World hunger: why do nearly 925 million people go hungry every day?
Author: Sean Stewart Dec 8, 2008 Junior Scholastic
Nimdoma Sherpa started school at age 5, but not to get an education. Nimdoma lived in a poor village ill Nepal where everyone was hungry. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) began to offer food at the local school. Kids who attended classes could get one free meal a day.
In the beginning I just went to school so that I could eat lunch," Nimdoma tells JS. "But slowly, slowly, I began to learn, even though I was much younger than most of the kids in my class."
Now 18, Nimdoma lives in Kathmandu (Kaht-mahn-DOO), Nepal's capital. She was lucky that she got enough food to sustain her. Worldwide, nearly 925 million people face extreme hunger every day. That number is up from 850 million just a year ago.
"Hunger [is] the world's No. 1 health threat," says Jennifer Parmelee, a spokesperson for the WFP. "It kills more people every day than AIDS. tuberculosis, and malaria combined. About 25,000 deaths every day are attributable to hunger and related ailments."
Global Food Crisis
You may have heard your parents complain lately about the high cost of groceries. In the past year, food prices have begun to skyrocket globally. The world is now in the midst of a "food crisis," Parmelee tells JS.
There are several reasons for this. Rising oil prices have made transporting food more costly. Also.the need for food in China and India--the world's most-populous countries--is rising. On top of this, the United States has begun to use an increasing amount of its corn crops to make biofuels, including ethanol, to replace gasoline. At the same time, more and more people worldwide have left farming to live and work in cities.
The rising demand for and falling supply of food have led to higher prices. Most people in wealthy countries are able to pay more. But those in poorer countries cannot afford to. At least 30 food riots have broken out around the world in recent months.
In Haiti, for instance, riots over high food prices forced the Prime Minister out of office in April 2007. Haiti is the Western Hemisphere's poorest country. Many Haitians spend 60 to 70 percent of their income on food--as opposed to Americans, who spend less than 15 percent, on average. Some desperate Haitians
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now eat cakes of mud mixed with cooking oil and salt. "They're basically living on a dollar a day," Parmelee says. "You can't buy much for a dollar anymore."
Two Types of Hunger
Experts say that mass hunger manifests itself in one of two ways. The first is called acute hunger. This type of hunger occurs when food disappears completely. Such emergency situations, called famines, are usually caused by natural disasters, including floods and droughts. Human-caused disasters, such as war, also play a role.
Acute food shortages are indeed serious. But experts say that chronic hunger affects more people. Nimdoma lived with chronic hunger as a child, eating just one meal a day. She ate enough to survive but was always hungry. Most of the world's poorest people endure chronic hunger.
Penelope Anderson helps direct food relief for Mercy Corps, an international aid organization. She says that there are many ways to combat both types of hunger. But taking three steps would greatly ease the problem:
* Increase food production. Countries should encourage the growth of small farms in regions where food supply is a problem.
* Improve government disaster preparations. All countries can better prepare for inevitable disasters such as floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes. Such readiness could save millions of lives each year.
* Ensure clean drinking water. Easily preventable diarrhea--spread by polluted water--accounts for about 8 percent of all deaths in Asia and Africa. "If you buy great nutritious food and wash it down with a glass of unsafe water," Anderson says, "that food does you no good whatsoever."
"We Can Do a Lot"
Nimdoma Sherpa is living proof that food programs can help. The need for food brought her to school and kept her there. She is about to finish her education--a big achievement in a country where only 35 percent of females can read and write.
Having enough food allowed Nimdoma to become strong physically as well as mentally. In fact, she was one of a group of Nepalese women who recently climbed Mount Everest. It is the world's tallest mountain, located on the border between China and Nepal (see map). "When I was on top of Mount Everest, it felt like a dream," Nimdoma says. "I couldn't believe I was there."
Experts on food want more young people to enjoy Nimdoma's success. But that will involve raising awareness about world hunger here in the U.S. HarleenGambhir, 15, is one of many teens doing just that. Through Mercy Corps, she started a club at her high school in Orange County, California. For World Hunger Day on October 18, her group asked students to wear white T-shirts marked with a duct-tape X. These individuals stood for the 100 children worldwide who die from hunger every 10 minutes.
Harleen says that her club started with a couple of friends. Now it has more than 30 members. "A lot of people think, 'I'm one small person, and I can't do that much,'" she tells JS. "But once you see how big this movement is, you realize that together we can do a lot."
Response Writing Prompts:
1. What measures can help prevent chronic hunger worldwide?
2. Is there an area near you where people suffer from chronic hunger?If so, how could you help them?
3. How does what you learned in this article relate to your own life?
Other things to consider:
How could a person find out if people in our area suffer from hunger?
What activity might you participate in that might draw attention to hunger?