Hunger

The FAO's food price index reflects the changes in the average international price of food. The sharp rise in 2007/08 caused a global food crisis, with food riots in dozens of countries, and pushed well over a hundred million into extreme hunger. The sharp rise in 2010/11 contributed to the Arab Spring.

Hunger is the physical sensation of desiring food. When politicians, relief workers and social scientists talk about people suffering from hunger, they usually refer to those who are unable to eat sufficient food to meet their basic nutritional needs for sustained periods of time.

Throughout history, a large proportion of the world's population have often experienced severe hunger. In many cases this resulted from disruptions to the food supply caused by war, plagues or adverse weather changes. For the first few decades after World War II, technological progress and enhanced political cooperation suggested it might be possible to substantially reduce the number of people suffering from hunger. While progress had been uneven, by 2000 the threat of extreme hunger has subsided for a great many of the world's people.

Until 2006, the average international price of food had been largely stable for several decades. But in the closing months of 2006 it began to rise at a rapid rate. By 2008 the price of rice had more than tripled in some regions, which had an especially severe impact in developing countries. Food prices fell in early 2009, but then rose again to reach another record high in 2011, and have since then decreased slightly. The 2008 worldwide financial crisis further increased the number of people suffering from hunger, including dramatic increases even in advanced economies such as Great Britain, the Eurozone and the United States.

The Millennium Development Goals included a commitment to achieve a further 50% reduction in the proportion of the world's population suffering from extreme hunger by 2015. As of 2012, this target appears difficult to achieve, due in part to the lasting inflation in the price of food. However, in late 2012 the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) stated it is still possible to hit the target with sufficient effort. In 2012, the FAO estimated that 868 million people are undernourished (12% of the global population) and that malnutrition is a cause of death for more than 2.5 million children every year.

As a physical condition [edit]

The physical sensation of hunger is related to contractions of the stomach muscles. These contractions, sometimes called hunger pangs once they become severe, are thought to be triggered by high concentrations of the hormone Ghrelin. The hormones Peptide YY and Leptin can have an opposite effect on the appetite, causing the sensation of being full. Ghrelin can be released if blood sugar levels get low; a condition which itself can result from going for long periods without eating. The stomach contractions resulting from hunger can be especially severe and painful in children and young adults. Hunger pangs can be made worse by irregular meals; people who can't afford to reliably eat more than once a day will sometimes refuse one-off additional meals even if they get the opportunity, as if they have the extra meal and then don't eat at around the same time on the next few days, they may suffer extra severe hunger pangs.^[1] Older people may feel less violent stomach contractions when they get hungry, but still suffer the secondary effects resulting from low food intake: these include weakness, irritability and decreased concentration. Prolonged lack of adequate nutrition also causes increased susceptibility to disease and reduced ability for the body to self heal.^[2][3]

Malnutrition, famine, starvation [edit]

• Malnutrition is a general term for a condition caused by inadequate dietary intake and/or disease; it can occur in conjunction with both under and over consumption of calories and/or micronutrients.
• Famine is a widespread scarcity of food that may apply to any fauna species; the phenomenon is usually accompanied by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality.
• Starvation describes a "state of exhaustion of the body caused by lack of food." This state may precede death.

World statistics [edit]

The annual FAO, WFP and IFAD The State of Food Insecurity in the World reports provide a statistical overview on hunger, and are usually considered the main reference in this regard (e.g., for the Millennium Development Goals). However, it is important to note that they have several caveats. First, undernourishment is defined solely in terms of dietary energy availability (i.e., disregarding micronutrients such as vitamins or minerals). Second, it uses the energy requirements for minimum activity levels as a benchmark, whereas many hungry people most likely face hard manual labour. Third, the numbers do not reflect short-term undernourishment (e.g., from food price shocks), unless they change long-term food consumption. In October 2012, the FAO published a report saying that their earlier 2009 estimate that one Billion people were suffering from chronic hunger was over stated, due to flawed methodology resulting from the pressure they were under to quickly estimate the effects of the financial crisis on hunger. They also said the number of people currently suffering from chronic hunger is close to 870 million.^[4][5][6]

The fight against hunger [edit]

Unemployed men outside a soup kitchen in Chicago, 1931

Throughout history, the need to aid those suffering from hunger has been commonly, though not universally,^[7] recognized. The philosopher Simone Weil 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." ^[8] 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.^[9]

