World hunger and poverty is such a major and ongoing issue, that you don’t see many people doing anything about it anymore. We have so many people living in poverty inside and out of the U.S., but no one is acting on it to decrease this problem. We have the resources and food to do it, but for some reason we won’t. I believe world hunger and poverty can be eliminated by acting on certain deeds that can help the livelihood of the poor and underprivileged.
“About 98 percent of undernourished people live in developing countries (Ferrari, 2019). For example, Asia, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa would be the worst countries struggling with hunger today. If we were to cut down on food waste we would have enough food and money to help feed the homeless and hungry in America and other starving countries. In order for us to try and cut down on world hunger, the U.S., (because they have more money and resources) could put together an organization that uses our unused food to send to other countries. If you look at South Korea they have cut down on their food waste by 93%. In 1995 South Korea used to only recycle 2% of there food waste,but now they recycle 95% of their food waste (Broom, 2019). In South Korea they have scales in their trash cans that measure how much food they are throwing away, and charge them depending on the weight. If we were to do this it could cut back a lot on our food waste which could save money to fund for food to feed others.
It is said that part of our problem for not producing enough food is due in part to women farmers. The reason this is said is because they face more challenges than men, which causes them to grow less food. “According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), women farmers typically have less land, fewer animals, less seeds, and lower education levels.” It is said that if women farmers were given the same level of terms as men, the number of hungry people would go down by 17 percent (Broom,2019). If the women farmers were given the same equal opportunity as men I know they would be able to grow a lot more food, which can go into the organization for funding food for others. Who knew that there would be so much sexism in farming.
Countries that are dealing with poverty and hunger have a death rate of about 303,000 mothers and 2.5 million newborn babies, from not having skilled doctors and nurses to help deliver them. Children are so underweight in developing countries that there's about 20 million infants born underweight each year! Those numbers are staggering. Being in poverty is causing all these children to become sick and undernourished that will eventually lead to death. Theses are horrifying facts, and I believe it’s something we can hopefully stop. In the U.S. we eat so much and have such big portions that we are considered an obese country. Cutting down on our portions and serving sizes could definitely produce a great portion of food to give to the people in poverty here in the U.S. and other countries. Statistics say that 5.9 percent of children under the age of 5 in the U.S. were overweight for their age in 2018 and 13.2 percent of adults were overweight in 2012 (UNICEF,2019). While kids in developing countries are underweight and dying from not enough food, where as we have too much of it. This is mostly driven from our big portions and fast food being pushed on society. America likes everything large and extra large; it's go big or go home! So they supersize everything we eat. We have portions on all of the food labels that we eat but no one ever follows them. In fact some people actually eat double maybe triple the portion size. They also put steroids and hormones in the food which makes it more addicting and fattening, causing people to eat more. This is what causes people to become overweight and obese which leads to health problems and shorter lives. If we keep this up we’ll end up like the people on Wall-E. But if we were to cut down the prices on some of the healthy foods people would cook more and eat out less. Driving the fast food sales to go down and close, which will save money for extra food.
Can poverty be reduced? I think it can. Right now “more than 780 million people live below the international poverty line on $1.90 a day, and more than 11% of the world's population is living in extreme poverty (UN Ending Poverty, 2019).” This issue is caused by people not having enough jobs to work at or access to livelihood, not having access to clean water or food, even poor education is a factor of why these countries are in such poverty. I feel a lot of it can be helped by the government, but there are only concerned with getting rich themselves. In this article, Le Journal International Archives, it is said that foreign aid is hurting more than it is helping Sub-Saharan Africa. As said in the “big push” “theory the negative consequences of aid which seem to have left developing countries in a worse place than before (Lyons,2014).” The reason for this is that the money Africa is receiving they are not using it to help the poor, they are using it to help the rich get richer. So why keep sending them money, they do it to make themselves look better and like they actually care about the other countries. Since aid isn't really helping it should be reconstructed and new policies should be put in place to show progress. The way I see it if we can change the way these government pyramids are set up we can stop the cycle of only helping the rich get richer and start helping the poor get out of poverty.
There are known facts that countries that were previously in poverty made it out and are doing very well for themselves now. There are ten countries that used to live in poverty, but now are now much more rich. Number one being Luxembourg, Europe. Back in the early 19th century 80 percent of the population were employed in agriculture. Many families could barely afford to live, so when things got really bad about a third portion of the Luxembourg population moved to other places like the U.S. to survive. But something changed in Luxembourg. Mines and factories sprung up, and the country's lucrative steel industry was born. By the end of the 19th century, Luxembourg had become one of Europe's leading steel producers (lovemoney, 2018) due to the discovery of iron ore in the south. A couple of other ones would be South Korea, Singapore, Spain, Saudi Arabia, and Ireland just to name a few. If you look at Singapore they were a country with no natural resources, and high unemployment. Half of the people being illiterate, and a good portion of the population living in the slums, living conditions were deplorable and work unsteady. Life was hard.That was when their first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew turned everything around.He was prime minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990. He made english the common language upping the workforce, he single handedly cut down taxes, and corruption, and banned trade unions in an attempt to attract foreign investors. By doing this, foreign money began to come in. With the new money coming into Singapore, the government spent it on improving its infrastructure,such as housing and more. by the 1970s, the standard of living improved tremendously.Lee is recognised as the nation’s founding father,with the country described as transitioning from the “third world country to first world country in a single generation”under his leadership. Now look at Saudi Arabia, plenty of people pay exorbitant prices for an exclusive vacation experience in an all inclusive luxury hotels, including world famous Dubai. This clearly is not what it was before. They used to be one of the poorest countries in the world, not even having just the basic necessities like roads, electricity, or even affording the basic need for an education. This goes to show that we can end world hunger and poverty.
Conclusion
To conclude, from the facts that I have found, world hunger and poverty can be decreased maybe even can be rid of forever. We just need to work together to make this planet a better place now and for future generations.