Hunger
Hunger is the physical sensation of desiring food. However when we talk about people suffering from hunger we usually refer to those who, for sustained periods, are unable to eat sufficient food to meet basic nutritional needs. i.e. for weeks, even months, its victims must live on significantly less than the recommended nutritional levels that the average person needs to lead a healthy life.
Daily undernourishment is a less visible form of hunger -- but it affects many more people
1) How much food do you need?
The energy and protein that any person needs varies according to age, sex, body size, physical activity and to some extent climate. On average, the body needs more than 2,100 kilocalories per day per person to allow a normal, healthy life. Extra energy is needed during pregnancy and lactation.
2) Manifestations of hunger
The sensation of hunger, a lack of food in stomach, is universal. But there are different manifestations of hunger:
• Starvation It is a severe deficiency in caloric energy, nutrient, and vitamin intake. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, death. It is described as a "state of exhaustion of the body caused by lack of food."
• Under-nourishment is a quantitative term and is used to describe the status of people whose food intake does not include enough calories (energy) to meet minimum physiological needs for an active life. At present, there are 870 million undernourished people worldwide, most of them in developing countries.
• Malnutrition is qualitative and means 'badly nourished’; Malnutrition is characterized by inadequate intake of protein, energy and micronutrients which are essential for growth and healthy living. Thus a malnourished person does not necessarily feel hungry but starved of right nutrition these people suffer from frequent infections and diseases. Malnutrition is measured not by how much food is eaten but by physical measurements of the body - weight or height - and age.
Malnutrition
Malnutrition covers a range of problems, such as being dangerously thin, being too short for one's age, being deficient in vitamins and minerals (such as lacking iron which causes anemia) or even being too fat (obese). Each form of malnutrition depends on what nutrients are missing in the diet, for how long and at what age. The most basic kind is called protein energy malnutrition. It results from a diet lacking in energy and protein because of a deficit in all major macronutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats and proteins. Other forms of malnutrition are usually the result of vitamin and mineral deficiencies (micronutrients), which can lead to anemia, scurvy, pellagra, beriberi and xeropthalmia etc and ultimately, death.
Deficiencies of iron, vitamin A and zinc are ranked among the World Health Organization's (WHO) top 10 leading causes of death through disease in developing countries.
Malnutrition is measured using the following indicators:
• Wasting is an indicator of acute malnutrition that reflects a recent and severe process that has led to substantial weight loss. This is usually the result of starvation and/or disease.
• Stunting is an indicator of chronic malnutrition that reflects the long-term nutritional situation of a population. It is calculated by comparing the height-for-age of a child with a reference population of well nourished and healthy children.
• Underweight is measured by comparing the weight-for-age of a child with a reference population of well-nourished and healthy children. An estimated 146 million children in developing countries are underweight.
3) Where are the hungry?
The percentage of hungry people is highest in east, central and southern Africa. Around three-quarters of undernourished people live in low-income rural areas of developing countries, principally in higher-risk farming areas. However, the share of the hungry in urban areas is rising.
Of the total number of the 870 million chronically hungry people, over half are in Asia and the Pacific and about a quarter are in Sub-Saharan Africa.
(Source: United Nations World Food Program)
4) Global Hunger Index
The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a multidimensional statistical tool used to describe the state of countries’ hunger situation which is published every year. The GHI measures progress and failures in the global fight against hunger.
The Index was adopted and further developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and was first published in 2006 with the Welthungerhilfe, a German non-profit organization (NGO) and also Concern Worldwide.
GHI 2012: In 2012, the GHI report focuses on the question of how food security and sustainable use of natural resources can be achieved, when the natural sources of food become scarcer and scarcer .The theme being called - The Challenge of Hunger: Ensuring Sustainable Food Security under Land, Water, and Energy Stresses.
The published report have shown a proportional growth in hunger reduction of people worldwide but recorded the progress speed was tragically slow and alarming.
The report in its findings recorded twenty countries across the world mainly from South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa to be highly alarming and have highest level of hunger.
As per the report, India instead of its fast paced economic growth in past two decades has lagged behind in improving its record in Global Hunger Index chart. In the list of 79 countries in the global Hunger Index, India was ranked 65th behind China that was placed at 2nd place position, Pakistan at 57th and Sri Lanka at 37th position.
