Although U.S. activist Rob Greenfield was able to sustain himself with food he scavenged from bins while cycling around the country - the FAO estimates that each year more than 1.3 million tons of food is thrown away - the issue of world hunger is not a priority on the agenda of rich countries.
I decided to write about this issue because I am increasingly convinced that the common denominators in the current global crisis are hunger; the rapid effect of climate change, overlooked in government policies; and the disproportionate ambitions of the arms market.
Only the poor complain of hunger, while more money is given to save a capitalist bank in crisis, than to help an African community obliged to fight both malnutrition and illness.
All these factors are “treatable,” if instead of investing in arms and wars, funds were spent on food and medicine for those most in need.
According to the UN, the tragedy and suffering of millions of victims of hunger (almost half the world’s population) could be resolved with “less than 1%” of the capital used by the principal capitalist governments to save the global financial system (including banks and companies which have intensified the crisis).
Poverty and hunger aren’t good business, they are outside the circles of consumption and don’t generate profits. In the development of this human tragedy process (with wealth concentrated in the hands of few and the extermination of “surplus populations”) the bases and triggers of a “social apocalypse” are fomented, which the system and its analysts still neither register nor acknowledge, according to an analysis by IAR NOTICIAS.
What kind of world are we living in? We need only look at the following number to understand: the 300 richest people in the world have more wealth than the three billion poorest, almost half the world’s population, according to a report by Al Jazzira.
There is more. For example, in the United States, authorities estimate that approximately 40% of food produced in the nation is thrown away, above all by supermarkets.
The Fourth International Forum on Ways to Protect Nature was held in Naples, Italy from October 10-11. An article by IPS covering the event reported that “just one fourth of all the food that is wasted or thrown away in the world could feed 870 million people suffering from hunger.”
The experts stated that although global food production has tripled since 1946 and malnutrition has fallen from 18.7% to 11.3% over the last 20 years, food security remains a crucial and pending issue.
The cost of wasted and thrown away food has risen to approximately 680 billion dollars in industrialized countries, according to the Save food campaign, a project by German Trade Fair Messe Dusseldorf, the FAO and the UN Environmental Program.
Developed countries throw away almost 222 million tons of food, almost the total net food production of Sub Saharan Africa (230 million tons), the organization reported.
British supermarket chain Tesco reported that it threw away 28,500 tones of food in the first half of 2013, and that annual surplus food in Great Britain is estimated to be 15 million tones.
While this shameful reality is exposed as being part of the exhibition displaying the extravagance and waste of rich nations, a report by the UN stated that every 15 seconds a child dies of hunger in the world.
According to the UN, more than 1 billion people are suffering from chronic hunger, the highest figure in history, with more than 3 billion poor and undernourished people in the world, representing half the world’s.
According to the report published in the magazine The Lancet, on average, three million children die of hunger every year.
This conclusively demonstrates that in the midst of the extravagance and waste of the powerful, the majority of the world’s population lack the basic resources to guarantee them food, health and life.
