HUNGER AND FOOD INSECURITY

 

जल ही नहीं, भोजन भी जीवन है।

- VEDANT AND RAJVEER

FOOD INSECURITY

Food insecurity refers to alack of access to enough, good, healthy, and culturally appropriate food.

Everybody needs to eat well and we all need a certain amount of daily food to satay healthy and active.

Everybody deserves to eat the food that they think is good for them. It keeps them mentally happy.

Everyone loves healthy food . Healthy eating is nutritious and sustainable. It is full of vitamins, minerals, fiber, energy and all the other things that our body needs to be happy.

FOOD SECURITY

To understand Food insecurity in more appropriate way, we need to throw some light on FOOD SECURITY.

Food security means having reliable access to enough good, healthy, and culturally appropriate food.

Food security is related to all other great and wonderful ideals such as food justice, food sovereignty and food equality. While food security is certainly a crucial part of this, concepts such as food justice and food sovereignty have far-reaching social, economic and cultural implications. So food security is an important part of food justice, but it is not perfect.

HUNGER BY THE NUMBERS

The world produces enough food to feed all 7.5 billion people.

Despite this, 1 in 9 people around the world go hungry each day.

Somalia is the world’s hungriest country as of 2021.

According to the 2021 Global Hunger Index, 47 countries will fail even to reach Low hunger status by 2030 — an increase of 10 countries compared to 2020’s report.

Since 2012, hunger has increased in 10 countries with Moderate, Serious, or Alarming hunger levels.

14 countries have achieved significant improvements in hunger, with a reduction of 25% or more between their 2012 and 2021 GHI scores.

The long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are expected to include 30 million more people undernourished globally in 2030.

CAUSES OF WORLD HUNGER

Many children become stunted (if not worse) due to food insecurity and malnutrition due to hunger. As part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Concern is working to eliminate hunger and malnutrition by 2050. This would mean that about 3 million lives would be changed for the better.

1. POVERTY :- 

Poverty and hunger exist in a vicious cycle. Families trapped in a cycle of poverty usually cannot afford nutritious food, which leads to malnutrition. In turn, malnutrition makes it harder for people to earn more money so they can get healthier food. Families living in poverty can also sell their livestock or equipment to supplement their income. This buys short-term relief, but perpetuates the long-term patterns of hunger and poverty that are often passed on from parents to children.

2. FOOD SHORTAGES :-

 In regions such as the Sahel and Horn of Africa, farming families experience pre-harvest periods known as "hungry seasons". This is the time of year when the supply of food from the previous harvest is exhausted, but there is still some time left to replenish the supply. This forces families to skip one (or more) meals per day in the period before the next harvest - which can be months away.

3. WAR AND CONFLICTS:- 

Conflict and hunger form another vicious-cycle relationship. In South Sudan, civil war has led to mass displacement and abandoned fields. The result is crop failure which, combined with a soaring inflation rate that makes imported food unaffordable, has left 7.2 million people in a food crisis. Likewise, Yemen’s ongoing conflict has led to over half the country (approximately 17 million people) in need of urgent action in the absence of ongoing humanitarian food assistance. 

4. CHANGE IN CLIMATE :-

Countries like Zambia enjoy relative peace and political stability. However, they also suffer from hunger due to climate change. Too little - or too much - rain can destroy the harvest or reduce the amount of available animal pasture. These fluctuations are exacerbated by the El Nio weather system and are likely to increase due to climate change. Extreme climate patterns also affect the poorest regions of the world the most. The World Bank estimates that climate change has the potential to push more than 100 million people into poverty over the next decade.

5. POOR NUTRITION:- 

Hunger isn’t simply a lack of access to food: It’s a lack of access to the right nutrients. In order to thrive, humans need a range of foods providing a variety of essential health benefits.

Malnutrition is especially important for pregnant and lactating women and young children: Nutrition during pregnancy and up to the age of five can help protect babies throughout their lives. Proper nutrition reduces the risk of disease, poor health and cognitive impairment. Through the LANN project, communities in countries such as Sierra Leone are learning how to identify nutrient-rich wild foods in order to make the most of their available resources. This is one of the many ways we find sustainable solutions for malnourished communities.

6. POOR PUBLIC POLICY:-

Systemic problems, like poor infrastructure or low investment in agriculture, often prevent food and water from reaching the world populations that need them the most. 

7. WASTAGE OF FOOD:-

According to the World Food Program, one-third of all food produced - more than 1.3 billion tons of it - is never consumed. What's more, the production of this spoiled food also utilizes other natural resources, when threatened, starvation, poverty and its impact on the countries most affected by climate change. The production of this waste food requires exactly the same amount of water as the annual flow of the Volga River in Russia - and adds 3.3 billion tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

8. FORCED MIGRATION:-

Hunger may be the cause of forced migration, but forced migration may also be the cause of hunger. Many refugees living abroad initially live in neighboring countries with limited resources. In Lebanon, for example, about a third of the population is refugees, which puts a huge strain on resources. Each year, Concern partners with Welthangerhilf to create the Global Hunger Index. Our 2018 edition underscores the link between starvation and forced migration, a problem that can only be solved by political means.