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Editorials, Opinion and Letters
Dear Hunger Notes,
I am a junior at Highland Park Senior High in St.Paul MN, USA.
I have a few questions to be answered if it's no problem:
1. Why is there such a thing as World Hunger?
2. Is there not enough food to go around?
3. What is one way to solve this issue?
4. What countries have the highest rate of hunger?
5. Is poverty sort of a combination with Hunger?
Thank you very much for your time.
Sincerely, F.B.T
Dear F.B.T.,
Here are my answers to your questions:
2. Is there not enough food to go around? There is enough food to go around. See our the section on "Is there enough food to feed everyone" in our World Hunger Facts
http://worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm .
5. Is poverty sort of a combination with Hunger? Poverty is the main cause of hunger. See the section "Causes of poverty" in our World Hunger Facts.
1. Why is there such a thing as World Hunger? See the section "Causes of poverty" in our World Hunger Facts. I would say also that people do not care enough to address the problem fully in their own nations--this for various reasons such as pursuit of their own self-interest, and
because many governments are ill-suited to address a major problem such as hunger.
3. What is one way to solve this issue? I think that at bottom the issue will be solved when very poor people have jobs that lift them out of poverty and thus hunger. China has done a very good job of lifting many of its people out of hunger and you might look more closely at what China has done.
4.What countries have the highest rate of hunger? Look at the latest FAO edition of The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2011. It can be downloaded at
http://www.fao.org/docrep/014/i2330e/i2330e.pdf At the end (p. 48) , there is a technical annex which gives the proportion of undernourished in the total population and you can see which countries have the highest rate of hunger.
Thanks very much for asking these useful questions.
Editor, Hunger Notes
(May 13, 2011) Hello, my name is K.M. I am a senior at Mount Saint Charles Academy in Woonsocket Rhode Island. My school focused a lot on community service and how to better our world. I personally am also an advocate for community service. One of my classes this year is called the Christian Action Program or CAP class. This class combines an aspect of community service along with learning about the Catholic Social Justice teachings. This quarter as part of class we are required to do an action project. This action project entails researching a social justice issue, having an interview with an expert and then “taking action”. My group and I decided to do “living on a dollar a day” as our issue. Upon researching, we stumbled on your website. We thought this would be a perfect source and foundation for our project.. I was wondering if you would answer a couple of questions for me. What is the definition of hunger? What percent of the world is a third world country? What percent of the world lives on “a dollar a day” standards? What is the best resource for people who are “living on a dollar a day”? Thank you so much for your time, K.M.
Dear K.M.,
Here are my answers to your questions.
1. What is the definition of hunger?
Hunger is a term which has three meanings (Oxford
English Dictionary 1971)
(May 1, 2011 ) Dear Hunger Notes,
My name is J.M. and I am in 8th grade at Fransworth Middle School.
I am doing a research project on world hunger. I have a couple of questions for
a professional about world hunger. Please see below and answer as soon as
possible.
1. What was the first recognized case of world hunger?
2. What are we doing to stop world hunger?
3. What are the big organizations
that are helping to end world hunger?
4. Do you think that world hunger can
be ended?
5. What do you think is the main cause for world hunger in the
world?
6. Are there ways people can help in small ways?
7. Do people care about ending world hunger?
8. Do you think most people are well informed about what is happening to the undernourished people in places like Africa?
If they aren’t do you think they would try to help of ignore and not help the people in places like Africa that are struggling to stay alive?
9. Is the Federal government doing anything to stop world hunger from spreading?
Please get back to me as soon as possible.
Thank you :)
J. M.
Dear J.M,
Given your time constraints and mine, we
have settled on your first four questions. Here are my
answers:
1. What was the first recognized case of world hunger?
Hunger in the world, including people starving to death in large numbers, has been around for many thousands of years. Famine is a name for large scale hunger. See an encyclopedia entry for famine, for example the Wikipedia entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine.