The report also points out the three countries Bangladesh, India and Timor-Leste constitutes to the highest occurrence of underweight children under the age group of five years, which records to more than 40 percent in each country. India was ranked second with 43.5 percent of the children less than five underweight in the list of the 129 countries compared for underweight child, after Timor-Leste.
5) Hunger and MDGs
The 1st goal of the Millennium Development Goals is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger in the world by 2015. It calls for a reduction by half of the proportion of people suffering from hunger between 1990 and 2015. Rather than setting a definite number to be reached, this hunger objective therefore depends on the size of the future world population.
Its five hunger objectives are to make sure that everyone in the world has access to enough nutritious food all year long; to end childhood stunting; to build sustainable food systems; to double the productivity and income of smallholder farmers, especially women; and to prevent food from being lost or wasted.
As per UN 38 countries have already met internationally-set hunger eradication targets to halve the percentage of hungry people. However this target appears difficult to achieve, due in part to persistent inflation in food prices.
In India eradicating hunger remains a key challenge. The proportion of population that has a dietary energy consumption of below the permissible standards of 2,100-2,400 kcal has risen from 64 percent in 1987-88 to 76 percent in 2004-05. Malnourishment is also an indicator of food insecurity. In 1990, when the MDGs were formulated 53.5 percent of all Indian children were malnourished. The target is to reduce malnourishment to 28.6 percent. However still about 43% of Indian children remains malnourished.
6) What causes hunger?
In purely quantitative terms, there is enough food available to feed the entire global population of 7 billion people. And yet, one out of every eight people is going hungry (about 850 million people worldwide). The reasons are:
• Poverty Trap: The poverty hunger nexus is considered the most important factor in causing hunger among people. The poverty-stricken do not have enough money to buy or produce enough food for themselves and their families. In turn, they tend to be weaker and cannot produce enough to buy more food. Thus the poor are hungry and their hunger traps them in poverty.
• Politics of Distribution: Amartya Sen Won a Nobel Prize in part for demonstrating that hunger in modern times is not typically the product of a lack of food. Rather, hunger usually arises from food distribution problems, or from governmental policies in the developing world. It has since been broadly accepted that world hunger results from issues with the distribution as well as the production of food, with Sen's 1981 essay Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation having played a prominent part if forging the new consensus
• Food wastage is very high – In developed countries a lot of food items are wasted due to improper eating habits. Whereas high losses in developing nations are mainly due to a lack of technology and infrastructure as well as insect infestations, microbial growth, damage and high temperatures and humidity.
• War - Since 1992, a large number of short and long-term food crises can be attributed to emergencies triggered by conflicts. From Asia to Africa to Latin America, fighting displaces millions of people from their homes, leading to some of the world's worst hunger emergencies. Since 2004, conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan has uprooted more than a million people, precipitating a major food crisis -- in an area that had generally enjoyed good rains and crops.
• Socio Cultural Factors: World Bank studies consistently find that about 60% of those who are hungry are female. The apparent explanation for this imbalance is that, compared to men, women more often forgo meals to feed their children. Also lack of awareness among people about proper dietary requirements and nutritional value of various food items causes malnourishment.
7) Challenges to Food Security
Food Security exists when all people at all times have both physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs for an active and healthy life. However there are several factors which can impede this goal.
1. Nature -
Natural disasters such as floods, tropical storms and long periods of drought are on the increase -with calamitous consequences for food security in poor, developing countries. Drought is now the single most common cause of food shortages in the world. In 2011, recurrent drought caused crop failures and heavy livestock losses in parts of Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya. In many countries, climate change is exacerbating already adverse natural conditions.
2. Over-exploitation of environment-
Poor farming practices, deforestation, over cropping and overgrazing are exhausting the Earth's fertility and spreading the roots of hunger. Increasingly, the world's fertile farmland is under threat from erosion, salination and desertification.
3. Poor agricultural infrastructure –
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 2004 Food Insecurity Report, all the countries that are on track to reach the first MDG have significantly better than average agricultural growth. Many developing countries lack key agricultural infrastructure, such as enough roads, warehouses and irrigation. The results are high transport costs, lack of storage facilities and unreliable water supplies which ultimately reduces agricultural yields and access to food.
4. Land distribution and usage –
As a result of decreasing farm sizes where land is diverted from agricultural to non agricultural practices and inefficient farm practices the production is decreasing. Moreover focus on export oriented agriculture and on cash crops, biofuels etc is also posing a major challenge to food security.
