The whole world is consuming more calories than it did forty years ago. The world population is growing at a rate of 200,000 people a day. These people must be fed. How can this be done?
Food producers argue that, in order to feed this growing world population, intensification and extentsification of available potentially arable land is needed. This seems to make sense. If the amount of food we are producing today only covers the population that exists, yet large numbers of people still die as a result of starvation, then even more food will be needed to satisfy the needs of the 9 billion people expected to be living on the planet and consuming its resources by 2050. We must use more land, in a better way.
This all sounds very plausible and is the message we are fed on a constant basis. It is certainly a lot easier for the public and politicians to swallow than blaming ourselves but it is indeed those in developed countries who are to blame. This is not because we throw too much food away (although we do) but because we consume so much more than we need, not only putting ourselves at risk of health problems but preventing others from accessing the resources they need to survive.
Data on the quantity of production suggests that, in fact, there is currently enough food being produced to ensure food security. Thus if we are to consider different dimensions of food security, there is a physical availability of food but not global access. Therefore, assuming that the world’s population continues to grow at its projected rate, poverty and inequality are the real causes of hunger around the world and that as such, focusing on technology alone and hoping that it can be used to produce more food is not enough. Assuming the current trend continues, even producing more and more food will not solve world hunger.
World agriculture, as of 2002 was producing 17% more calories per person than in the 1970s even with an increase of the global population of around 70%. These figures can be explained by both great advances associated with farming production techniques but also the conversion of land into farm land. Furthermore, some estimates state that there is currently enough food produced globally to provide every individual with approximately 2800 kilocalories a day. This figure is more than the NHS recommendations for men and women; which stands at 2500 and 2000 respectively.
The reason for the current hunger and malnutrition of millions of people around the world is not due to the quantity of food being produced but the spread of access to this vital resource.
Unfortunately, the access to food is controlled and determined by the purchasing power of consumers and the evolution of real incomes and food prices. This is because it is more profitable for companies to sell food to richer consumers (even if much of this food is wasted or unnecessary to achieve the recommended calorie intake) than to sell it to poorer individuals at a lower price. A political solution is needed.
Politicians, must accept that the only way to ensure food security is through large and overarching changes to the current global economic system. They must turn away from a focus, and reliance, on technology to increase yields as the solution to solving global starvation.
This in turn leads to a need for further institutions to exist before it is possible to address the paradox that there is enough food produced to feed the world but that there remains 870 million people who are chronically undernourished. This is because, as it stands, the “planet as a whole lacks efficient political instruments able to deal with and govern the technology- and economy-driven processes of globalization”. Even if policy makers wanted to try and implement some kind of redistribution of food, the instruments to do this do not exist.
Hunger is both instrumentally and intrinsically bad. It becomes a cyclical problem as it ultimately leads to even greater hunger due to a reduction of the capacities of people to work and learn and its resulting in (costly) health problems. We must realise that the eradication of hunger is not easy and that it is only achievable through wholesale changes to the structure of the world economy and while technological advances may form part of the solution, they alone are not enough.
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“.. the eradication of hunger is not easy and … it is only achievable through wholesale changes to the structure of the world economy…” The first statement is highly plausible – the second very much less so. No evidence is offered. It might be asking a lot, but an existence proof would help – a proof that there are wholesale changes to the world economy that would eradicate hunger. We could then move on to a topic on which the article is completely silent – what sort of changes might do this?
Really interesting points Tim. The point of the piece was more to raise the possibility of other answers to the problem of millions of people going hungry. I hoped to briefly explore the idea that, if food production was not the problem, then it must be distribution. As the distribution of food is tied up in purchasing power, then an economy where ‘need’ was also factored into the equation would lessen this factor. While I am aware that calls for global redistribution (however this is construed) are not new, I think it is a topic which is not explored in debates concerning global hunger as much as it should be.