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world hunger

By: Anonymous

World Hunger Every day an estimated 24,000 people die from hunger or

hunger related causes. Three-fourths of these deaths are children under the

age of five. One may wonder how this can be living in a country were it

seems so much food is wasted everyday. Food restaurants and grocery

stores throw away food every night before closing. Many Americans waste

food every day within their own homes. With so much "left over" food in

American how is it that an estimated 800 million people around the world

suffer from hunger and malnutrition?1 Well, first we must define the word

hunger. Hunger, in this case, is not just the rumbling in ones stomach that

most of us feel if we have not eaten for a few hours. For this purpose, hunger

is defined as "a condition resulting from chronic under-consumption of food

and/or nutritious food products. It may be precipitated by an inability to

obtain sufficient quantities of food to eat or a failure to consume adequate

quantities of nutritious food products, regardless of the ability to obtain

sufficient food supplies."2 The problem of world hunger is not that there is

not enough food produced in the world. "World production of grain alone is

over 1.5 billion tons, enough to supply the entire world population with two

pounds a day."3 This grain combined the current production of other foods

such as meat, fruits, vegetables, and nuts is enough to provide each adult and

child on earth 3000 calories a day which is what the average American

consumes.4 Americans are not the only ones who waste food. People all

over the world are doing the very same thing. And the though it seems that

America has too much food, we Americans have hungry people living right

here in our own country. The world hunger problem lies within the changing

environmental conditions, population, and most of all, poverty. This paper will

discuss the causes, effects and possible solutions of world hunger. There are

three major causes of world hunger, changing environment conditions,

population, and poverty. The environment, of course, is the major element in

the production of food in most countries across the globe. The environment in

which one lives decides what types of food can be produced and how much

of that food can be produced. The weather or climate in any particular

environment can change and affect what people eat and how much of it they

are able to eat. One change in the environment that adversely affects

agriculture is soil erosion. "Some one-third of the world's cropland is losing

topsoil at a rate that undermines its future productivity."5 Topsoil is a major

factor in growing most crops. It is the richest part of the soil and contains

minerals and nutrients that most plants need for survival. Too much soil

erosion begins a chain reaction leaving the land susceptible to drought. And

as we all know, very little food can be grown on dry land. A drought not only

affects plants, but as a result of lack of plants and water and in many cases

extreme heat cattle are starved or die from thirst. This loss of organic matter

in the land results in runoff after rainfall and increased runoff and rainfall

allows for flooding. A flood, like the drought though they are opposite, wipes

away crops or kills them because of the overabundance of water. People can

attempt to produce food by planting and caring for their land and animals, but

Mother Nature has the ultimate say and humans are unable to predict what

she will do next. The next two causes of hunger we will discuss together

because they coincide, population and the poor. Population is an issue not

because there are too many mouths to feed, as was stated earlier, but

because the hungry people of the world are the majority who have large