Year of the Hungry: One billion people will go hungry around the globe next year

[Karmadillo]

This article is worth reading in full. While the situation is bad enough, global warming and the current financial crisis are likely to make things much worse. The idea that we can spend trillions on wars of aggression and trillions more to allow a criminal ruling class to live the parasitic life to which they've become accustomed seems so wrong in light of the horrific future that appears to be waiting for us if we stay on our current path.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/year-of-the-hungry-1000000000-afflicted-1213843.html

One billion people will go hungry around the globe next year for the first time in human history, as the international financial crisis deepens, the United Nations has told The Independent on Sunday.

The shocking landmark will be passed – despite a second record worldwide harvest in a row – because people are becoming too destitute to buy the food that is produced.

Decades of progress in reducing hunger are being abruptly reversed, dealing a devastating blow to a pledge by world leaders eight years ago to cut it in half by 2015.

Rich countries have failed to provide promised money to boost agriculture in the Third World; the financial crisis is starving developing countries of credit and driving their people into greater poverty, and food aid to the starving is expected to begin drying up next month.

Development charities recently called on US president-elect Barack Obama to put the escalating food crisis "front and centre" of his priorities.

<edit>

At a special summit in June last year, rich governments pledged $12.3bn (£8.4bn) to tackle the food crisis, but have so far handed over only $1bn of it, as they have scrambled to provide trillions to bail out failing banks.

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[valerief]

1. Good thing we invest our farmland to grow corn for cows that we eat and make us sick.

for the sarcasm-impaired
:sarcasm:

[vadawg]

2. mmmmmm cows and corn, i think ill BBQ later.

[valerief]

3. LOL

:rofl:

[lunatica]

4. The real tragedy, according to this article

Is that it isn't lack or shortage of food that's the problem. It's that people are becoming too poor and destitute to buy it.

[izquierdista]

5. The tragedy is that kind of thinking

That the poor should BUY food instead of GROW it. Of course to do that, they need a little land and some seeds or starter plants, and some government support. But given a little bit of help, the poor and destitute don't need to rely on the charity of moneyed donors.

If the North Koreans could work in the fields instead of practice for the Arirang, they might have enough food.
If the people in Darfur were given nopal and improved millet, instead of visits by the Janjaweed, they might have enough food.
If the people in the Niger delta didn't have toxic refinery wastes to deal with, they might have enough food.

The problem that many of these poor have is that someone else thinks they have a better idea of what they should do than those people actually raising enough food to feed themselves. Americans have no idea how lucky they are to have a Department of Agriculture that has worked for over 150 years to support local agriculture through their cooperative extension program. It is one bit of American culture that every country should emulate, with the possible exception of Greenland.

[wildflower]

6. I agree that is part of the solution

I think the solution is multi-pronged and includes birth control, more efficient food production and distribution, and education. Also, while charities and foundations provide wonderful services, addressing the need for food more systematically (from the governmental level) would be more efficient, as you pointed out in your mention of the Department of Agriculture.

[opihimoimoi]

7. Time for TOGA Party.....Louie Louie