According to Dr David Grigg, prior to the end of World War II, world hunger received little academic or political attention, whereas after 1945 there has been an explosion of interest in the topic.^[10] While some of the principles for avoiding famines had been laid out in the very first book of the Holy Bible,^[11] they were not commonly understood. Even up to early modern times, a typical reaction among leaders to the occurrence of famine was bewilderment and confusion. From the first age of globalization which began in the 19th century, it became more common for people to consider problems like hunger in global terms. But as early globalization largely coincided with the high peak of influence for classical liberalism, there was relatively little call for world hunger to be addressed by politicians.^[12][13] In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the view that politicians ought not to intervene against hunger was increasingly challenged by campaigning journalists, with some academics and politicians also calling for or organizing intervention against world hunger, such as U.S. President Woodrow Wilson.^{[10] [14] [15][16]}

Politics of hunger [edit]

Martin Luther King (center), one of many twentieth century political figures who considered it important to fight hunger: "When I die, don't build a monument to me. Don't bestow me degrees from great universities. Just clothe the naked. Say that I tried to house the homeless. Let people say that I tried to feed the hungry." ^[16]

After World War II, a new international politico-economic order came into being, which was later described as Embedded liberalism. For at least the first decade after the war, the United States, by far the period's most dominant national actor, was strongly supportive of efforts to tackle world hunger and to promote international development. It heavily funded the United Nation's development programmes, and later the efforts of other multilateral organisations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB).^[10][16][17]

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.^[10][16][17]

Following the successful reconstruction of Germany and Japan, the IMF and WB began to turn their attention to the developing world. A great many civil society actors were also active in trying to combat hunger, especially after the late 1970s when global media began to bring the plight of starving people in places like Ethiopia to wider attention. Most significant of all, especially in the late 1960s and 70s, there was the Green revolution which saw improved agricultural technology propagated throughout the world.^[10][16][17]

The United States of America began to change its approach to the problem of world hunger from about the mid 1950s. Influential members of the administration became less enthusiastic about methods which they saw as promoting an over reliance on the state, as they feared that might assist the spread of communism. By the 1980s, the previous consensus in favour of moderate government intervention had been displaced across the western world. The IMF and World Bank in particular began promoting market based solutions; in cases where countries became dependent on their finance, they sometimes forced national governments to prioritize debt repayments, and to sharply cut public services which sometimes had a negative effect on efforts to combat hunger. Organizations such as Food First raised the issue of food sovereignty and claimed that every country on earth (with the possible minor exceptions of some city-states) has sufficient agricultural capacity to feed its own people, but that the "free trade" economic order, which from the late 1970s to about 2008 had been associated with such institutions as the IMF and World Bank, had prevented this from happening. The World Bank itself had claimed to be part of the solution to hunger, asserting that the best way for countries to succeed in breaking the cycle of poverty and hunger was to build export-led economies that will give them the financial means to buy foodstuffs on the world market. However, in the early 21st century the World Bank and IMF became less dogmatic about promoting free market reforms. They increasingly returned to the view that government intervention does have a role to play, and that it can be advisable for governments to support food security with policies favourable to domestic agriculture, even for countries that do not have a Comparative advantage in that area. As of 2012, the World Bank remains active in helping governments to intervene against hunger.^{[10][16] [17][17][18][19]}

Until at least the 1980s, and to an extent the 1990s, the dominant academic view concerning world hunger was that it could be understood as problem of demand exceeding overall supply. So proposed solutions often focused on boosting food production and sometimes on birth control. There were exceptions to this, even as early as the 1940s, Lord Boyd-Orr, the first head of the UN's FAO, had perceived hunger as being largely a problem of distribution, and had drawn up comprehensive plans to correct this. But few agreed with him at the time, and he resigned after failing to secure support for his plans from the US and Great Britain. In 1998, Amartya Sen won his Nobel Prize in part for work demonstrating that hunger in modern times was not typically the product of a lack of food; rather, hunger usually arose from problems in food distribution networks or from governmental policies in the developing world. It has since been broadly accepted that world hunger results from issues with the distribution as well as the production of food.^[16]

In 2007 and 2008, rapidly increasing food prices caused a global food crisis, increasing the numbers suffering from hunger by over a hundred million. Food riots erupted in several dozen countries; in at least two cases, Haiti and Madagascar, this led to governments being toppled. A second global food crisis occurred due to the spike in food prices of late 2010 and early 2011. Less food riots occurred due in part to greater stock piles of food being available for relief; however several analysts have argued it was one of the causes of the Arab Spring.^[17][20][21]

Efforts since the global 2008 crisis [edit]

A young girl standing amid the freshly made graves of 70 children in Dadaab. Many of them died of malnutrition during an extensive drought in East Africa, which began in July 2011.

