Background
Hunger is a situation whereby an individual is feeling uncomfortable or weak due to a lack of food, coupled with the desire to eat. Hunger has become one of the greatest disasters in the world today despite not being featured on breaking news. According to the current United Nations statistics, at least 1 in 8 people go hungry worldwide. As the world’s population increases, the depletion of resources is experienced, which has led to increases in the hunger scale over the past decade. The increase in hunger scale has become the greatest threat to health; people affected can easily suffer from diseases such as malaria, AIDS, and tuberculosis due to general body weakness (World Health Organization, 2015).
World hunger is mostly experienced in developing countries, where 98 percent of the world’s hunger resides. Africa is the leading continent with the greatest number of countries that suffer from hunger. UN report states that in 19 nations in Africa, 25 percent of its citizens go hungry (World Health Organization, 2015). Hunger in Africa has been encouraged by political unrest, poverty traps, climatic conditions, and other crises such as terrorism. People who suffer most from hunger are those who flee their homes and reside in refugee camps, and finding food there is a problem.
Local Organizations and international organizations, such as the United States, spend over $30 million on a weekly basis to ensure that they supply food to these areas (Maddison, 2007). Despite the fact that these agencies supply food, they are still not enough to solve a problem or to feed the entire affected group. According to my understanding, the food and hunger crisis can be solved only when it is addressed on a global scale. International communities have to join hands together and come up with solutions that will address the issue.
The Solution To The Hunger Problem
Hunger issues should be treated as a priority across the globe. Hunger comes in as a result of other issues, such as poverty and war crises, and to solve hunger effectively, poverty and war crises need to be addressed because all are political, and they end up affecting the entire economy of a country. People go hungry not because they lack food but because they are not able to buy food and because of the unequal distribution of food resources (Struble and Aomari, 2013). To solve hunger problems, the following need to be addressed:
Social Or Political Change
The highest percentage of food shortages is caused by political issues such as war, corruption, and unequal distribution of public resources, and this has been a big driver of world hunger growth. Social change cannot be achieved overnight, but it needs to be addressed. The superpower nations need to focus on how to solve these issues by ending wars but not supporting the wars in the affected countries.
Government Intervention
The government should focus on how to solve food shortage problems. This can be done through various programs such as empowering women, education, and population control mechanisms. These programs are currently supported by United Nations agencies. Empowering women about issues of gender inequalities will greatly impact food access, financial issues, and families ‘ ability to provide for themselves. Educating citizens will also solve problems such as poverty, which is the problem of hunger. Education can provide opportunities and more access to income and food, and finally, the government needs to intervene in population control. Due to the high birth rate, governments cannot be able to provide the basic needs of their citizens. Families should be educated on how to plan their families to avoid adding up the problems at hand.
Sustainable Food
Governments and international agencies should help people transform agriculture. They should provide funds that help people invest in agricultural opportunities, and they will be in a position to provide food for themselves. This is very important because it will reduce dependency levels, and eventually, every household can have an opportunity to change their living standards and create their own steady supply of food. This is achieved by providing people with financial support, such as access to credit. These credits will enable the poor to support themselves on farms, and eventually, several industries will come up addressing many problems in the region.
Food Donations
I would not encourage food donation as a main solution because it is important to reduce the dependency ratio in the world. Food donations are only important when issues at hand cannot be easy to solve, and also, during the transition process, it is good to help them grow by donating food. Food donations have reduced world hunger only, but it is not a permanent solution to the problem.
Advantages Of The Above Solutions
- Political and social change will reduce the poverty and hunger rates in the world.
- Empowering women will improve their living standards and increase access to food and income.
- A sustainable food program will help people produce a steady supply of food and reduce dependency.
- Food donations are very important when it comes to emergencies and during the transition process.
Disadvantages
- Political change is very difficult to implement and very slow to take place.
- It is very expensive to implement the above programs in affected areas.
In conclusion, solving hunger effectively requires stakeholders to address the main causes of poverty. By analyzing the affected countries by hunger, the main problems in distribution and land ownership, politics and political unrest, inefficient use of land, and illiteracy levels are very high. When the root causes of poverty are addressed, solving hunger will be very simple and cheap.
References
Maddison, A. (2007). The World Economy Volume 1: A Millennial Perspective Volume 2: Historical Statistics. Academic Foundation.
Struble, M. B., & Aomari, L. L. (2013). The position of the World Dietetic Association: Addressing world hunger, malnutrition, and food insecurity. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 103(8), 1046.
World Health Organization. (2015). World Health Statistics 2015. World Health Organization.
