Hunger
Famine: Severe short term shortage of food production or distribution that leads to starvation. This could be because of natural or human causes.
Starvation: Extreme hunger that occurs over a long period of time.
Malnutrition: Poor health caused by too much or too little of one or more essential nutrients
Chronic Hunger: Insecure supply of food affecting more than 850 million people around the world. Lack of opportunity or ability to earn enough money to grow/buy food.
Causes of World Hunger
Extreme weather and climate change-
Natural disasters leave dramatic impact on the production of arable land. And the thing is weather is sometimes unpredictable. Floods, storms, rains, droughts; being the single most common cause of food shortages in the world, heat and other extreme weather can cause communities mass destruction and wipe away any existing farms. The long term damage is sometimes not fixable and some of these communities can never fully recover again, which causes them to face many years of hardship. So it isn't difficult to understand that if land is destroyed by natural disasters, their source of food is destroyed as well.
Poverty-
Those who are impoverished and farmers usually lack the funds to acquire high yield seeds, equipment and such to produce food for themselves. They can only produce what their own physical strength will allow and most of the time, that is barely enough to even live on. Labour is not uncommon on these farms and as a result children end up working on these farms instead of having the opportunity to go to school and have a proper education. As these children grow older into adults, they have no advanced knowledge of ways of producing in more efficient ways to secure their future, therefore they continue to follow the same patterns, make the same mistakes; forcing their own children to do labour work instead of getting educated and the poverty cycle continues. As a family becomes more impoverished, they are forced to save their income as much as possible. If they were to spend the majority of this money on on food, they would therefore have less money is available to spend on other important necessities such as health care and education. Poorer farmers are unable to purchase seeds, tools, or other farming equipment that would improve the quality of their crops. Poverty is a cause of hunger, but it is an effect as well.
Agricultural Practices-
Poor agricultural practices can destroy arable land such as overgrazing, over-cropping, and deforestation.
Population Growth-
As the populations of countries rise, so too does the demand for food. With rising food prices, it becomes increasingly difficult to match food production rates with population growth rates.
What are the effects of hunger?
Economy-
Countries with high rates of hunger often do poorly within their economic success as well. This is the case because the people in the work force do not have the necessary state mind to do work since they can be constantly ill. Having fewer hands to work on farms means that there is not enough produce coming from the farmers' crops being transported to towns, villages and bigger cities for consumption and even further export.
Health-
Both hunger and malnutrition make the body weak and vulnerable to various diseases and infections as the body does not have the necessary fuel and nutrients to build cells that would fight off infections. Disease in children is deadly, and many of children who are living in hunger prone nations die for this reason. Mothers who are pregnant and malnourished deliver underweight babies and who most likely will struggle to survive. Children often have stunted growth as a result of malnutrition. About one out of six children in developing countries are underweight, and poor nutrition causes nearly half of the deaths of children under five years of age. This comes to a total of about 3.1 million children dying each year due to malnutrition and hunger.
Social-
Increased crime rates. Because people are not provided with the food sources they need in order to survive, they are likely to attempt stealing necessary supplies for their own survival as well as their families.
Education-
Without the proper balance of vitamins and minerals in one's diet, the brain is not able to develop properly. The feeling of hunger in general also makes it difficult to focus on other things, especially for younger children. Children suffer from hunger the most, and sometimes are unable to stay in school because of it. About 66 million primary school aged children attend school hungry across the developing world with 23 million of these children in Africa alone.
Opinion-
In my opinion, I think that world hunger is an issue that could be ended. Scientific research proves that we have enough resources for the population in the world currently, but all it takes is sharing them. We have to come together as a planet to ensure that our government systems are distributing food products fairly. There are some achievements that have helped hunger such as The World Food Program who provide foods with high energy and medications to children in the more hungry nations of the world. Food programs in school are also becoming increasingly common in developed countries with areas where families are poor. The idea of this program is to get families to keep their children in school so that they can get both the nutrition they need and education. Some programs also provide free meals everyday to the community at places such as temples. I also like the idea of farmers being buying bulk as this encourages more production and less waste. I believe that fixing the problem of world hunger will not only provide everyone with the necessary amount of food sources and keep everyone healthy but it can also create more peace in the world. The more we give out, the more gratefulness we get back. As long as there are supporters out there for world hunger, we can always keep this plan going. Remember that if every person in America were to donate 1 or 2 cans of food, millions and millions of food products could be transported to the less fortunate. We need to never forget that the world of hunger could be ended if many were to start cooperating and take action as many have already began to do.