780 million people in the world are under nourished. Unlike you and I, they don’t have breakfast, they cant go to the canteen for a snack at break, their parents dont make them a nice packed lunch or give them money for lunch. They dont go home and eat dinner with their familys.
There have been Tortilla Riots in Mexico over the price of flour, India has restricted rice exports, In Haiti they have even resorted to eating dirt cookies. Indeed the price of our groceries here has increased and I was talking to the owner of my local indian take away recently, he was telling me the price of a sack of rice has increased from £18 to £43! But we’re the lucky ones.
The reasons behind the problem are interconnected with all of our lives. The UN blames
- Increasing global populations
- Crops being grown for biofuels
- More people changing their diet from vegetarian to meat eaters especially in India and China.
- Extremes of weather, either flooding (affecting milk yields in Argentina)or drought affecting harvests (wheat yields in Australia)
A relianace on one main genetically engineered crop may also put pressure on food supplies if that crop were to fail. The subsidies that the USA and Europe give to help farmers and the fact that farmers in LEDC countries cannot afford to pay for seeds, fertilizer or farm machinery all add to the problem we face today.
In order to try to solve this the UN has held a world food summit. Have a look at the following news articles and make your own minds up. Is there anything we can do?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/world/2008/costoffood/default.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7437808.stm
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1311358,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/16/food.biofuels
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1734834,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/world/2002/disposable_planet/food/
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/06/rome_food_crisis_summit_on_the.html
Many people feel that although the World Food Summit has made a decent start it falls well short in addressing the problems caused by the growing of biofuels and tackling free trade.
http://www.alertnet.org/db/an_art/47985/2008/05/6-163920-1.htm
6 Comments
10 June, 2008 at 10:23 am
I can remember when I was a child (a long time a go, I know) There was a Blue Peter appeal to help the victims of a famine in Ethiopia. I think you had to collect stamps or something like that which were somehow converted in to cash.
Anyway, one would have hoped that people had learnt from past mistakes to make sure that the same horrifying situation never happened again. I looks very much like history is about to repeat itself.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7444753.stm
12 June, 2008 at 5:03 pm
you know we take a lot of our food for granted it is just put on the table and we dont realise that people are stsrving in third world countries
13 June, 2008 at 3:49 pm
sir did u really watch blue peter – cos that is shameful! but on to a serious note how poor do you have to be to eat dirt cookies. i saw that the labour party had spoke to Mugabe (current leader of Zimbabwe) but he said that is was all rubbish. But then there were loads of pictures from journalists out there of people starving and evicted from their homes (because of the election) but also away from their crops.
13 June, 2008 at 8:18 pm
What’s wrong with Blue Peter? I used to love it as kid.
Hmmm I think some politicians used the Rome Summit as a bit of a soap box to put forward their own agendas instead of discussing the important issue of wolrd hunger, which is really quite depressing and selfish.
16 June, 2008 at 5:28 pm
[...] like all proceeds of any veg sales to go towards feeding people who cant afford to feed themselves. (see this post on the livegeography site) However I would be very open to listening to ideas. At the same time we can learn a bit about [...]
19 June, 2008 at 9:22 am
It looks like the British government have decided that genetically modified (GM) crops are the way to solve the problem
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/gm-crops-needed-in-britain-says-minister-849991.html