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Hunger Problem

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The Hunger Problem

WHAT IS HUNGER?

According to the UN’s Hunger Report, hunger is the term used to define periods when populations are experiencing severe food insecurity—meaning that they go for entire days without eating due to lack of money, lack of access to food, or other resources.

Awareness Generates Action

The Hunger Problem Requires A Little Understanding And A Little Effort. People At Every Level Can Be Made Aware And Any Action Goes A Long Way!

Hunger takes on many forms. According to the FAO, while the inflicted may not be “hungry” and have physical discomfort by a high lack of dietary energy, they may still be food insecure. Despite having the means for their food requirements, they may face uncertainty about when they will get access to more food, and may even be forced to ‘get by’ affecting the quality and quantity of the food they have. This food insecurity develops in the short term and long term into dietary deficiencies and has long-term impacts at the individual, community, and country levels.
Hunger and undernourishment severely impact children under five, the worst implications being wasting and stunting. This culminates in high mortality rates and is still challenging many communities. Around 13 million children in the United States live in “food insecure” homes and over 34 million or 10.5% of all American people in the US live in poverty, according to 2019 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. 12 million of those were children. This number is shockingly high for a country of such enormous wealth. This may sound mild, but it means that those households don’t have enough food for every family member to lead a healthy life.

There are many complex and interconnected factors such as poverty, unemployment, food waste, poor infrastructure, unstable markets, climate change, war and conflicts, Nutritional quality, and discrimination that become a cause of hunger both in the United States and abroad despite enough food production.

Globally, hunger spins off into an inescapable trap. People and their families end up facing food insecurity, including lesser access to food or means to provide. With lower food quality and increased stress, individuals can end up losing productivity or being a positive contributor in society, and may be more susceptible to malnutrition and illnesses. This increases medical costs, poor health leads to less employability. Poverty levels rise, financial strain continues as a whole in society making food more hard to obtain and food insecurity continuously rise.
This transcends borders as countries and their import and export needs face challenges when society, and ultimately the country, face the impact of this spin-off.
Hunger can trap many people in a cycle of poverty and food insecurity in many ways. If not dealt with, hunger burdens every age for a lifetime, and the effects are passed on to the next generation, which can become trapped in the hunger cycle as well.
Health problems and illnesses keep children out of school, who turn into adults with less Education, reduced ability to work and income opportunities. Health issues especially during pregnancies lead to undernourished children- starting the cycle again, with children facing poor nutrition having their physical and mental development affected.
Taking on the challenge of world hunger is a critical task because after good decline, the numbers recently started climbing. Globally, close to 811 million people sleep hungry and there are emergency levels of hungry for about 50 million people
Hunger and its impact on the diets of millions with deficiencies nutrition, vitamins and minerals affect the future of communities and entire countries.
Despite enough food produced to for everyone on earth, the UN had to create a goal of a world with zero hunger, in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The multitude of complexities is multifaceted.

Demographic Trends

Mounting population and food demands is affected by old production technology and disintegrated community systems to manage requirements for food and reproductive health.

Industrial agriculture

With subsistence farming being displaced, Industrial agriculture affects hunger in developing countries. Farmers managing basic food needs face challenges to find support or opportunities to obtain what they produced for themselves.

A grim number: at the current rate, an additional 2 billion people are expected to face global hunger problems by 2050. Increasing agricultural productivity and sustainable food production are crucial to help change these numbers.

Social inequality

Unfortunately, people with the least social, political or economic power are liable to face hunger or malnutrition. This happens everywhere, in low-income countries, or in marginalized communities in high-income countries.

Education systems

The impact of hunger on education systems is widely underreported.

  •  An estimated 150 million children stay behind in receiving adequate nutrition because of food and hunger, resulting in malnutrition, stunting and disease. Infant mortality requires any efforts to be channeled well.

  • Severe malnourishment, to the extent of impacting brain development, is possibly equivalent to the loss of four years of schooling. An estimated 155 million children under the age of five are stunted. Stunting, or impaired growth and development that children experience from poor nutrition and food poverty, impact a child’s cognitive abilities and their performance in school. Astonishingly, stunted children are approximately 20%  less likely to read by age eight.

Policy Changes

Policy changes can cause farmers and their families to be displaced, leaving arable and fertile land to not be put in productive use, which is detrimental to poverty and hunger.

The Gender Inequality Cycle

While the majority of food producers are females, and also usually primary caregivers for children, gender inequality results in unequal distribution of food as well, meaning girls have less access to food; so women who have suffered from malnutrition as children also give birth to malnourished babies, aggravating the problem. Aid organizations call attention to helping mothers with information and training.
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