Figure 1 – Visual representation of world hunger. Source – Google
There is no singular, easy solution to world hunger, yet that does not exclude its abolition. We have been fighting to eradicate severe poverty in different parts of the world for almost fifty years. Many African countries have made great strides in reducing chronic hunger, malnutrition, and weight loss over the last several decades, but with one in every five Africans still “perennially malnourished,” including millions of children, there is much more work to be done to help turn African communities into examples of food security. There are numerous alternatives available to us, both organizationally and personally, to help end hunger once and for all, and it is time to confront the challenges and answers in this article.
Despite advances over the last several decades, around 767 million people worldwide continue to live in severe poverty, with Sub-Saharan Africa accounting for half of them. That is almost one in ten people who are surviving on less than $1.90 per day. The vast majority of the world’s impoverished and hungry live in rural regions and rely on agriculture for subsistence. Their lives, however, are frequently hampered by restricted access to resources, services, technology, markets, and economic possibilities, reducing their productivity and income. Rapid population expansion, rising wars, civil unrest, and climate change worsen the problem, as the poor are always the most susceptible. Crops are devastated when these calamities hit. Sometimes an entire crop is destroyed, leaving people with nothing to eat and no seeds to grow the next year. According to the FAO’s Work on Climate Change report, the climate issue might force an additional 122 million people into severe poverty by 2030. Conflict is the leading source of hunger worldwide, accounting for individuals experiencing severe food insecurity. Prolonged violence ruins livelihoods and drives families to abandon their homes from Mali to Syria to Mozambique, leaving many children, especially girls, hungry. It also makes reaching out to populations in need exceedingly difficult and risky for humanitarian organizations. According to the OECD’s ‘The State of Fragility on 2020’ report, 76.5 percent of people in extreme poverty live in economic systems impacted by fragile nature, disagreement, and violent behavior, and a further 26 million people living in those contexts are expected to fall into extreme poverty as a result of the socioeconomic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its impact on poverty and hunger has been significant in just one year. Loss of livelihoods, interruptions in supply chains, and the pandemic’s worldwide economic effect are forcing more people into severe poverty. Globally, the number of people experiencing food insecurity is expected to nearly double, rising from 135 million at the start of 2020 to a startling 265 million over the year.
Figure 2 – Visual representation of World Hunger. Source – Google
According to the Global Hunger Index 2020, our globalized food systems endanger human, animal, and environmental health. Because humans have intruded on and destructed natural ecosystems to establish, among other things, farm animals’ grasslands, wild creatures have moved closer to regions where humans rear livestock and livestock, uncovering domestic animals to a completely new range of pathogens and vectors to which they are highly susceptible. These illnesses may spread quickly, causing significant morbidity and mortality in animals, as well as trade restrictions and economic losses. Furthermore, food systems have contributed to agro-ecological deterioration and global warming through land-use change, intensive agriculture, large-scale animal production, and other activities. In recent decades, changing lifestyles and diets have boosted demand for animal-sourced goods such as eggs, meat, milk, and fish. In recent decades, the most major driver of biodiversity loss has been the massive expansion in intensive animal agriculture. Our food system as a whole generates 21–37 percent of total net human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, it accomplishes all of this while producing massive amounts of food waste. According to the FAO, more than one-third of all meals are discarded. That equates to 1.3 billion tonnes per year.
Figure 3 – Visual representation of stopping hunger. Source – Google
Although the climate issue is presently having a bigger impact in poor and middle-income countries, the increasingly reliant nature of our agricultural systems implies that our global food system as a whole will be jeopardized. Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) is a wide word that refers to a variety of methods that enable farmers to adapt and become more resilient to a changing climate. Diversifying crop types, conservation agricultural methods, and low-water sack gardens are examples of these practices. Families have benefited from these solutions on several occasions, both nutritionally and monetarily. The usage of biofortified crops, such as iron-enriched beans, iron-enriched pearl millet, and orange-fleshed, Vitamin A-rich sweet potatoes, can assist boost the consumption of key micronutrients in families that are deficient in micronutrients such as Vitamin A and Iron. Crops are threatened not just by drought and flood, but also by insect and fungal infestations. The aerial spray is the only efficient technique to control swarms in such extreme instances, although other agricultural procedures may deal with smaller-scale infestations or even dangerous funguses that can destroy crops.
Gender equality is another important answer to world hunger in two areas: agricultural, maternal, and child health. When food is limited, girls tend to eat less and later. 70 percent of the world’s hungry are women and girls. As families and communities become increasingly stressed, girls are more likely than boys to be removed from school, putting them at risk of a child, early, and forced marriage, gender-based aggression, sexual abuse, and unplanned pregnancy. Women also make up over half of the agricultural labor in many of the countries, and figures from the Food and Agriculture Organization show that providing female farmers similar access to resources as their male counterparts may improve farm output by 20-30%. This may lower the number of hungry people in the world by up to 150 million.
Even before COVID-19, problems like violence and the climate catastrophe were impeding efforts in decreasing hunger. The pandemic’s impact on both the global and local economy is a further setback, increasing existing disparities and forcing more people into famine. None of this, however, implies that achieving zero hunger by the agreed-upon timeframe will be impossible. We can yet eradicate hunger if the legislative resolve remains and we take bold and decisive action now.
Anand Subramanian is a freelance photographer and content writer based out of Tamil Nadu, India. Having a background in Engineering always made him curious about life on the other side of the spectrum. He leapt forward towards the Photography life and never looked back. Specializing in Documentary and Portrait photography gave him an up-close and personal view into the complexities of human beings and those experiences helped him branch out from visual to words. Today he is mentoring passionate photographers and writing about the different dimensions of the art world.
