Introduction
- The common reasons of starvation.
- The increase of the prices on grain;
- The declining quality of water and soil;
- The social reasons and consequences of hunger.
- The current examples of the starving countries and their cooperation with International Organizations.
- Possible solutions of the worldwide hunger and the recommendations to help the starving countries.
Introduction
For many years’ scholars, journalists and other enthusiasts have studied population, agricultural, economic and environmental trends with their interactions and the consequences of them for the future generations, as they mostly have an ability to create the political tensions also with the possibilities of the collapses of the societies and the governments. With the current agricultural and environmental problems, like the water, air and soil pollution, resulting in their bad agricultural quality, the food shortage and a decline in the quality of it must not be neglected.
It has been a common belief that the problem of starving was only a local one, reflecting only the situation in one country of the Third World; however, even the developed Western countries are struggling with the problem of the food quality. The continuous failure to be healed from the environmental problems also rejects any positive perspectives for the food economics with the eroding soils, low-quality water and the rise of temperatures make the worldwide social crisis possible and even inevitable.
- The common reasons of starvation.
1.1 The increase of prices on grain
The rise of the prices on grain in 2007 and 2008 with its official description of the food quality purposes has deeper reasons and consequences, as it`s currently being driven by the consumption trend; therefore, the change of the grain prices is only possible with the change of the trend itself. Figure 1, which is mentioned lower is the illustration of the rising demand with a continuous extension of it of more than 70 mln people each year; moreover, the 60% of such demand is being created by the African and Eastern developing countries and the countries with the transitional economics. However, the figures show us that India consumes approximately a pound of grain per day; on the contrary, the USA and Canada consume four-time more grain per person, although the 90% of this consumption is the indirect consumption of animal products, as they are fed by grain products.
Figure 1. Rising hunger in the World`s 70 least developed countries.
1.2. The declining quality of water and soil
Julian Cribb in his book “The Coming Famine: The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It” also describes the current state of the food and water usage. He states that approximately 70% of the water resources are used in the food industry and the rest 30% go to the home usage and for other production industries. He also concludes that the potential shortage of the water supply will also reflect on the shortage of the crops harvests with an inevitable rise of the prices on them; moreover, this situation is about to have the negative consequences for at least one billion people in the World.
With the declining quality of water and its constant pollution, the production of fish and sea products is also under threat of declining and the price increase. With the current over consumption trends and the environmental changes, it makes the famine closer for every person of the World also. The constant use of nitrogen fertilizers makes the soil also losing its fertile qualities and the amount of future harvests, as a result.
2. The social reasons and consequences of hunger.
As we`ve described the main sources and reasons of the starvation, we should also describe the current consequences of them. The protests of 2008 against the rising prices on food showed that the famine has its foundation in poverty and social vulnerability; however, these reasons are obvious, as they usually go hand-in-hand with each other – the socially unprotected people are the poorest and the hungriest.
Hunger is also unavoidable when the distribution of physical goods and services makes the social groups live only on the entitlements that obviously cannot include enough food for each family and even each member within one family. Some scholars conclude also that every household`s entitlement should contain enough food to avoid the starvation. The bright examples of such programs are the food stamps in US and the Zero Hunger Project in Brazil, as they have their main aim in supplying the food to the poorest households, providing the needed food security.
However, the hunger vulnerability also means the susceptibility of the populations to the shortages of the food supply, and this gives the people the reasons to strike against the governments, especially in the countries, where the food entitlements are low. An example of this was in February 2007, when thousands of Mexicans marched the streets of their native capital protesting against the rising prices of food, and tortillas in particular, as their price had grown up for 40% in a couple of month. This increase was also resulted by the big demand for corn products in US by the ethanol industry, pushing the price of corn to its highest levels for that time. Moreover, it`s one of every seven Mexicans lives below the official poverty line, as his earnings are too small to afford shelter, clothing and food.
3. The current examples of the starving countries and their cooperation with International Organizations.
The short answer on “What are the exact countries that suffer from the hunger most?” cannot be certain, as there is not enough sufficient data for deep analysis. Field reports of World Food Programme (WFP) showed that Burundi, Nepal, Yemen, and other countries in 2008 confirmed the negative predictions that the poor countries-importers of food, as island countries, countries in conflict and Western African countries, were the ones to have the worst consequences of the rising food prices in the World. Despite this fact, from the high price of the food suffered the net-exporting countries, like Uganda, Mozambique and Thailand in 2009.
Did all countries that were recovered by the entitlements of the World Organizations had their goal to tackle the rising prices? Yes, they did, and it is confirmed by the scholars, as there were five big aid programmes established to struggle with the food crisis. Among them were the WFP country programmes reported in September 2008, EC Food Facility prioritized the 50 countries, and World Bank Global Food Crisis Response Fund12 with FAO Soaring Food Prices Programme that encompass more than 70 countries of the World. However, the study concludes that among the 55 countries labelled as “most highly” and/or “extremely” vulnerable to the increase of the food price by the World Organizations were the countries that never received any entitlements from the programs mentioned above, like Chad, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Morocco, Mongolia, The Republic of Congo, Papua New Guinea, Tunisia and the others. That demonstrates that the Organizations could not help the starving nations, as they cannot adequately evaluate the needed ones due to the obstacles in finding the corresponding data for their predictions.
4. Possible solutions of the worldwide hunger and the recommendations to help the starving countries.
The only possible solution of the water crisis is the improving its usage and saving it with the help of the technical improvements and developments with social and governmental awareness. The pressure of the population is not only the main reason of the water supply shortage, it`s has a big impact on the agricultural soil areas. In this context, the main factors are the industrialization and a continuous urbanization that result in desertification, increasing toxicity of the soil and the land degradation, as a result. Despite the fact that farmers and agricultural productions are currently doing their best to satisfy the local needs of the agricultural products and even have something for exporting, many experts think that the day, when they`ll not be able to compete with the overgrowing demand will surely come.
The cooperation of the technological developments and the agricultural productions is not only the method of the increasing the amounts of the agricultural production and improving its quality, but it`s also hides the potential in satisfying the mass food needs. In this case, a businessman gains his profits due to the mass production and sales, and more people have their food, at the same time.
Another conclusion is that the governments indeed are willing to help the starving nations, as they are interested in the demand and consumption balance themselves due to various economic and social reasons. However, they sometimes fail to reach their goal due to the insufficient funds spent on the famine struggling purposes and that makes the people struggle even more; moreover, the results of the analysis mentioned above show that sometimes the governments and World Organizations cannot even adequately predict the countries that will be starving in the next period to send them the needed funds and food.
However, it`s only for the people to raise their awareness to the problem and start removing the reasons of it immediately and not fighting the consequences instead.
References
Brown, L. R. (2009). Could food shortages bring down civilization? SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, 50-57.
Cribb, J. (2010). The Coming Famine: The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid it. Ewing: University of California Press,.
Julia Compton, S. W. (2010). Impact of the global food crisis on the poor: what is the evidence? London: Overseas Development Institute.
Thomas J. Bassett, A. W.-N. (2010). The Atlas of World Hunger. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