5. Population Growth -
Population growth will make the challenge of feeding everyone that much more difficult. The FAO estimates the world’s population will reach 9.3 billion people by 2050 and 10.1 billion by 2100. Much of this increase is projected to come from developing countries with rapid population growth. To meet the world’s increasing demand for food, an anticipated 70-percent boost in global food production will be necessary by 2050.
6. Changing consumption Patterns –
Rising incomes around the world have led to improvement in the diets of tens of millions of people. As income rises above the basic subsistence level, diets diversify and move beyond grains toward greater consumption of animal protein in developing countries. The FAO predicts that by 2050, the expanded world population will be consuming two thirds more animal protein, with meat consumption rising nearly 73 percent and dairy consumption growing 58 percent over current levels. To meet the growing demand considerable increase in livestock production would be required in future.
8) Global effort to combat Hunger
• After 2nd world war, USA which became the period's most dominant national actor was strongly supportive of efforts to tackle world hunger and to promote international development. It heavily funded various humanitarian efforts and multilateral agencies to combat hunger.
• Later United Nations became a leading player in coordinating the global fight against hunger. The UN has three agencies that work to promote food security and agricultural development: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
FAO is the world’s agricultural knowledge agency, providing policy and technical assistance to developing countries to promote food security, nutrition and sustainable agricultural production, particularly in rural areas.
WFP’s key mission is to deliver food into the hands of the hungry poor. The agency steps in during emergencies and uses food to aid recovery after emergencies.
IFAD, with its knowledge of rural poverty and exclusive focus on poor rural people, designs and implements programmes to help those people access the assets, services and opportunities they need to overcome poverty
The annual FAO, WFP and IFAD The State of Food Insecurity in the World reports provide a statistical overview on hunger, and are usually considered the main reference in this regard.
• The MDG goal of reducing to half the number of hungry people by 2015, created considerable awareness and pressure on the governments worldwide to initiate several measures in achieving that end. Their efforts were supplemented by the multilateral organizations. For e.g. in 2008, World Bank established the Global Food Crisis Response Program to assist the countries hardest hit by the dramatic rise in food prices.
• Prior to 2009, efforts to fight hunger were mainly undertaken by governments of the worst affected countries, by civil society actors, and by multilateral and regional organizations. In 2009, Pope Benedict published his third encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, which emphasized the importance of fighting against hunger. The encyclical was intentionally published immediately before the July 2009 G8 Summit to maximize its influence on that event. At the Summit, which took place at L'Aquila in central Italy, the L'Aquila Food Security Initiative was launched, with a total of US$22 billion was committed to combat hunger.
• Since the 2009 G8 summit, the fight against hunger has remained a high profile issue among the leaders of the world’s major nations. In April 2012, the Food Assistance Convention was signed; the world's first legally binding international agreement on food aid. The May 2012 Copenhagen Consensus recommended that efforts to combat hunger and malnutrition should be the first priority for politicians and private sector philanthropists looking to maximize the effectiveness of aid spending. In May 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama launched a "New alliance for food security and nutrition"—a broad partnership between private sector, governmental and civil society actors—that aimed to "...achieve sustained and inclusive agricultural growth and raise 50 million people out of poverty over the next 10 years."
9) Situation of Hunger in India
Despite significant economic progress in the past decade, India is home to about 25 percent of the world's hungry poor. With an absolute number of about 230 million, India has the largest number of hungry people in the world. Although the country grows enough food for its people, pockets of hunger remain.
According to government figures, around 43 per cent of children under the age of five years are malnourished and more than half of all pregnant women aged between 15 and 49 years suffer from anaemia.
Stark inter-state disparities exist with some states better off on all social indicators than the others. India State Hunger Index 2008 highlights the continued overall severity of the hunger situation in India, while revealing the variation in hunger across states within India. An alarming finding is that not a single state in India is either low or moderate in terms of its index score; most states have a “serious” hunger problem, and Madhya Pradesh, has an “extremely alarming” hunger problem. Some other states that suffer from hunger and malnutrition include Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
10) Indian effort to combat Hunger
With frequent famines and stagnant agricultural growth feeding the huge population of India was a major concern after independence. So the 1st 5year plan focused mainly on agriculture to increase the food production. However India still had to depend on food aid like PL480 of USA. It was only after green revolution India attained self reliance and also surplus in food grain production.
