The Root Causeof Hunger and Poverty
By Ramon T. Ayco, Sr.June 2008
H
unger is everywhere in the world, not only in the poorest countries where the poorestpeople live but also up to the wealthiest nations where the world’s richest peopleresides. There might be many causes of hunger, but undoubtedly there is only oneprincipal cause, and that is poverty. People are hungry because they cannot afford tobuy foods even though there are plenty of these around.Different people gave different opinions regarding the causes of poverty, but not all of these are real, some are only myths. If we trace in history the root cause of poverty, wewill surely nd out that poverty started when the system of society base on exploitationand oppression of human to human began. And from that, we will nd out that thenumber one root cause of today’s worldwide poverty is the world capitalist system in itshighest stage, imperialism.Ten years after the 1996 Rome World Food Summit (WFS), the number of undernourishedpeople in the world remains stubbornly high, said the 2006 report of the Food andAgriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. In 2001–03, FAO estimates therewere still 854 million undernourished people worldwide
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: 9 million in the industrializedcountries,
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25 million in the transition countries, and 820 million in the developingcountries.Of the latter’s 820 million people: 212 million live in India; 206.2 million livein Sub-Saharan Africa; 524 million live in Asia and the Pacic; 52.4 million live in LatinAmerica and the Caribbean; and 37.6 million live in the Near East and North Africa.In the developing countries, out of 5.1 billion people (approx.)
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or 3/4 of worldpopulation: 1 billion people live on less than $1/day; 146 million children under age 5are underweight; 10.1 million children under age 5 die every year, over half of hunger-related causes; 1 in 6 people is hungry; 1 in 6 people lacks safe drinking water.In the United States, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that in 2006:
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35.5 million people lived in households considered to be food insecure.
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Of these 35.5 million, 22.9 million are adults (10.4 percent of all adults) and 12.6million are children (17.2 percent of all children).
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The number of people in the worst-off households increased to 11.1 from 10.8 in2005. This increase in the number of people in the worst-off category is consistentwith other studies and the Census Bureau poverty data, which show worseningconditions for the poorest Americans.
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Black (21.8 percent) and Hispanic (19.5 percent) households experienced foodinsecurity at far higher rates than the national average.
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The ten states with the highest food insecurity rates in 2006 were Mississippi, NewMexico, Texas, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky,and Arizona.Nearly half of those lining up outside soup kitchens in the United States (U.S.) have one ormore family members employed, but most of them are simply too poor to buy food. Theyare the people who scavenge in dumpsters outside restaurants. They’re the schoolchildrenwho cannot pay attention in class because they did not have dinner or breakfast.According to the United Nations (UN) the number of chronically hungry people worldwideis growing by an average of four million per year at current trends, and about 25,000people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes.
In the Philippines
In October 2007, the Social Weather Stations (SWS) reported that about 3.8 millionFilipino families experienced involuntary hunger without having anything to eat, at leastonce in the three months previous to the latest SWS survey of Sept. 2-5, 2007, hitting anew record-high of 21.5 percent.This was a “dramatic” reversal of gains in June where hunger fell to 14.7% from19% in February 2007 and November 2006. The 21.5% was almost 10 points abovethe 11.8% average for the 38 hunger surveys SWS had conducted quarterly startingmid-1998. This was despite government’s implementation of anti-hunger programslike the food-for-school program and the Gulayan ng Bayan to encourage backyardfarming.This May 2008, a new SWS survey was released showing that fewer Filipino families,around 2.8 million of them, experienced involuntary hunger in the last three monthsbut a majority are dissatised with the way the Arroyo administration is addressing theproblem.The national percentage of families who experienced involuntary hunger eased to 15.7%from 16.2% in December, the survey, made exclusive to
BusinessWorld
, showed.The latest result, however, was still four points above the 12% average for 40 quarterlySWS surveys from mid-1998 to the present, the independent research institution said.
Food shortage
In this era of highly developed science and technology, it is not logical to think that foodshortage will be the cause of hunger anywhere in the world. As a matter of fact, FAOstudies conrmed that food shortage is not and will never be the cause of hunger in theworld, at least up until 2030.According to 2000 technical interim report from FAO, the long-term food security outlookfor developing countries is good. While the world population is expected to reach eightbillion by 2030, growth in global agriculture should be more than sufcient to meetworld demand.
The FAO report is relatively optimistic that, at the world level, there will be sufcientagricultural production to meet increases in demand over the next thirty years. By 2030,for example, crop production in developing countries is projected to be 70 percent higherthan in the 1990s. Still, this increase in production will be far lower than the increasesseen during the “green revolution” begun in the 1960s.
The report indicates that while the predictions in the rate of annual growth in global cropproduction is expected to decrease over the next 30 years relative to those advancesseen in the previous 30, it will still exceed the demand for increased agriculturalproduction. With lower population growth and the gradual attainment of medium tohigh food consumption levels in most countries, crop productivity will continue tooutpace the overall growth rate in the demand for food. The report acknowledges thepersistent contradiction between having sufcient food production at the world level
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The Root Cause of Hunger and Poverty by Ramon T. Ayco
Hunger is everywhere in the world, not only in the poorest countries where the poorest people live but also up to the wealthiest nations where the world’s richest people resides. There might be many causes of…
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