Hunger - The Fight Against Hunger

The Fight Against Hunger

Throughout history, the need to aid those suffering from hunger has been commonly, though not universally, recognized. The philosopher Simone Weil has wrote that feeding the hungry when you have resources to do so is the most obvious of all human obligations. She says that as far back as Ancient Egypt, it was believed that people needed to show they had helped the hungry in order to justify themselves in the afterlife. Weil writes that Social progress is commonly held to be first of all "a transition to a state of human society in which people will not suffer from hunger." Social historian Karl Polanyi wrote that before markets became the world's dominant form of economic organisation in the 19th century, most human societies would either starve all together or not at all, because communities would invariably share their food.

After World War II, the newly established United Nations became a leading player in co-ordinating the global fight against hunger. The UN has three agencies that work to promote food security and agricultural development: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). FAO is the world’s agricultural knowledge agency, providing policy and technical assistance to developing countries to promote food security, nutrition and sustainable agricultural production, particularly in rural areas. WFP’s key mission is to deliver food into the hands of the hungry poor. The agency steps in during emergencies and uses food to aid recovery after emergencies. Its longer term approaches to hunger help the transition from recovery to development. IFAD, with its knowledge of rural poverty and exclusive focus on poor rural people, designs and implements programmes to help those people access the assets, services and opportunities they need to overcome poverty.

In 2002, the World Bank began a study involving 61 countries and more than 400 agricultural scientists. In 2008 they released a report called the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development. It contained ideas about how to feed the world, fight poverty and address climate change. According to the report, small-scale, diverse, sustainable farms and home gardens had the most potential to solve the world’s hunger problems while reversing modern agriculture’s devastation of ecosystems. The authors concluded that “small farms are often among the most productive in terms of output per unit of land and energy.” Also, they wrote, “an increasing percentage of the funding of university science tends to be concentrated in areas of commercial interest or in advanced studies such as satellite imaging, nanotechnologies and genomics rather than in applications deeply informed by knowledge of farming practice and ecological contexts.” Regarding genetically engineered crops, the report cited “possible risks to biodiversity and human health” and the “privatization of the plant breeding system and concentration of market power in input companies.”