Currently India is facing a paradoxical situation where at one side it has a record production of food grains with overflowing godowns and on the other hand having the largest number of hungry people in the world. To overcome this situation and combat the chronic hunger and malnutrition the government has undertaken several initiatives. Some of which are:
• The Targeted public Distribution system of India along with Antodaya anna Yojana aims to provide access to food grains to the most vulnerable sections of our society
• There are a number of food-for-work programmes and employment guarantee schemes, the largest of which is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Scheme (MNREGA) aims to increase income levels to provide access to food and nutrition.
• Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojna and National Food Security Mission, the two of the major schemes for the agriculture sector to increase the agricultural productivity to feed the hungry millions of our country. There are also considerable efforts to usher in a 2nd green revolution in our country. With scare land resource in our country these schemes to increase productivity attain a very important role in achieving food security in future
• Among the direct nutrition supplementation programs are the Midday Meal Scheme, which is now almost universal in all the states, and the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), which is the largest supplementation program of its kind in the world (and probably the largest ever in human history) plays a huge role in reducing hunger and malnutrition among children.
• Food fortification programs and schemes like Nutri Farms and Livestock development programs are striving towards reducing malnutrition among the people.
• The proposed National Food Security Act when implemented would make the access of food a matter of right with a governmental commitment to provide cheap food grains to its people.
11) Action plan against hunger
Food donations (food aid) sent to the worst affected countries by those who have plenty is a first and essential step in emergencies, and nearly 10 million tonnes of cereals are provided each year to poorer countries as food aid. However it is not a lasting solution to the problem. The other steps to be adopted are:
• Promoting greater self-reliance in countries suffering from hunger - hence reducing dependency on imports.
• Re-examining farm policies in developing countries to make sure that they encourage - rather than discourage - farmers to produce food on a dependable basis. Policies should aim to ensure fair prices for farm produce, access to the means of production, and wise land and water use.
• Reorienting national policies to encourage both public and private investments in food and agricultural sector.
• Improving transportation, marketing and storage systems to ensure that available food reaches areas where and when it is needed most.
• Re-examining food aid to make sure it reaches the hungry but does not disrupt national production.
• Greater co-operation among developed and developing nations to remove trade barriers and help stabilize international prices for agricultural commodities.
• To make sure developing countries have a fair chance of competing in world commodity markets and that agricultural support policies do not unfairly distort international trade.
• Avoiding over consumption and the waste of food in all countries.
• To ensure that countries are prepared to adapt to climate change and mitigate negative effects.
Daily undernourishment is a less visible form of hunger -- but it affects many more people
1) How much food do you need?
The energy and protein that any person needs varies according to age, sex, body size, physical activity and to some extent climate. On average, the body needs more than 2,100 kilocalories per day per person to allow a normal, healthy life. Extra energy is needed during pregnancy and lactation.
2) Manifestations of hunger
The sensation of hunger, a lack of food in stomach, is universal. But there are different manifestations of hunger:
• Starvation It is a severe deficiency in caloric energy, nutrient, and vitamin intake. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, death. It is described as a "state of exhaustion of the body caused by lack of food."
• Under-nourishment is a quantitative term and is used to describe the status of people whose food intake does not include enough calories (energy) to meet minimum physiological needs for an active life. At present, there are 870 million undernourished people worldwide, most of them in developing countries.
• Malnutrition is qualitative and means 'badly nourished’; Malnutrition is characterized by inadequate intake of protein, energy and micronutrients which are essential for growth and healthy living. Thus a malnourished person does not necessarily feel hungry but starved of right nutrition these people suffer from frequent infections and diseases. Malnutrition is measured not by how much food is eaten but by physical measurements of the body - weight or height - and age.
Malnutrition
Malnutrition covers a range of problems, such as being dangerously thin, being too short for one's age, being deficient in vitamins and minerals (such as lacking iron which causes anemia) or even being too fat (obese). Each form of malnutrition depends on what nutrients are missing in the diet, for how long and at what age. The most basic kind is called protein energy malnutrition. It results from a diet lacking in energy and protein because of a deficit in all major macronutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats and proteins. Other forms of malnutrition are usually the result of vitamin and mineral deficiencies (micronutrients), which can lead to anemia, scurvy, pellagra, beriberi and xeropthalmia etc and ultimately, death.
Deficiencies of iron, vitamin A and zinc are ranked among the World Health Organization's (WHO) top 10 leading causes of death through disease in developing countries.
Malnutrition is measured using the following indicators:
• Wasting is an indicator of acute malnutrition that reflects a recent and severe process that has led to substantial weight loss. This is usually the result of starvation and/or disease.
