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GLOBAL CITIZEN
ASSIGNMENT
Zero Hunger: End hunger, achieve food security and improved
nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.

University of South Florida- MAN3025

Jaimin Suresh U01611087
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Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Chosen Goal 4
About the Goal 4
Chosen Company 5
About the Company 5
Recommendation 1 6
Recommendation 2 7
Recommendation 3 8
Implementation 9
Conclusion 10
References 11
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Introduction
We lose 25,000 people every day from hunger (Holmes). The demand for food has risen at a

commensurate rate due to populations increasing and more and more people living in

poverty. There are many reasons for why hunger exists in the world we live in today.

Poverty is the main cause of hunger, both in high economically developed countries and also

in low economically developed countries. The people who suffer from hunger live dire

conditions barely surviving on an income of just $1.90 per day (Bread). The majority of those

living in poverty are small farmers that reside in countries such as Haiti, Zambia, and Yemen.

One of the reasons for this is that they do not have enough land to grow food to supply

themselves with food to eat year-round and due to the small income, they have, they cannot

afford to purchase other food when their own supply runs out.

Hunger does not only effect those living in low-income countries. In the countries like the

United States of America there is a high level of job instability and there is hunger due to lack

on jobs or due to a job paying too little. When the economy is low and, in a slump, people

lose their jobs and struggle to find work causing them to rely on their savings or live-in

poverty (Bread). Additionally, 7% of American households are single-parent families. In

families where there is only one parent, they may not be able to work long hours or take a

certain job due to having to look after their child.

Having poor infrastructure also aids in hunger as it makes it hard to transport food to places

of a country where there are people struggling. It is common in developing countries where

people have died of hunger in one region due a lack of food and water when in another region

there is plentiful amounts of food and water but due to the road conditions and transport

conditions being so poor, it was not possible for the government to transport food to all the

people who needed it causing them to die.

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In this recommendation report, I am going to be recommending ways in order to achieve the

UN sustainable development goal 2 of ‘zero hunger’ I am going to be doing this by using

Panera Bread in order to help achieve this goal.

Chosen Goal
Out of the seventeen UN sustainable development goals the one I chose to write a solution for

was goal two, “Zero Hunger: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and

promote sustainable agriculture.” (United Nations)

About the Goal

This goal stood out to me as whilst all the seventeen goals are important and must be solved

is that to me a world that is no longer hungry can positively impact every country as it can

open up endless possibilities of trade routes which will improve economies, health,

education, equality, and social development around the world. I believe that this goal is a

main piece in the jigsaw puzzle of making a better world for everyone.

The UN claim that nearly 690 million people/ 8.9% of the worlds’ population are hungry and

that by 2030 this number would be 840 million or higher if we continue at this current rate.

According to the World Food Programme, it is estimated that around 135 million suffer from

acute hunger due to man-made conflicts, climate change and economic unrest (World Food

Programme). Now with COVID-19 out and about it is estimated that this number will double

putting a further 130 million at risk.

The majority of world’s malnourished are Asia where 381 million people are barely surviving

and in Africa where there is currently around 250 million people suffering from hunger but

this number in growing at a faster rate than anywhere in the world.

With a quarter of a billion people at risk from dying for hunger, action needs to be taken to

provide aid to these people who are currently suffering.

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Chosen Company

The company that I have chosen to help with UN goal 2 is Panera bread.

About the Company

Panera bread in American chain store than runs more than 2,300 bakery- cafes in the US and

Canada. They sell bakery items, pastas, salads, sandwiches, and soup. Founder Ron Shaich

started company as cookie store in Massachusetts in 1980. After partnering with a women

named Louis Kane, they turned his cookie business into a small French bakery operating

under the name ‘Au Bon Pain.’ This turned out to be a big success as in 1991 they became

publicly traded opening cafes all along the East coast. In the mid-90s, founder Ron Shaich

saw a gap in the market for customers hungry for more than just fairly priced food. They

wanted an eating experience that gave them satisfaction and left them feeling good about

themselves. Having noticed this they sold Au Bon Pain divisions to an investment company

and the remaining company that was left was renamed Panera Bread.

They shifted their focus to enhancing the customer experience giving out free Wi-Fi in their

stores and incorporating designs such as fireplaces into their stores resulting in customers not

only just coming for food, but also coming for the experience and wanting to stay for longer.

Panera bread set the standard for food quality, introducing chicken raised without antibiotics

and eliminating all non-naturally occurring trans fats and showing calories on their menus

(Panera).

The reason why I have link Panera with UN sustainable goal 2 is that having researched

Panera, I have seen that they already have some initiatives in place such as ‘Day-End Dough-

Nation which is an initiative that at the end of each day when Panera closes, all of their

unsold bread and baked goods gets donated to local area hunger relief organizations and

charities. This program was a huge success and even inspired other companies such as
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Starbucks to donate any of their unsold baked goods at the end of the day to local charities in

order to solve hunger.

Recommendation 1
My first recommendation for Panera to help aid zero hunger is that they as they are

professional bakers who work closely with farmers, Panera can send crops such as wheat,

maize, rice and soybeans to countries with high hunger rates such as Yemen, South Sudan,

Nigeria, and Ethiopia.

By giving crops to farmers, they will be able to grow and sell more crops than they usually

would which would increase their income and yield. Furthermore, Panera can teach regular

people who are struggling to grow their own food to become self-sustainable about how to

grow food and how to cultivate it and then using it to make foods such as bread and rice.

Furthermore, we all know that farming is climate dependent, Panera can teach farmers to

produce crops that are more resilient to changes in the climate meaning that they will

continue to grow no matter what the climate is like which will benefit farmers and their

people both nutritionally and financially.

Recommendation 2
My second recommendation would be for Panera to get volunteers from their company and

send them over to such countries with high hunger rates and teach them how to make bread

easily and how to cook food, that will last a long time in order to reduce food waste.

At the moment over 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted around the world (United Nations). It is

known that around two-thirds of the food that goes to waste is still edible, which is enough

for countless meals for everyone. If a company that specializes in baking and reducing food

waste such as Panera was able to send experts out to countries struggling from hunger in
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order to educate them how to get the most of their food and how to make it last, they would

able to make sure that people do not stay hungry for longer as the food that will potentially

last them a month would now hopefully be able to last them two/ three months with enough

practice and training.

Recommendation 3
My last recommendation is for Panera to partner to with food companies and send any

leftover food there for them to use. This would be beneficial for everyone as it would help get

rid of food waste whilst helping a nation that desperately needs food. This would also make it

more accessible for everyone there.

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Implementation
I will talk about how using my recommendations, Panera can implement this. I will also try to
convince my reader here that my ideas are realistic and can easily be done in order to achieve
UN goal 2.
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Conclusion
I will summarise what I have written in my paper here and include my final thoughts.
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References
I will reference using APA format any website where I have gotten information from and if I
use any work that is not my own such as from a website or from a book, I will reference it
here using APA guidelines.