The Causes Of Famine

The causes of world hunger are at once intimidatingly complex and stunningly simple, depending on the underlying ideological assumptions which inform one's approach to the problem. For the uninformed, the cause of world hunger might seem to be quite obvious, because the concept of hunger is ostensibly simple; being hungry means a lack of food, so world hunger must be caused either by a lack of food on a global scale or overpopulation. Put another way, the easy answer to the question of world hunger is to suggest that there is either too little food or too many people, but in reality, neither of these scenarios prove to be the case. Instead, research has shown that human beings produce more than enough food for the global population, and that world hunger stems not from a lack of food overall, but rather an inequitable distribution of wealth, which precludes certain populations from being able to purchase the food they need, or else prompts localized overpopulation due to insufficient family planning and local resources. Thus, poverty is ultimately the cause of world hunger, but to understand why one must investigate the nexus between capitalism, poverty, global trade, and world hunger, because far from being the product of hard limits regarding the amount of food or size of the population, world hunger is almost entirely the result of social forces which have conspired together to impoverish and starve millions for the sake of a privileged few.

The location and geography of the country has caused the people to experience famine after famine, leaving many to die from starvation. A famine is in definition, “A great shortage or an extreme scarcity of food over an extended period of time” (Webster). There are several different types of famine that occur in different types of the world. The type that Ethiopia generally goes through is called a Ravallion. During a Ravallion famine, there are unusually large amounts of causalities with extreme shortages of food in certain parts of the population. There are many things that cause famine, whether it’s draught, plague, or civil disrupt. Right now, Ethiopia is experiencing a draught that has killed almost all of their crops. Because of the famines that Ethiopia experiences most every year, there is usually an increase in the amount of people malnourished. This year, 11to 14 million people are expected to go hungry leaving many to starve to death. Ethiopia has experienced many draughts like these, the worst however, being in 1983. This draught lasted two years and the draught alone killed over 400,000 people in one year, this doesn’t include the deaths that were due to starvation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983%E2%80%931985_famine_in_Ethiopia).

As Patel mentions in the sixth chapter, increasing amounts of food does not equal decreasing amounts of hunger. Amartya Sen did a study case of famines and found that modern famines to not be about the lack of food, but rather the inability to pay for food. The market is not about solving hunger, but is in business to sell products and technology. It is up to the state to address problems such as hunger, not the market’s, but the state hands their responsibility to the market (Patel, 2014).

Richard Robbins explores and analyzes the creation and the upkeep of hunger in his book “Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism. Each day, over a billion people in the world lack basic food needs. Common misunderstandings about world hunger are that it is the result of insufficient food production, famine is the common reason for hunger and that hunger is caused by overpopulation. Robbins argues against that theory and says that famines is not the leading cause of hunger and hunger is not due to overpopulation or insufficient food production. “Food production is not determined by the global need for food; it is determined on how many people have the means for it” (page 176). The documentary “The End of Poverty” reinforces Robbins belief that food is a commodity.

The issue of hunger in africa has caused major chaos around the world. The fact that families and children are left to die because there is insufficient food; therefore, families are separated and left to suffer. For example, on page 1 of “Why Africa Is Still Starving”, by Alex Perry, it states that, “From January to May, the fields were parched and brown. And one failed harvest is enough to turn Ethiopia, a nation of 66 million farmers, a humanitarian catastrophe”. Alex Perry explains how the soil of Africa is not rich enough to grow any goods or rich crops.

Natural disasters, poverty, and war all cause famines. Hurricane Matthew in the Caribbean, the war in Iraq, and drought in East Africa are all examples of how hunger devastates

Food is a necessary part of ever individual’s daily life. Without food, the body cannot function properly, resulting in poor health, exhaustion, and even death by starvation. Therefore, food insecurity continues to be an international global epidemic. The journal article by Harrigan suggests that the citizens of the Sub-Saharan African country of Malawia are in further poverty due to their lack of food and agricultural resources. The newspaper article from the Guardian tells the real life story of African citizens struggling to farm and find food due to the crop shortages that have spanned Africa for the past two years. This is a current global issue, and the journal and news article prove that there is much to be done in order to help restore

Famine as defined by dictionaries and famine analysts is a virulent manifestation of intense starvation causing substantial loss of life. During 1980s, several writers challenged this view of famine as a discrete event that is triggered by food shortage and resulting in a mass death rate by starvation. These writers argued instead that famine should be perceived as an intensification of normal processes rather than an aberrant event. Mass starvation is only one possible outcome of the famine process; others include fertility decline, economic destitution, community breakdown, distress migration and exposure to new disease vectors. For example, in pre-colonial Tanzania, two kinds of famine were recognised; ordinary food shortage and famine that kill, the ultimate horror of mass starvation. While people in Sudan categorised famines according to their severity; minor famines causes hunger, severe famines cause destitution, and catastrophic famines result death.

Today all over the world,there are people who haven’t eaten in days,weeks,and maybe even months.Many food organizations are working to fix it,but the countless number of Africans who live homeless.”In 2012, 501 million people, or 47% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, lived on $1.90 a day or less, a principal factor in causing widespread hunger.” World hunger has been a problem for a long time now. I feel it can be stopped by donations farming and many more food related things.

Famine is a highly prevalent and debated topic. Written in November 1971, Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” addresses famine as a moral issue. Peter Singer, as a Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, focuses on ethics and moral values, and with his text, I will analyze this moral dilemma and show that the reasonable and well-thought Peter Singer’s argument is successful.

Almost all the hungry people, 780 million, live in developing countries, representing 12.9 percent, or one in eight, of the population of developing counties. There are 11 million people undernourished in developed countries. With anticipated impact of global warming and increase in natural disasters such as drought and flooding, food shortages in parts of the world (especially in Asia and Africa) can only increase in scale and severity in view of growing population and poverty indexes.

The mission of the U.S. Department of State is “to shape and sustain a peaceful, prosperous, just and democratic world and foster conditions for stability and progress for the benefit of the American people and people everywhere” (U.S. Department of State 2016). Food security is a problem that plagues much of the developing world. The U.S. government’s global hunger and food security initiative “Feed the Future” (FTF) aims to put an end to global hunger by giving people the tools they need in order to feed themselves. Feed the Future works in nineteen different nations across the globe but does not include Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan or Yemen. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),

Hunger is caused by many events, including the poverty trap, natural disasters, war, poor agricultural infrastructure, and over-exploitation of the environment.

The failure of harvest is not natural it's political, the famine is not the absence of food rather it's the absence of

Over the past century, major world powers have begun to look beyond their own borders and developed systems of development assistance for other countries in need. One of the two main methods by which relief was provided is through In-Kind Aid, in which benefits are given in the form of goods or services most beneficial to those in need. However, the effectiveness of this system has often been called into question next to the option of simply giving direct cash transfers to needy recipients. On one hand, in-kind aid can serve to lower the prices of commodities to to their increased supply(In kind aid study), yet the direct contribution of food and other goods of a similar nature can be costly and inefficient as food spoilage is a frequent occurrence and there may be more efficient and effective alternatives. Additionally, a study in India found that In-Kind Aid often favors urban areas and provides goods and services solely to these areas, neglecting rural areas in which the necessity of aid may be the most dire.