• Stunting is an indicator of chronic malnutrition that reflects the long-term nutritional situation of a population. It is calculated by comparing the height-for-age of a child with a reference population of well nourished and healthy children.
• Underweight is measured by comparing the weight-for-age of a child with a reference population of well-nourished and healthy children. An estimated 146 million children in developing countries are underweight.
3) Where are the hungry?
The percentage of hungry people is highest in east, central and southern Africa. Around three-quarters of undernourished people live in low-income rural areas of developing countries, principally in higher-risk farming areas. However, the share of the hungry in urban areas is rising.
Of the total number of the 870 million chronically hungry people, over half are in Asia and the Pacific and about a quarter are in Sub-Saharan Africa.
(Source: United Nations World Food Program)
4) Global Hunger Index
The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a multidimensional statistical tool used to describe the state of countries’ hunger situation which is published every year. The GHI measures progress and failures in the global fight against hunger.
The Index was adopted and further developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and was first published in 2006 with the Welthungerhilfe, a German non-profit organization (NGO) and also Concern Worldwide.
GHI 2012: In 2012, the GHI report focuses on the question of how food security and sustainable use of natural resources can be achieved, when the natural sources of food become scarcer and scarcer .The theme being called - The Challenge of Hunger: Ensuring Sustainable Food Security under Land, Water, and Energy Stresses.
The published report have shown a proportional growth in hunger reduction of people worldwide but recorded the progress speed was tragically slow and alarming.
The report in its findings recorded twenty countries across the world mainly from South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa to be highly alarming and have highest level of hunger.
As per the report, India instead of its fast paced economic growth in past two decades has lagged behind in improving its record in Global Hunger Index chart. In the list of 79 countries in the global Hunger Index, India was ranked 65th behind China that was placed at 2nd place position, Pakistan at 57th and Sri Lanka at 37th position.
The report also points out the three countries Bangladesh, India and Timor-Leste constitutes to the highest occurrence of underweight children under the age group of five years, which records to more than 40 percent in each country. India was ranked second with 43.5 percent of the children less than five underweight in the list of the 129 countries compared for underweight child, after Timor-Leste.
5) Hunger and MDGs
The 1st goal of the Millennium Development Goals is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger in the world by 2015. It calls for a reduction by half of the proportion of people suffering from hunger between 1990 and 2015. Rather than setting a definite number to be reached, this hunger objective therefore depends on the size of the future world population.
Its five hunger objectives are to make sure that everyone in the world has access to enough nutritious food all year long; to end childhood stunting; to build sustainable food systems; to double the productivity and income of smallholder farmers, especially women; and to prevent food from being lost or wasted.
As per UN 38 countries have already met internationally-set hunger eradication targets to halve the percentage of hungry people. However this target appears difficult to achieve, due in part to persistent inflation in food prices.
In India eradicating hunger remains a key challenge. The proportion of population that has a dietary energy consumption of below the permissible standards of 2,100-2,400 kcal has risen from 64 percent in 1987-88 to 76 percent in 2004-05. Malnourishment is also an indicator of food insecurity. In 1990, when the MDGs were formulated 53.5 percent of all Indian children were malnourished. The target is to reduce malnourishment to 28.6 percent. However still about 43% of Indian children remains malnourished.
6) What causes hunger?
In purely quantitative terms, there is enough food available to feed the entire global population of 7 billion people. And yet, one out of every eight people is going hungry (about 850 million people worldwide). The reasons are:
• Poverty Trap: The poverty hunger nexus is considered the most important factor in causing hunger among people. The poverty-stricken do not have enough money to buy or produce enough food for themselves and their families. In turn, they tend to be weaker and cannot produce enough to buy more food. Thus the poor are hungry and their hunger traps them in poverty.
• Politics of Distribution: Amartya Sen Won a Nobel Prize in part for demonstrating that hunger in modern times is not typically the product of a lack of food. Rather, hunger usually arises from food distribution problems, or from governmental policies in the developing world. It has since been broadly accepted that world hunger results from issues with the distribution as well as the production of food, with Sen's 1981 essay Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation having played a prominent part if forging the new consensus
• Food wastage is very high – In developed countries a lot of food items are wasted due to improper eating habits. Whereas high losses in developing nations are mainly due to a lack of technology and infrastructure as well as insect infestations, microbial growth, damage and high temperatures and humidity.
