One of the most unimaginable things is that fellow human beings die of starvation. And the numbers are staggering
According to the World Health Organization, hunger is the gravest single threat to the world's public health. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, more than 25,000 people died of starvation every day in 2003, and as of 2001 to 2003, about 800 million people were chronically undernourished. The WHO also states that malnutrition is by far the biggest contributor to child mortality, present in half of all cases. Scientists say millions of people face starvation following an outbreak of a deadly new strain of blight, known as Ug99, which is spreading across the wheat fields of Africa and Asia.
Hartwig de Haen expounds on the numbers.
The data is from the World Health Report 2000 (WHO). The main causes leading to the estimates include diseases and lack of safe drinking water and sanitation. The estimate is a relatively conservative estimate, amounting to a little over 9 million deaths per year, of whom 6 million are children under the age of five who die prematurely, as a direct or indirect result of hunger.
(Another bleak fact is over 2,000,000,000 people suffer from suffer from micronutrient malnutrition.
"The term "hidden hunger" denotes deficiencies of vitamins and minerals. The poor health and loss of human potential that arise from micronutrient deficiencies are enormous")
And due to the food crisis things will get/ have gotten worse.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food supply problems have caused 36 countries to require external assistance just to cope with this global crisis. Twenty-one of these "food insecure" countries are situated in Africa, nine in Asia, four in Latin America and two in Europe, said FAO, a United Nations (UN) agency.
The food crisis is playing out in Sudan a place in which the people have suffered so much, continues to suffer.
JUBA, Sudan, Aug 6 (Reuters) - A global food crisis has taken its toll in Sudan's semi-autonomous south with 12 people dying from hunger in the past week as prices soar and deliveries are hampered by heavy rains, a local official said on Wednesday.
The south is rich in natural resources, but after decades of civil war it relies heavily on imported food from neighbouring east African countries, so rising food and fuel prices globally have hit the region hard.
"In Gogrial East alone, it is reported that 12 people have died of hunger in the last week " said Kuot Deng Kuot, a member of parliament for the area.
The food crisis is playing out in Ethiopia. A drought and raising food prices claimed the life of a three year old boy. His father a farmer speaks
"It's strange to see hunger when everything is so green," said Wariso Shete, 26, a southern Ethiopia farmer who recently buried his 3-year-old son. "But there is no food. The boy just starved."
Once again, images of emaciated children are emerging from this Horn of Africa nation, rekindling memories of the 1984 famine that killed nearly 1 million people. This time Ethiopia has been grappling with a double whammy: drought in its traditional breadbasket and a global food crisis that has pushed prices sky high.
As Lily Tomlin once said (paraphrasing)"things are going to get worse before they get worse."
The food crisis is playing out in Nepal, many parts of the country are facing severe food shortages.
Thousands of people in the mid-western and far western region of the country are facing severe food shortages, raising concerns that it might soon turn into a famine like situation there.
Reports said that thousands of people in rural areas of mid-western Rukum and Rolpa in the far western region are starving due to severe shortage of food items, while efforts to get food to them have been hampered by lack of road connectivity, bad weather (for helicopters to supply food), strikes and fuel shortage.
Worsening the already stark food crisis in Rolpa, the office of Nepal Food Corporation in the district headquarters Libang has stopped selling rice from Sunday, saying that it has run out of stock. Reports said this has caused panic among the people living in Rolpa, sending them in hordes to the office to demand for rice. People come to NFC to purchase rice as the prices here are low compared to private shops.
A report published in today's edition of the Himalayan Times says a decline in maize and wheat production this year was another reason for food scarcity in the district.
Chile, Indonesia, and Egypt plan on taking food crisis issues to the UN. Indonesia's Foreign Affairs Minister knows the issue has to be addressed.
The crisis has created a new geopolitics. ... It has also incited social unrest that threatens stability internationally
So erratic weather conditions augmented by climate change, neo-liberal trade deals, US policy on ethanol and poor infrastructure are the issues going to have to be discussed.
I think the neo-liberal trade policies in particular needs to really be looked at. A case example would be Haiti. In which people have been hard hit by the rising food prices.
The food riots in Haiti were also a result of policies and actions of the international community. Haiti has lost its food sovereignty as a result of decades of foreign-imposed neoliberal measures. This is a concrete example of what longtime Haiti advocate Paul Farmer calls "structural violence"—the long-term underdevelopment and inequalities in the world system.
Many people in Haiti point to the first trigger being the USAID eradication of the Haitian pig population following an outbreak of swine fever. Peasants counted on pigs as "bank accounts" (Diederich 1985) so the action amounted to Haiti's "great stock market crash" (Smith 2001:29) , contributing to Duvalier's ouster on Feb. 7, 1986. Under U.S. military supervision, Duvalier was replaced by an army junta, the CNG, whose finance minister Delatour imposed a series of neoliberal measures, including currency devaluation, trade liberalization, and opening Haiti's agricultural markets to U.S. producers. Today, Haiti is the most "open" economy in the hemisphere.
Raj Patel 'a former employee of international institutions such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization' puts it bluntly "The reason people go hungry is not for a shortage of food. We have enough food to feed everyone. The reason people go hungry is that they are poor."
IS there any hope?
The food crisis reflects a breakdown in our global food system that threatens to worsen poverty, hunger, climate change, and insecurity. Global institutions and governments are responding, yet their answers are vastly inadequate. For decades, trade and investment liberalization have undermined human rights and the environment. The food crisis should help us to understand that now it is time for a new vision of global cooperation, one that is democratic and accountable to people and the planet.