The Roots of World Hunger

Why is world hunger such an issue? Yes, our population has grown exponentially in past years, but our food production has grown at an even faster rate. The Scarcity Fallacy written by Stephen J. Scanlan, J. Craig Jenkins, and Lindsey Peterson, talks about world hunger and its causes. As you might guess from the title, there is some mistaken belief as to what is the true cause of world hunger. The authors of the text clearly point out that the widely held belief that world hunger is caused by a limited supply of food is wrong. The authors even go so far as to say that “on a per capita basis,” food is more abundant now than any of the years past. In fact, “poverty, inequality, conflict, and corruption” are the true “contributors to world hunger”. The authors give statistics backing up each one of their hypothesized causes of world hunger. For example, countries with higher than 35% poverty rates (extreme poverty), also have child hunger rates above 35%. To make matters worse, people living in or near the poverty line, spend 60% of their income on food compared to the poorest American who spends 15-20%. After the authors identify the causes of world hunger, they propose a couple of solutions. The first is that food must be seen as fundamental human right. This would increase the importance of mitigating world hunger in the eyes of the public and would also protect the poor against the high price of food. Their second solution would be to rid food agencies of corruption thereby guaranteeing that the efforts of these food agencies reach the right people through the right means. They also propose sustainable agricultural practices and fiscal policy.

            “The challenge, in short, is to create a more equitable and just society in which food access is ensured for all.” That’s no simple task. It might seem easy to write that down in a sentence and dream of one day in which everyone is educated, ethnic inequalities are broken down, and money doesn’t rule the world; but we are far from that dream. Some steps have been taken, however, they are only superficial and do not help in the long run. It is as if we have trimmed the branches off a tree but the roots are still there and the branches just grow back. If world hunger is to be fought, we need to fight the roots of the problems that the authors mention in The Scarcity Fallacy.

1)   How do you propose we fight world hunger?

2)   What do you think is the most surprising statistic the authors give in the text?