• War - Since 1992, a large number of short and long-term food crises can be attributed to emergencies triggered by conflicts. From Asia to Africa to Latin America, fighting displaces millions of people from their homes, leading to some of the world's worst hunger emergencies. Since 2004, conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan has uprooted more than a million people, precipitating a major food crisis -- in an area that had generally enjoyed good rains and crops.
• Socio Cultural Factors: World Bank studies consistently find that about 60% of those who are hungry are female. The apparent explanation for this imbalance is that, compared to men, women more often forgo meals to feed their children. Also lack of awareness among people about proper dietary requirements and nutritional value of various food items causes malnourishment.
7) Challenges to Food Security
Food Security exists when all people at all times have both physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs for an active and healthy life. However there are several factors which can impede this goal.
1. Nature -
Natural disasters such as floods, tropical storms and long periods of drought are on the increase -with calamitous consequences for food security in poor, developing countries. Drought is now the single most common cause of food shortages in the world. In 2011, recurrent drought caused crop failures and heavy livestock losses in parts of Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya. In many countries, climate change is exacerbating already adverse natural conditions.
2. Over-exploitation of environment-
Poor farming practices, deforestation, over cropping and overgrazing are exhausting the Earth's fertility and spreading the roots of hunger. Increasingly, the world's fertile farmland is under threat from erosion, salination and desertification.
3. Poor agricultural infrastructure –
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 2004 Food Insecurity Report, all the countries that are on track to reach the first MDG have significantly better than average agricultural growth. Many developing countries lack key agricultural infrastructure, such as enough roads, warehouses and irrigation. The results are high transport costs, lack of storage facilities and unreliable water supplies which ultimately reduces agricultural yields and access to food.
4. Land distribution and usage –
As a result of decreasing farm sizes where land is diverted from agricultural to non agricultural practices and inefficient farm practices the production is decreasing. Moreover focus on export oriented agriculture and on cash crops, biofuels etc is also posing a major challenge to food security.
5. Population Growth -
Population growth will make the challenge of feeding everyone that much more difficult. The FAO estimates the world’s population will reach 9.3 billion people by 2050 and 10.1 billion by 2100. Much of this increase is projected to come from developing countries with rapid population growth. To meet the world’s increasing demand for food, an anticipated 70-percent boost in global food production will be necessary by 2050.
6. Changing consumption Patterns –
Rising incomes around the world have led to improvement in the diets of tens of millions of people. As income rises above the basic subsistence level, diets diversify and move beyond grains toward greater consumption of animal protein in developing countries. The FAO predicts that by 2050, the expanded world population will be consuming two thirds more animal protein, with meat consumption rising nearly 73 percent and dairy consumption growing 58 percent over current levels. To meet the growing demand considerable increase in livestock production would be required in future.
8) Global effort to combat Hunger
• After 2nd world war, USA which became the period's most dominant national actor was strongly supportive of efforts to tackle world hunger and to promote international development. It heavily funded various humanitarian efforts and multilateral agencies to combat hunger.
• Later United Nations became a leading player in coordinating the global fight against hunger. The UN has three agencies that work to promote food security and agricultural development: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
FAO is the world’s agricultural knowledge agency, providing policy and technical assistance to developing countries to promote food security, nutrition and sustainable agricultural production, particularly in rural areas.
WFP’s key mission is to deliver food into the hands of the hungry poor. The agency steps in during emergencies and uses food to aid recovery after emergencies.
IFAD, with its knowledge of rural poverty and exclusive focus on poor rural people, designs and implements programmes to help those people access the assets, services and opportunities they need to overcome poverty
The annual FAO, WFP and IFAD The State of Food Insecurity in the World reports provide a statistical overview on hunger, and are usually considered the main reference in this regard.
• The MDG goal of reducing to half the number of hungry people by 2015, created considerable awareness and pressure on the governments worldwide to initiate several measures in achieving that end. Their efforts were supplemented by the multilateral organizations. For e.g. in 2008, World Bank established the Global Food Crisis Response Program to assist the countries hardest hit by the dramatic rise in food prices.
• Prior to 2009, efforts to fight hunger were mainly undertaken by governments of the worst affected countries, by civil society actors, and by multilateral and regional organizations. In 2009, Pope Benedict published his third encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, which emphasized the importance of fighting against hunger. The encyclical was intentionally published immediately before the July 2009 G8 Summit to maximize its influence on that event. At the Summit, which took place at L'Aquila in central Italy, the L'Aquila Food Security Initiative was launched, with a total of US$22 billion was committed to combat hunger.
