximately 314 million live in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Who Is Affected?
The World Food Programme reports that three-quarters of all hungry people live in rural areas, primarily in villages of Asia and Africa. Furthermore, the FAO calculates that of the developing countries’ 820 million hungry, half are farming families. These individuals are nearly completely dependent on farming as income sources and for personal sustenance since access to employment opportunities outside of the agricultural trade are extremely limited. Unfortunately, those communities surviving off the land are impacted greatly by natural disasters such as droughts or flooding, which further perpetuates the problems of hunger and poverty.
Sadly, one of the populations most affected by hunger and lack of clean water, particularly in developing countries, is children, comprising 25 percent of those plagued with hunger. More than one-third of child deaths worldwide are attributed to undernutrition and, according to the FAO, if hunger continues at present levels it will cost five million children their lives annually. Further, more than 1.8 million children die each year, roughly one child every 15 seconds, from water and sanitation-related Diarrhoeal diseases. It is unfathomable but true that in the time it has taken to read this paragraph, at least four children have died.
An estimated 126.5 million children in developing countries are underweight—the result of acute or chronic hunger, with 17 million of these children having been born underweight due to poor nutrition before and during pregnancy. According to UNICEF, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation services, coupled with poor hygiene practices, kills and sickens thousands of children every day, and leads to impoverishment and diminished opportunities for thousands more.
Additionally, children without access to clean water and sanitation are often deprived of educational opportunities since time spent fetching water means that children, particularly girls and women, are unable to attend school. Studies show that girls are 12 percent more likely to attend school if water is available within 15 minutes from home versus a one hour’s walk. Additionally, water-related illnesses increase absenteeism for school age children resulting in more than 443 million lost school days globally each year.
While they may live in faraway countries out of sight for most Americans, these children are someone’s son or daughter, niece or nephew, sister or brother, or grandchild.
Despite acting as primary food producers, women are another demographic most affected by hunger. As a result of iron deficiencies during pregnancy, which affect 50 percent of expectant mothers, 315 million women die annually from childbirth. Those who do give birth to children often impart to them the abovementioned problems resulting from hunger and malnourishment.
What Are the Causes?
Drought is the single most common cause of food shortages in the world. In 2007, drought affected 10 million people in sub-Saharan Africa. By destroying the crops and killing the livestock, drought eliminates food and income sources for farmers and their families and propagates hunger and poverty. It also displaces individuals, leaving them homeless and without resources. Future climate change and natural disasters such as drought, floods, earthquakes, and tsunamis are expected to put almost 50 million people at risk of hunger by 2020. The same types of natural disasters disrupt water supplies and foster disease, particularly drought, which limits the amount of water available for drinking and sanitation uses.
Hunger is directly related to poverty, whereby families and individuals are unable to meet their basic need for food. As the cost of food rises at unprecedented rates, it becomes even more difficult for those already living beneath the poverty line to afford the means to survive. By then, hope is lost, productivity diminishes, and the problem perpetuates.
Unlike in the Unites States, developing countries where a large portion of the population suffers from hunger do not have the economic means to supply safety nets such as soup kitchens, food stamps, and job training programs. For those living in a poor country that cannot grow enough food or earn enough money to buy food, there is nowhere to turn for help.
Hunger also weakens the people who depend on farming for food and income, causing them to produce fewer goods and, in turn, become hungrier and poorer—continuing the often unbreakable cycle of hunger and poverty. Farming communities are also harmed by the agricultural infrastructure in their countries, where roads and irrigation are inadequate, restricting the profits earned from harvests and limiting access to outside food. Further, many developing countries that depend on agriculture have governments whose planning focuses instead on urban development. Poor farmers are hindered even more due to illness resulting from a lack of clean water and sanitation so that individuals, communities and national economies suffer.
War is another contributing factor of hunger. Millions of people are uprooted from crop-producing land by war in areas such as the Darfur region of Sudan. During war, local markets and food supplies are often overtaken or destroyed. Similarly, participants frequently starve their opponents as a war tactic, whether they’re soldiers or citizens.
What Are the Solutions?
Plain and simple, there is not a food shortage. There exists enough food in the world to feed all of its 6.5 billion people.
To end world hunger, nations must band together to break the cycle of starvation for populations who are poverty-stricken and cannot buy food or do not have the means to produce food. This can be accomplished if governments and private citizens commit time and funds to victims of hunger in developing countries. Everyone is capable of making a difference and every dollar counts. On a larger scale, the financial costs to end hunger are still relatively slight. The United Nations Development Program estimates that the basic health and nutrition needs of the world’s poorest people could be met for an additional $13 billion a year. Animal lovers in the United States and Europe spend more than that on pet food each year.
Additionally, money must be invested in the development and emergency relief to aid victims of natural disasters and war.
Farmers also need to be given the right tools and taught new methods to advance agriculture in their communities, where governments are unable to supply support. If farmers are provided food assistance, they can afford to spend time on rebuilding crops, irrigation and roads so harvests flourish. Without this support, their days are spent desperately trying to find work and food to survive.
Of these farmers in dire need of help, the majority are women. In fact, in Africa 80 percent of farmers are women and in Asia 60 percent. Therefore, educating women on advanced farming techniques and nutrition is essential to building healthier, well-nourished generations. A study of 63 countries by the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington found that improvements in women’s education helped to reduce the proportion of children who were malnourished by 50 percent between 1970 and 1995.
