Essay/Term paper: World hunger

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Society Term Papers

World Hunger

*** Warning: the following is a look at World hunger which some people may
disagree with, if you would look at non-partisan look at World hunger then keep
reading ***

Hunger is an issue which many people think lies little importance. Im
going to give you a look at World Hunger as a Picture of Poverty, how it affects
Third World Nations, and How World Hunger is a disease that is plaguing our
society.
"Food is more than a trade commodity," pleaded Sir John Boydorr in 1946.
"It is an essential to life." The first director-general of the new Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Boydorr fruitlessly proposed
plans for a World Food Board to protect nations and people from hunger in the
world market system. That market system does not distribute food on the basis of
nutritional need. This is one of the most troubling and complex realities of
the world hunger problem. During recent famines in Ethiopia, in another example
of the workings of the marketplace, foreign food aid begins trucked to famine
areas from ships at the docks passed food leaving the famine areas on other
vehicles. Merchants were taking food from famine areas to parts of the country
where there was no famine. World Hunger and poverty can be seen in many ways.
But first lets establish a solid definition of poverty : Poverty is a state in
which the ability of individuals or groups to use power to bring about good for
themselves, their families, and their community is weakened or blocked. When
someone lacks food, this is referred to as material poverty. This sort of
poverty can hurt people in many ways, it can hurts people's self esteem and it
can also hurt their outlook on life. Lets say you come home from work to see
your family, instead of seeing a family which is happy because it has a roof
over its head you come home to see that your children don't have enough food on
the table to keep them properly nourished. This hurts familys and tears some of
them apart. It is also just a very cruel punishment because after a while of
being hungry, you start to starve to death and when you starve, the body just
starts to eat itself up to find the nourishment it needs. It can also effect
people's outlook on life and on people in a major way. People who are denied
food can start to hate life and everyone around them. There's also two
instincts in life that will always kick in when your hungry: The survival
instinct which is to survive no matter what the situation is and the instinct to
provide food for your family. I am not a father myself, but I talked to my own
dad about this. My own father said that if I was ever starving that he would do
anything it takes to make sure that I have the proper nourishment. Im not sure
my father would go this far, but I know there are some fathers that would reach
a point to where they would even kill for food. This feed the monster we call
the "spiral of violence" and helps to encourage it grow. Because we have in the
long run, poor people stealing and sometimes killing for no reason. They
shouldn't have to steal or kill for food, they should at least have enough food
to eat to survive. In fact, there is enough food grown in the world to supply
ever man with thirty-six thousand calories a day, this is enough to cause weight
gain. In my opinion, I feel some governments want their people to be hungry.
Babies are being born every second, the population is starting to get out of
control, there are more and more people in the world, I think some governments
are trying to use their control on food to control the population by starving
their people. There are a few other solutions to World Hunger, for instance,
one is Food Security. The opposite of being threatened by hunger is to have
food security. The two basic elements of food security are, first, a regular
food supply large enough to meet human nutritional needs and, second, access to
a supply of food in sufficient quantity at all times to maintain a healthy,
active life. The world hunger problem is the absence of food security for 10
percent to 20 percent of the world's population. Th steady food supply could
come from fellow rich countries.
Hunger affects Third World Nations in many ways also. A Third World
Nation or Country is a developing country, for example: Ethiopia could be
considered a Third World Country. Currently, around fifteen to twenty million
people die each year of hunger-related causes, including diseases brought on by
lowered resistance due to malnutrition. Over 40 percent of all deaths in poor
countries occur among children under five years old. There are seven main
reasons why poor countries can't provide food for their people: 1) The demand
for exports: Wealthy countries demand products like coffee, sugar, lumber, and
grains from poor countries. So a poor country's economy moves away from
providing food and resources for its own people. 2) Government by the elite:
Many of the world's poorest and hungriest nations are controlled by governments
consisting of the nations' wealthiest members. Government policies tend to
favor the interests of the wealthy rather than the poor. 3) Conditions on aid
programs: Aid that is offered by wealthy countries to poor countries often comes
with strings attached. For example, a wealthy country might give a poor country
money, but require the poor country to use the money to build roads, bridges,
and airports. This in no way helps the poor country provide food for its people.
4) Debt payments and conditions: Most poor countries are deeply into debt to
banks. Paying interest on loans takes money from programs that could help