• Since the 2009 G8 summit, the fight against hunger has remained a high profile issue among the leaders of the world’s major nations. In April 2012, the Food Assistance Convention was signed; the world's first legally binding international agreement on food aid. The May 2012 Copenhagen Consensus recommended that efforts to combat hunger and malnutrition should be the first priority for politicians and private sector philanthropists looking to maximize the effectiveness of aid spending. In May 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama launched a "New alliance for food security and nutrition"—a broad partnership between private sector, governmental and civil society actors—that aimed to "...achieve sustained and inclusive agricultural growth and raise 50 million people out of poverty over the next 10 years."
9) Situation of Hunger in India
Despite significant economic progress in the past decade, India is home to about 25 percent of the world's hungry poor. With an absolute number of about 230 million, India has the largest number of hungry people in the world. Although the country grows enough food for its people, pockets of hunger remain.
According to government figures, around 43 per cent of children under the age of five years are malnourished and more than half of all pregnant women aged between 15 and 49 years suffer from anaemia.
Stark inter-state disparities exist with some states better off on all social indicators than the others. India State Hunger Index 2008 highlights the continued overall severity of the hunger situation in India, while revealing the variation in hunger across states within India. An alarming finding is that not a single state in India is either low or moderate in terms of its index score; most states have a “serious” hunger problem, and Madhya Pradesh, has an “extremely alarming” hunger problem. Some other states that suffer from hunger and malnutrition include Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
10) Indian effort to combat Hunger
With frequent famines and stagnant agricultural growth feeding the huge population of India was a major concern after independence. So the 1st 5year plan focused mainly on agriculture to increase the food production. However India still had to depend on food aid like PL480 of USA. It was only after green revolution India attained self reliance and also surplus in food grain production.
Currently India is facing a paradoxical situation where at one side it has a record production of food grains with overflowing godowns and on the other hand having the largest number of hungry people in the world. To overcome this situation and combat the chronic hunger and malnutrition the government has undertaken several initiatives. Some of which are:
• The Targeted public Distribution system of India along with Antodaya anna Yojana aims to provide access to food grains to the most vulnerable sections of our society
• There are a number of food-for-work programmes and employment guarantee schemes, the largest of which is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Scheme (MNREGA) aims to increase income levels to provide access to food and nutrition.
• Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojna and National Food Security Mission, the two of the major schemes for the agriculture sector to increase the agricultural productivity to feed the hungry millions of our country. There are also considerable efforts to usher in a 2nd green revolution in our country. With scare land resource in our country these schemes to increase productivity attain a very important role in achieving food security in future
• Among the direct nutrition supplementation programs are the Midday Meal Scheme, which is now almost universal in all the states, and the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), which is the largest supplementation program of its kind in the world (and probably the largest ever in human history) plays a huge role in reducing hunger and malnutrition among children.
• Food fortification programs and schemes like Nutri Farms and Livestock development programs are striving towards reducing malnutrition among the people.
• The proposed National Food Security Act when implemented would make the access of food a matter of right with a governmental commitment to provide cheap food grains to its people.
11) Action plan against hunger
Food donations (food aid) sent to the worst affected countries by those who have plenty is a first and essential step in emergencies, and nearly 10 million tonnes of cereals are provided each year to poorer countries as food aid. However it is not a lasting solution to the problem. The other steps to be adopted are:
• Promoting greater self-reliance in countries suffering from hunger - hence reducing dependency on imports.
• Re-examining farm policies in developing countries to make sure that they encourage - rather than discourage - farmers to produce food on a dependable basis. Policies should aim to ensure fair prices for farm produce, access to the means of production, and wise land and water use.
• Reorienting national policies to encourage both public and private investments in food and agricultural sector.
• Improving transportation, marketing and storage systems to ensure that available food reaches areas where and when it is needed most.
• Re-examining food aid to make sure it reaches the hungry but does not disrupt national production.
• Greater co-operation among developed and developing nations to remove trade barriers and help stabilize international prices for agricultural commodities.
• To make sure developing countries have a fair chance of competing in world commodity markets and that agricultural support policies do not unfairly distort international trade.
• Avoiding over consumption and the waste of food in all countries.
• To ensure that countries are prepared to adapt to climate change and mitigate negative effects.
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