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World Food & Hunger

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( Hunger )
foodline
Picture Credit: Associated Press
More than a billion people suffer from chronic malnutrition. In spite of official pledges to halve the world's hungry, the trend now runs in the opposite direction. More than thirty million people die of malnutrition and starvation every year - nearly 100,000 every day. A GPF introductory article spells out the problems. The section General Analysis will help to provide a deeper understanding of hunger and food challenges.

The Emergency Food Relief System does not work well. Food assistance is often too little and too late.  And it is frequently a means for donor countries to dump subsidized agricultural surpluses, damaging small producers in recipient countries where production is already insufficient.

An international policy process, coordinated by the United Nations, has been considering systemic reforms, but little fundamental change has been accomplished to insure food security.  Large agrobusiness companies, like Montsanto, Cargill, McDonalds and ConAgra, dominate food policy, just as they reign over the production chain itself and shape the food system.

drought_unep
Picture Credit: UNEP
The globalized Trade and Food Production System boosts industrialized agriculture and leads to speculation in agricultural commodities. It pushes small farmers into monocrop production, reducing local food security.  Biofuels have diverted very large quantities of land and produce away from basic food crops. The system of agricultural Land Ownership has grown steadily more unequal, as financial pressures concentrate landholdings.

small farmers n24
Picture Credit: N24.de
To reduce the hungry, food production must be more equitably distributed at a time when world population is rising and agricultural systems are exposed to the damaging effects of Environmental Degradation and Climate Change.  Agriculture not only suffers from environmental problems, it also contributes to them, through pollution, overgrazing, and release of greenhouse gases.

This site offers much else on global food and agricultural policy, including a unique set of Data on tables and charts on Global Food Aid, showing the astonishing lack of assistance for some key food emergencies. There are also excellent broader data on World Hunger.

In addition, the site follows the NGO Working Group on Food and Hunger, composed of NGOs active at the UN in New York.  The working group, founded in 2008 by Global Policy Forum, carries out regular policy advocacy and education towards a more just and sustainable worldwide food system.

 

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