Essay About Much Food And Problem Of World Hunger

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world hunger
By: Anonymous
World Hunger Every day an estimated 24,000 people die from hunger or
hunger related causes. Three-fourths of these deaths are children under the
age of five. One may wonder how this can be living in a country were it
seems so much food is wasted everyday. Food restaurants and grocery
stores throw away food every night before closing. Many Americans waste
food every day within their own homes. With so much “left over” food in
American how is it that an estimated 800 million people around the world
suffer from hunger and malnutrition?1 Well, first we must define the word
hunger. Hunger, in this case, is not just the rumbling in ones stomach that
most of us feel if we have not eaten for a few hours. For this purpose, hunger
is defined as “a condition resulting from chronic under-consumption of food
and/or nutritious food products. It may be precipitated by an inability to
obtain sufficient quantities of food to eat or a failure to consume adequate
quantities of nutritious food products, regardless of the ability to obtain
sufficient food supplies.”2 The problem of world hunger is not that there is
not enough food produced in the world. “World production of grain alone is
over 1.5 billion tons, enough to supply the entire world population with two
pounds a day.”3 This grain combined the current production of other foods
such as meat, fruits, vegetables, and nuts is enough to provide each adult and
child on earth 3000 calories a day which is what the average American
consumes.4 Americans are not the only ones who waste food. People all
over the world are doing the very same thing. And the though it seems that
America has too much food, we Americans have hungry people living right
here in our own country. The world hunger problem lies within the changing
environmental conditions, population, and most of all, poverty. This paper will
discuss the causes, effects and possible solutions of world hunger. There are
three major causes of world hunger, changing environment conditions,
population, and poverty. The environment, of course, is the major element in
the production of food in most countries across the globe. The environment in
which one lives decides what types of food can be produced and how much
of that food can be produced. The weather or climate in any particular
environment can change and affect what people eat and how much of it they
are able to eat. One change in the environment that adversely affects
agriculture is soil erosion. “Some one-third of the worlds cropland is losing
topsoil at a rate that undermines its future productivity.”5 Topsoil is a major
factor in growing most crops. It is the richest part of the soil and contains
minerals and nutrients that most plants need for survival. Too much soil
erosion begins a chain reaction leaving the land susceptible to drought. And
as we all know, very little food can be grown on dry land. A drought not only
affects plants, but as a result of lack of plants and water and in many cases
extreme heat cattle are starved or die from thirst. This loss of organic matter
in the land results in runoff after rainfall and increased runoff and rainfall
allows for flooding. A flood, like the drought though they are opposite, wipes
away crops or kills them because of the overabundance of water. People can
attempt to produce food by planting and caring for their land and animals, but
Mother Nature has the ultimate say and humans are unable to predict what
she will do next. The next two causes of hunger we will discuss together
because they coincide, population and the poor. Population is an issue not
because there are too many mouths to feed, as was stated earlier, but
because the hungry people of the world are the majority who have large