The United Nation’s Millennium Development Goal for water and sanitation is to reduce the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe water and basic sanitation by 2015. While there may be a shortage of clean water, there is no shortage of solutions to resolve the crisis. Access to clean water and sanitation can be achieved by providing urgent relief in emergency situations, improving water supply hardware so that communities have superior infrastructure and tools, supporting policy development towards improving clean water access and sanity conditions, instilling and enhancing water and sanitation facilities at school to foster children’s education, and raising awareness about hygiene, particularly in schools.
While it seems third world and developing countries are suffering the most from hunger and lack of clean water, one need not look far beyond their backyard to realize hunger is also rampant in the United States of America. The situation affects more than just the homeless you see on the streets downtown; it affects your neighbors, colleagues and kids’ friends. Thirty-five million people, including 12.6 million children, live in households that experience hunger or the risk of hunger. This represents more than one in 10 households in the U.S.
Who Is Affected?
Similar to world hunger, domestic hunger is connected to poverty. In 2006, the national poverty rate was 12.3 percent and 12.1 percent of individuals were food insecure, meaning individuals were living in hunger or fear of starvation.
Hunger and food insecurity affects states and races where poverty statistics are higher than the national average. Mississippi, for example, has the greatest number of people living in poverty (20.6 percent) and the largest percentage of households that are food insecure (18.1 percent). Twenty-four percent of African-American households live below the poverty line, of which 21.8 percent suffer from food insecurity and hunger. Likewise, there is a 20.6 percent poverty rate among Hispanic households, only 1.1 percent more than Hispanics’ rate of food insecurity. Moreover, 30.5 percent of people in families with a female head of household without a present spouse are considered in poverty, near the exact same percentage of families comprised of single mothers and their children who are food insecure (30.4 percent).
While hunger is spread fairly evenly in regions nationwide, rural communities suffer dramatically—1.5 million households experience food insecurity in addition to another 852,000 households that are hungry, despite an abundance of agriculture produced in the U.S.
What Are the Causes?
Poverty and unemployment are the leading causes of hunger in the U.S. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the unemployment rate is 5.5 percent with 8.5 million unemployed persons as compared to a jobless rate of 4.6 percent and 7 million unemployed persons just a year ago. As of June 2008, 400,000 jobs have been lost representing six straight months of job losses.
As reports of mass layoffs at small businesses and Fortune 500 corporations alike dominate the news, it comes as no surprise that the unemployment rate is expected to continue to increase, surpassing 6 percent by year’s end. Companies including Citigroup, Chrysler LLC, United and Starbucks have plans to close plants and cut back on hundreds of thousands of jobs in the coming months, furthering the number of individuals unemployed in the U.S.
At the same time, employees’ wages have increased only slightly by 3.4 percent over the past year, the smallest increase in hourly earnings since January 2006. The true disadvantage of these statistics is clearer when posed against the exorbitant, rising costs of essential commodities such as fuel and food. This combined with the increased cost of living—specifically, high housing and medical costs—are also big contributors the U.S. hunger crisis.
According to the Oil Prices Information Services and AAA, the cost of oil reached a new high at $146 per gallon in June 2008, amounting to another record of $4.10 per gallon of gas for consumers. As for food, consumers in the U.S. are paying 69 percent more than two years ago for staples such as bread, chicken and eggs.
What Are the Solutions?
Hunger is without a doubt a widespread problem in the U.S. However, as the largest and most efficient food producer in the world, domestic hunger is also a solvable problem.
Possibly the greatest tool in the fight to end hunger is the U.S. Food Stamp Program. Since its inception in the late 1930s, the Food Stamp Program has served hundreds of millions of households. In April 2008, an average of 28 million people used food stamps monthly, an increase of approximately 6.8 percent since April 2007—substantially greater than the 1 percent increase between 2006 and 2007. This growing participation in the Food Stamp Program can be attributed to an intensified need driven by a weakening economy and growing unemployment. Those eligible for the program are often encouraged to participate by the successful outreach efforts of churches, charities and community organizations.
The Food Stamp Program will continue to assist households across the country if agencies and individuals provide time and donations to help garner exposure for this efficient, cost-effective solution. Another way that both organizations and private citizens can support the fight against hunger is through advocacy, speaking up to ensure that legislators are informed and actively participating in the cause.
In May 2008, more than 1,000 national, state and local organizations signed a letter urging Members of Congress to override President Bush’s veto of the Farm Bill. Both the Senate and House were responsive to the appeal, overriding Bush’s veto and enacting the Farm Bill as law on May 22, 2008. The Farm Bill is a $288 billion, five-year agricultural policy bill that includes specific initiatives such as increases in Food Stamp benefits, enhanced support for the production of cellulosic ethanol, and research money for the examination of pests, diseases and other agricultural setbacks.
Domestic hunger’s greatest threat is lack of donations. Hungry and food insecure households, charities, organizations and food banks all depend on the donations of funds, food and the collective resource of time from individuals, corporations and government partners, among others. By donating one of these resources, fellow Americans can positively impact the hunger crisis in the U.S.
Project 7
Project 7 is committed to “changing the score” by creating consumer goods that change people’s lives. Fifty percent of profits from Project 7 products will be donated to charities supporting one of the world’s seven critical needs including world and domestic hunger as well as clean water.