Hunger and Poverty

The UN reported that its goal of halving the number of people living in poverty by 2015 is unlikely to be reached due to several factors including the economic climate and, more dramatically, the predicted continued rates of population growth. (Read more here.) The world population is expected to reach 7 billion at some point in 2011.

Meanwhile, a separate UN report says that due to population growth in Asia, specifically, the continent is at risk for a major hunger crisis and the resulting social upheaval. Hundred of billions of dollars needs to be invested in infrastructure, especially in irrigation systems:

India, China, Pakistan and other large countries avoided famines in the 1970s and 1980s only because they built giant state-sponsored irrigation systems and introduced better seeds and fertilisers. But the extra 1.5 billion people expected to live on the continent by 2050 will double Asia's demand for food, says the report from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Bank-funded International Water Management Institute (IWMI).

A combination of very little new land left for cultivation, an increasingly unpredictable climate and water supplies stretched to the limit means the only realistic option to feed people in the future will be better management of existing water supplies, according to the report.

For the full article see here.

SO LETS GO DO THAT!!! I'd be surprised if it happens though, for some reason or another.. call me cynical.

Hunger and Farming

Last week, Anuradha Mittal, in a Commondreams article asked the question: What will the G8 Summit do, exactly, about hunger? She points out:

With hunger framed as a crisis of demand and supply, the proposed solutions have come to primarily focus on boosting agricultural production through technological solutions like genetic engineering (GE) and chemical inputs or/and on removing supply-side constraints to ensure access to food through liberalization of agricultural trade. This framework was used, for instance, to explain the 2008 food crisis and has permeated international efforts geared towards challenging hunger without questioning the policies promoted by the same donor countries and the multilateral institutions they control, over the last three-four decades that undermined food security in the developing countries in the first place. Their faulty analysis yields an incomplete understanding of the causes of world hunger and hence, broken solutions...
Assertion that free trade will help solve hunger is however based on amnesia. Liberalization of agricultural markets has yet to deliver on the promised or expected gains in growth and stability in the developing world. In a submission to the Commission of Sustainable Development (CSD) in May 2009, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, pointed to the multilateral trading system as being "heavily skewed in favor of a small group of countries, and in urgent need of reform." (TWN, 2009) He was referring to the heavily subsidized agriculture in the rich countries which has helped them secure markets by flooding developing countries with cheap farm imports, making subsistence farming uncompetitive and financially unstable.

Meanwhile, a USA Today article from yesterday talks about young people taking responsibly food production into their own hands and buying small plots of land to start small organic farms. Not exactly the fast lane to ending world hunger, but an interesting step towards responsible consumption and production.

Obama is asserting that accessible education is the primary way to fight social ills, with his proposed education plan that would help displaced workers go to college. His goal of spending $12 million to boost the U.S. network of community colleges, combined with new loan legislation, should help provide training for workers who are out of jobs and for young people entering a difficult job market, Obama says. For the complete article in the NYTimes, read here. I don't want to be cynical but I certainly want more information...

Lastly, I am really concerned about the continued controversy over mountaintop removal in Appalachia. An article in Tricities (which I read on Commondreams) talks about the film "Coal Country" that engages with the negative effects of coal mining in Appalachia. Mari-Lynn Evans, the executive producer of the film, asks the important question:
“Why are these people [in the Appalachian region] the poorest in the United States of America when they are living on land that is the richest in the United States of America? It seems obvious from that alone that there is a problem. ... We’ve got to figure out how Appalachia is going to flourish in a future that does not involve coal.”
This, in my mind, is directly connected to world hunger and poverty. How ironic (or predictable, depending on how you look at it) that some of the geographical areas richest in resources are the most impoverished and hungry? In the U.S. that clearly follows too. I just grew up knowing, accepting, that Appalachia was poor. Never once was I taught to ask why??!? WHY is it so poor when it has so much to offer?