Hunger

Hunger and Starvation a part of our world...

Starvation is just one of the many different kinds of plaugues that the world faces today. The only problem is that this should not be a plague. This world can fix so many of its problems if we would stop fighting and decided to save the next generation so that man will not go extinct. I hope that people would start to see past their selfish desires and see that people need help. We need to get out there and play an active part in helping bring the humans of this world back to a place where every man has the nourishment that he/she needs. So many people can report on these things and no one pays attention. I hope that the world would open its eyes and relieve the pain that we are suffereing.

"The world wakes up when we see images on the TV and when we see children dying," Mr Egeland told the BBC's World Today programme.

"We have received more pledges in the past week than we have in six months. But it is too late for some of these children."

The slow response has greatly increased the cost of dealing with the crisis, aid workers say.

"The funding needs are sky-rocketing because it's a matter of saving lives," UN World Food Programme Niger representative Gian Carlo Cirri said.

"The pity is we designed a preventative strategy early enough, but we didn't have the chance to implement it."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4698943.stm

The world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day (Food and Agriculture Organization 2002, FAO 1998). The principal problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, enough food.

http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm

Malnutrition A broad term for a range of conditions that hinder good health, caused by inadequate or unbalanced food intake or from poor absorption of food consumed. Refers to both undernutrition and overnutrition - conditions of both deprivation and excess.

http://www.feedingminds.org/info/info_level.htm

Myth 1 :Not Enough Food to Go Around

Reality: Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world's food supply. Enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,500 calories a day. Enough food is available to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day worldwide: two and half pounds of grain, beans and nuts, about a pound of fruits and vegetables, and nearly another pound of meat, milk and eggs-enough to make most people fat!

Myth 2 :Nature's to Blame for Famine

Reality: The real culprits are an economy that fails to offer everyone opportunities, and a society that places economic efficiency over compassion

Myth 3 :Too Many People

Reality: Birth rates are falling rapidly worldwide as remaining regions of the Third World begin the demographic transition--when birth rates drop in response to an earlier decline in death rates. Although rapid population growth remains a serious concern in many countries, nowhere does population density explain hunger.

Myth 4: The Environment vs. More Food?

Reality: Efforts to feed the hungry are not causing the environmental crisis. Large corporations are mainly responsible for deforestation-creating and profiting from developed-country consumer demand for tropical hardwoods and exotic or out-of-season food items. Most pesticides used in the Third World are applied to export crops, playing little role in feeding the hungry, while in the U.S. they are used to give a blemish-free cosmetic appearance to produce, with no improvement in nutritional value. Alternatives exist now and many more are possible.

Myth 5: The Green Revolution is the Answer

Reality: The production advances of the Green Revolution are no myth. Thanks to the new seeds, million of tons more grain a year are being harvested. But focusing narrowly on increasing production cannot alleviate hunger because it fails to alter the tightly concentrated distribution of economic power that determines who can buy the additional food.

Myth 6: We Need Large Farms

Reality: Large landowners who control most of the best land often leave much of it idle. Unjust farming systems leave farmland in the hands of the most inefficient producers. By contrast, small farmers typically achieve at least four to five times greater output per acre, in part because they work their land more intensively and use integrated, and often more sustainable, production systems. Without secure tenure, the many millions of tenant farmers in the Third World have little incentive to invest in land improvements, to rotate crops, or to leave land fallow for the sake of long-term soil fertility.

Myth 7:The Free Market Can End Hunger

Reality: Unfortunately, such a "market-is-good, government-is-bad" formula can never help address the causes of hunger.

Myth 8: Free Trade is the Answer

Reality: The trade promotion formula has proven an abject failure at alleviating hunger. In most Third World countries exports have boomed while hunger has continued unabated or actually worsened.

Myth 9: Too Hungry to Fight for Their Rights

Reality: Bombarded with images of poor people as weak and hungry, we lose sight of the obvious: for those with few resources, mere survival requires tremendous effort. If the poor were truly passive, few of them could even survive

Myth 10: More U.S. Aid Will Help the Hungry

Reality: Most U.S. aid works directly against the hungry. Foreign aid can only reinforce, not change, the status quo. Where governments answer only to elites, our aid not only fails to reach hungry people, it shores up the very forces working against them.

Myth 11: We Benefit From Their Poverty

Reality: The biggest threat to the well-being of the vast majority of Americans is not the advancement