In the early 21st century, there was relatively little awareness of hunger from leaders of advanced nations, such as those which form the G8. Prior to 2009, efforts to fight hunger were mainly undertaken by the governments of those countries worst affected by it, by civil society actors, and by multilateral and regional organizations. In 2009, His Holinesss Pope Benedict published his third encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, which emphasised the importance of fighting against hunger. The encyclical was intentionally published immediately before the July 2009 G8 Summit, in order to maximise its influence on that event. At the Summit, which took place at L'Aquila in central Italy, the L'Aquila Food Security Initiative was launched, with a total of US$22 billion was committed to combat hunger. In 2009 and early 2010, food prices did fall sharply, though analysts credit this much more to farmers increasing production in response to the 2008 spike in prices, rather than to the fruits of enhanced government action. However, ever since the 2009 G8 summit, the fight against hunger has remained a high profile issue among the leaders of the worlds major nations, and was a prominent part of the agenda for the 2012 G-20 summit.^{[20] [22][23][24] [25]}

In April 2012, the Food Assistance Convention was signed, the world's first legally binding international agreement on food aid. The May 2012 Copenhagen Consensus recommended that efforts to combat hunger and malnutrition ought to be the No. 1 priority for politicians and private sector philanthropists looking to maximize the effectiveness of their spending on aid. This was ahead of other priorities like the fight against malaria and AIDS.^[26] Also in May 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama launched the "new alliance for food security and nutrition" - a broad partnership between private sector, governmental and civil society actors - which aimed to "achieve sustained and inclusive agricultural growth and raise 50 million people out of poverty over the next 10 years".^[24][27][28] Great Britain's prime minister David Cameron held a hunger summit on 12 August, the last day of the 2012 Summer Olympics.^[24]

The fight against hunger has also been joined by an increased number of regular people. While folk throughout the world had long contributed to efforts to alleviate hunger in the developing world, there has recently been a rapid increase in the numbers involved in tackling domestic hunger even within the economically advanced nations of the Global North. This happened much earlier in North America than it did in Europe. For the US, State run welfare provision was scaled back by president Raegan's administration in the early 1980s, leading to a vast increase in efforts by the charity sector to help Americans unable to buy enough to eat. According to a 1992 survey of 1000 randomly selected US voters, 77% of Americans had contributed to efforts to feed the hungry, either by volunteering for the various hunger relief agencies such as food banks and soup kitchens, or by donating cash or food.^[29] In western Europe with its more generous welfare provision, there was little awareness of domestic hunger until the inflation in food prices which began in late 2006, and especially as austerity imposed welfare cuts began to take effect from 2010. Various surveys reported that upwards of 10% of Europe's population had begun to suffer from food insecurity. Especially since 2011, there has been a substantial increase in grass roots efforts to help the hungry by means of food banks, within both the UK and continental Europe.^{[1][30][31][32][33]}

By July 2012, the 2012 US drought had already caused a rapid increase in the price of grain and soy, with a knock on effect on the price of meat. As well as affecting hungry people in the US, this has caused prices to rise on the global markets; the US is the world's biggest exporter of food. There has been much talk that this may cause the 21st century's third global food crisis. The Financial Times reports that the BRICS may not be as badly affected as they were in the earlier crises of 2008 and 2011. However, smaller developing countries which need to import a substantial portion of their food could be hard hit. The UN and G20 has began contingency planning so as to be ready to intervene if a third global crisis does break out.^{[19][21][34][35]}

In an April 2013 summit held in Dublin concerning Hunger, Nutrition, Climate Justice and the post 2015 MDG framwework for global justice, Ireland's President Higgins said that only 10% of deaths from hunger are due to armed conflict and natural disasters, with ongoing hunger being both the "greatest ethical failure of the current global system" and the "greatest ethical challenge facing the global community".^[36]

In the United States [edit]

Volunteers pass out food items from a Feeding America food bank

The Meals On Wheels Association of America Foundation (MOWAAF) reports it has found that hunger is a serious threat facing millions of seniors in the United States, and that understanding the problem is a critical first step to developing remedies. In 2007, MOWAAF, underwritten by the Harrah's Foundation, commissioned a research study entitled The Causes, Consequences and Future of Senior Hunger in America.^[37] The report was released at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging in March 2008 in Washington, D.C.

