When we talk about the problem of world hunger, we are not talking about that desire to eat you feel at lunch or dinner. The problem of hunger is related to the lack of food available to people or the impossibility of being able to access or buy food.
Therefore, hunger in the world is related to the economic issue, directly linked to the misery that some people and most countries suffer. Currently, an estimated 1 billion people around the world suffer from this problem.
To better understand this issue, social scientists have divided hunger into two types: endemic or open and the epidemic or hidden.
Epidemic or open hunger: is one that occurs due to specific situations in a given region or locality, such as pests that affect agriculture and prevent the supply of food, and the carrying out of wars, which generate many deaths and misery among the people of countries reached.
Endemic or hidden hunger: is the one that occurs because of the malnutrition, that is, when people do not have access to enough food to guarantee the amount of nutrients needed by the body.
The UN (United Nations) and the WHO (World Health Organization) define that, per day, each person needs to consume at least 2500 calories. If people consume, on average, less than this, they are considered to be endemic or hidden hunger.
Hunger occurs in many places, often in economically weak countries (some in Africa, others in Asia and the Americas), but this problem is not unique to poor countries or regions. It also manifests itself on the outskirts of large and small cities in rich or emerging countries, including Brazil!
Many children in the world have little access to food¹
How to fight hunger in the world?
There is no consensus on how to solve the problem of world hunger, although it has been decreasing (slowly!) in recent decades.
Many people, countries and NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) invest time, money and resources to fight hunger in the world, believing that only then it will end. Other people believe that this alone is not enough, as it would be necessary to fight inequalities that exist both between countries and within them, mainly increasing the distribution of income.
Does hunger occur because we produce too little food?
For a long time, politicians and thinkers thought that the problem of hunger was aggravated by the growth of populations and the lack of food resources for them. Today, however, we know that this is not true, as technology in agricultural production and other types of food is quite advanced, so that current production levels are more than sufficient to feed the entire world.
The problem is that this production takes place unevenly. Some countries produce more and others produce less, a factor that is directly related to the economic and political characteristics that these countries experience.
Despite these conclusions, there is no complete certainty about the causes and ways to fight hunger in the world. But, without a doubt, it is necessary to combat the inequalities and misery that affect most people.
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¹ Image credits: africa924 and shutterstock
By Rodolfo Alves Pena
Graduated in Geography