2. What are we doing to stop world hunger?
If we divide the world into developed and less developed countries then I think it can be said that both the developed and less developed countries have a verbal commitment to the economic development of less developed countries, which almost everybody takes as the main way to reduce hunger, and in fact all nations do take some practical steps in this direction. Basically countries try to adopt economic policies that will make their economies grow, producing more goods and services, with everyone presumably getting some benefit from the increased production, although often,
really typically, the benefits are very unequally distributed, with 'them that has, gets' and the poor get relatively little
or really nothing. You might look at Wikipedia's article 'economic development' (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_development) though it is not very good.
Developed countries support this process with some amount of development assistance (see the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_aid) which is typically a very small percentage of what a developed country produces. For example United States official development assistance is .2 of one percent of US national output (called Gross Domestic Product or GDP), a very small amount. (See Wikipedia 'official development assistance'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Development_Assistance). By comparison, the United States spends 4.7 percent of its GDP on military expenditure (Wikipedia 'List of countries by military expenditures'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures) or 23.5 times as much as
the United States spends on development assistance. Some of this development assistance is specifically targeted to assist hungry people. If you added up things it would certainly come to many billions of dollars, and thus sounds like a lot of money, but in the grand scheme of things the amount of money that goes to help hungry people is a drop in the bucket.
3. What are the big organizations
that are helping to end world hunger?
Considering the broad overall picture it is goverments as indicated above and the capitalist system/private enterprise/markets and science/technological advance that are probably considered as the forces that will (may?) end hunger or reduce it substantially. There has certainly been progress in reducing the percentage of people in the world that are hungry. The problem is that hungry people are really at the margins of everyone's thoughts and actions, which are mainly focused on self interest.
On a different level of response to this question, some institutions that do respond to hunger issues and hungry people include the World Food Program, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (http://www.cgiar.org/), the
Food and Agriculture Organization, private voluntary organizations such as
Catholic Relief Services, development assistance agencies such as the
United States Agency for International Development, and others.
4. Do you think that world hunger can
be ended?
My short answer is no. It will be reduced in terms of the
percentage of the people of the world that are hungry, and
there will probably be some reduction in the absolute
numbers. The latest estimation by the Food and Agricultural
Organization is that there are 925 million hungry people. I
doubt very much if the number of hungry people will fall
below 500 million in the next 20 years and I wouldn't be
surprised if it was higher than that--between 500 million
and 1 billion or more.
I hope this response is
not too late. Excellent questions!
Editor, Hunger Notes
(April 15, 2011) Dear Hunger Notes,
Our names are Carter and Ashley. We are in Mrs. Ingelright's class at Gwin Elementray in Hoover, Alabama. We are working on a very special project called A Light Bulb. We chose to do our research on poverty, and we're trying to solve the problem of how to educate others about this important topic. You could help us with our research by answering the questions below.
1. What is the main reason whow poverty and hunger started?
2. Would poverty spread throughout the world if we didn't help it?
3. How can we help people who are in poverty and are hungry?
4. Do kids that experience hunger do as well in school?
5. What can I do as an elementary student to help solve hunger in our state or educate other people about our topic?
Sincerely,
Ashley and Carter
Dear Ashley and Carter,
Here are my answers to your very interesting questions. (I did not respond to question 3, due to lack of time.)
1. What is the main reason why poverty and hunger started?
Poverty and hunger go very far back, really into prehistory. Very early humans were 'hunter-gathers'. That is to say, they lived by killing wild animals and by looking for and gathering food that grew in the wild. People didn't get very far out of poverty, though they may well have been happy with their way of living. Native Americans, before the arrival of Europeans, had this way of living, for example. A lot of human history is really the invention of ways to produce more food and other useful (and some not so useful) objects. For example, various kinds of plants were brought into cultivation, such as corn, seed varieties were improved to produce more, and other steps were taken to increase output, such as the discovery and use of various types of fertilizer. Also there was a vast increase in new ways of producing goods, such as the use of various types of energy including coal and oil, to stand in for human power in producing goods and make the production of many more goods possible. As this greater production occurred, often referred to as an economic surplus, inequality sprang up, with some people getting a lot, while others had barely enough to live. This was basically due to the fact that smaller groups could conquer others and establish their rule and dominance. This also has been a phenomenon for thousands of years. So the two reasons for poverty and hunger--low levels of production and then, as production gradually rose, inequality have around for quite some time.