eliminate hunger. 5) Discrimination: Ethnic, religious, and gender
discrimination within poor countries also cause poverty. Religious and ethnic
minorities are likely to be more impoverished then other groups, and with no
money comes no food. 6) Arms sales: Military spending by poor countries is
encouraged by rich countries that make and sell arms. Because of this, valuable
money which could go to help by food is spent on weapons. The spiral of
violence is also fueled by the availability of weapons, which increases
repression and adds to poverty and hunger. 7) Abuse of land and other resources:
The abuse of a poor country's resources leads to environmental degradation.
Damaged land cannot be effectively farmed for local food production. These are
seven reasons which contribute to the hunger in some Third World Countries. So
a lot of hunger is caused by the military, so even when countries aren't at war,
they can cause death just by being selfish. The United states dies offer help
to some of these countries , but might wonder how come the us doesn't give more
help to these countries? Well, to ally themselves with the interests of the poor,
groups such as U.S. AID would have to support those groups throughout the third
world that are confronting the issue of power-the issue of control over the
resources. To do so would pit these groups against the interests of the
powerful dominating most governments in the world today. To do so would go
against the "formidable lobbyists of multinational corporations". To do so
would be to risk supporting democratic economic alternatives abroad that might
lead more Americans to question how just their own economic system has become.
For these reasons, no U.S. government group is about to do so. This is where
we conclude that agencies of the U.S. government are incapable of arriving at a
correct answer of the root causes of hunger- an answer that puts control over
resources in the central position. Currently, the United States is trying to
remove some obstacles which help contribute to World Hunger, for instance they
try to send as much aid as they can to hungry nations. But again, are we really
sending as much aid as we could?
Where there is hunger, the path to a workable solution starts by asking
what normally entitles people to a share of food in the "particular social
context" in which they are living. Well I say they are automatically entitled
to a share of food because they are humans that were given life to by god, and
that is our guarantee to food. Hunger can also seen as a disease that is
plaguing our society. The world currently spends $550 billion a year producing,
buying, and selling military weapons. The world currently spends about $22 on
military purposes for every dollar it spends on official development aid. One
out of every four human beings has no access to safe drinking water. What the
world spends in half a day on military purposes could finance the entire malaria
eradication program of the World Health Organization. The rice of one military
tank vehicle could provide improved storage facilities for 100,000 tons of rice.
Everyday, the world produces two pounds of grain for every man, woman, and child
on earth. That is enough to provide everyone 3,000 calories a day, well above
the recommended daily minimum of 2,300 calories. What am I trying to prove with
these facts? I am trying to prove that as human begins and since we are all
god's children, we should be worried about giving each other support so we can
all survive. Instead we are worried about who will have the most tanks or guns.
If we stopped spending so much money on military expansion, we could easily
provide every man, woman, and child in the world with enough food to get fat!
Hunger is plaguing our society, its a disease that kills many people every year,
and the sad thing is that so many people in rich countries like the United
States, Japan, and etc, will never know the truth about World Hunger. Everyday
I can see America indirectly making the situation worse and worse. I flip on
the television everyday and see commercials about the starving the children and
they show little kids on laying on a bed starving to death. I find this very
disrespectful to the people who are really starving, they shouldn't be shown
like animals on a tv screen, they should be given dignity. They shouldn't be
shown on tv at all, I am sure they are not proud of the way they look and
probably wouldn't want to be on tv. We should stop trying to have the biggest
military force and start trying to live like Jesus would want us to and help our
fellow brothers in Christ.
Due to many self-centered greedy people, we have fellow humans starving
to death. This can't keep going on because every time someone starves, we are
not just hurting that person but we are also hurting ourselves. We all live in
the world as one race with different sections. The sections being the different
nationalities we have in the world. And whenever one division gets hurt, the
whole gets weakened. We need to depend on each other to survive from day to day
healthy. It is true the poverty is a main cause of world hunger but it isn't
the only cause. If the economy was serving the people and not the other way
around then more people would have the money needed to buy food to live from day
to day. And if greedy governments gave some of he people money or food they
would have money to buy food. If the Military stopped using so much money to
make machines that kill, there would be more money for people to buy food with.
And if more people cared there would be a lot less starving people in this world.
If this hunger doesn't end, I can see a very pathetic world in our future.