The study found that in the U.S., over 5 million seniors (11.4% of seniors), experience some form of food insecurity (i.e., were marginally food insecure). Of these, about 2.5 million are at-risk of hunger, and about 750,000 suffer from hunger due to financial constraints. Some groups of seniors are more likely to be at-risk of hunger. Relative to their representation in the overall senior population, those with limited incomes, under age 70, African American, Hispanic, never-married, renters, and seniors living in the Southern United States are all more likely to be at-risk of hunger. While certain groups of seniors are at greater-risk of hunger, hunger cuts across the income spectrum. For example, over 50% of all seniors who are at-risk of hunger have incomes above the poverty threshold. Likewise, it is present in all demographic groups. For example, over two-thirds of seniors at-risk of hunger are Caucasian. There are marked differences in the risk of hunger across family structure, especially for those seniors living alone, or those living with a grandchild. Those living alone are twice as likely to experience hunger compared to married seniors. One in five senior households with a grandchild (but no adult child) present is at-risk of hunger, compared to about 1 in 20 households without a grandchild present. Seniors living in non-metropolitan areas are as likely to experience food insecurity as those living in metropolitan areas, suggesting that food insecurity cuts across the urban-rural continuum.^[38]

The number of Americans suffering from hunger rose after the 2008 financial crisis, with children and working adults now making up a large proportion of those affected. In 2012, Gleaners Indianna Food bank reported that there were now 50 million Americans struggling with food insecurity (about 1 in 6 of the population), and that the number of folk seeking help from food banks had increased by 46% since 2005.^[39] According to a 2012 study by UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, even married couples who both work but have low incomes will sometimes now require the aid of food banks.^[40][41]

Hunger and gender [edit]

Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange (1936).

In both developing and advanced countries, both mothers and fathers will sometimes go without eating so their children can avoid hunger. But women seem to be more likely to make this sacrifice than men. Studies by World Bank have consistently found that about 60% of those experiencing hunger are female. The explanation for this disproportionate suffering appears to be that compared to men, women will more often forgo meals in order to feed their children. In older sources this was sometimes said to be a phenomena unique to developing countries, due to greater sexual inequality. More recent findings have suggested that mothers will also often miss meals even in advanced economies. For example, a 2012 study undertaken by Netmums in the UK found that one in five mothers would sometimes miss out on food so as to be able to save their children from going hungry.^[19][42][43]

In several periods and regions, gender has also been an important factor determining whether or not victims of hunger would make suitable examples for generating enthusiasm for hunger relief efforts. James Vernon, in his Hunger: A Modern History, wrote that in Britain before the 20th century, it was generally only women and children suffering from hunger who could arouse compassion. Men who failed to provide for themselves and their families were often regarded with contempt. This changed after World War I, where thousands of men who had proved their manliness in combat found themselves unable to secure employment. Similarly, female gender could be advantageous for those wishing to advocate for hunger relief, with Vernon writing that being a woman helped Emily Hobhouse draw the plight of hungry people to wider attention during the Second Boer War.^[15]

See also [edit]

• Category:Hunger relief organizations
• Fome Zero (Hunger 0)
• Global Hunger Index
• Hunger in the United Kingdom
• Malnutrition
• National Security Study Memorandum 200 (1974)
• Right to food
• Starvation

Notes and references [edit]

Further reading [edit]

• Hunger an unnatural history(2006) by Sharman Apt Russell - rather than focus on the politics and economics of hunger, this work discusses the psychological effect on individuals and also explores the topic from an anthropological perspective.

External links [edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Hunger

Wikiversity has learning materials about Hunger

• World Food Programme | WFP
• Action Against Hunger | ACF-USA
• Action Against Hunger | ACF-UK
• The Global Food Security and Nutrition Forum (FSN Forum)
• Ten Things you can do to Fight World Hunger The Nation, 13 May 2009
• United Nation 2007 report