2. Would poverty spread throughout the world if we didn't help it?
Both no, and yes. Take the no part of the answer first. A basic idea of a capitalist economic system, first set out by someone called Adam Smith, is that people do things like save money, invest in new factories, invent improved ways of doing things, and that doing so will not only benefit the people that are doing them, but the rest of the people in society as well. That being said, I think there is plenty of room for specific policies to keep hunger and poverty from increasing. In particular, those who are poorest in a society often get very little of the benefits of living in a society where most people are many times richer than they are, and this situation can be helped by specific actions by others, such as voting for government income supplements for the poorest people.
4. Do kids that experience hunger do as well in school?
No. There are really two aspects to this question. Children that show up to school hungry do not do as well in learning (as measured say, by a test at the end of the day) as children who are not hungry. The second part takes a longer-range view of child hunger—as
something that lasts for years for many children. These
children, hungry for many years, grow up to be adults who
are shorter, less healthy, and, it appears, with reduced
ability to think.
5. What can I do as an elementary student student to help solve hunger in our state or educate other people about my topic?
Preparing and delivering your presentation to others is really quite an accomplishment, and you should be proud of yourselves. Perhaps there is a food bank or food pantry in your community that you and your family could donate to. Keeping an interest in the topic of hunger and poverty and learning more would be very valuable. Maybe writing a short letter to your local newspaper about hunger in Alabama. It would be interesting to see if it would be published.
Good luck with your project. If you have time drop me a line and tell me how it went.
Editor, Hunger Notes
(April 12, 2011) Dear Hunger Notes,
My name is Tinchin. I am a student from St Mary’s college. I am currently studying stage 2 Research Project. The Research Project is a subject which enables students to pick a topic of their interest and investigate it. My research topic question is ‘How to develop a website to raise awareness of world hunger’. I am going to make a website which is aimed at making teenagers become aware of world hunger. I am researching how to what types of information would be suitable for a website about world hunger?
What types of information would you want to see on the website about world hunger?
Kind regards, Titchien
Dear Titchen Majok,
The simple answer to
your question is that we are also trying to develop a
website to raise awareness of
world hunger.
Thus, just look at what we do from an analytical and
critical point of view.
Certainly some things are
more basic than others.
The hunger fact sheets
for the US and the world do try to lay out the basic issues.
See
http://worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm
and
http://worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/old/us_hunger_facts.htm
The hunger quizzes are a valuable source of some
basic information. See
http://worldhunger.org/contributefood.htm and
perhaps especially the one on 'what does long term hunger
feel like' and the video on hunger in India.
Definitely take a look at the learn more about hunger
page
http://worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/old/us_hunger_facts.htm
and the help reduce hunger page
http://worldhunger.org/reduce.htm.
I
hope this is helpful. Please send us a link to your website
when it is done. I am sure we could learn some things by
seeing your website.
Editor, Hunger Notes
(April 2, 2011) Dear Hunger Notes,
Thanks so much for your website and work. I was commissioned to make a short documentary on a performance art project by a young man named Alex Donaghy. His project was about world hunger and American apathy. We credit your website as a source and used some information you provide. I think you will find his composition rather interesting. Check out the video here:
http://vimeo.com/21014203 Let me know what you think.
Matthew Armstrong, Web Developer, Filmmaker, and Abolitionist
Dear Matthew,
Thanks very much for sharing your very interesting video with us! I am sure many of our readers will want to view the video, too.
Editor, Hunger Notes
