The societies of Western Europe and North America have reached the stage of mass consumption.

Nevertheless, hunger has not been totally eradicated within any of these societies... even our own. Indeed, hunger has worsened as a result of long-term unemployment. Five to ten percent of the population in these industrialized societies lives in a semi-permanent state of insufficient food consumption.

As opposed to industrialized societies, most developing (third world) countries are at a stage of mass poverty. Under-consumption, food shortages, and sometimes even famines characterize the poorest societies.

A famine is a food shortage so widespread that it causes malnutrition in most of the population and starvation in some of the population of the effected region.

Not enough food to go around?In reality, abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world’s food supply.

There is such a surplus of wheat, rice and other grains that every human being on Earth could be provided with 3,500 calories a day.That doesn’t even count many other commonly eaten foods, such as vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, meats and fish.Enough food is available to provide 4.3 lbs. of food per person a day worldwide: 2.5 lbs. of grain, beans, and nuts; 1 lb. of fruits and vegetables; even 1 lb. of meat, milk and eggs! That’s enough to make most people fat!

Even most hungry countries have enough food for all their people right now.

Some people believe that there are simply too many people.

• while rapid population growth remains a serious concern in 3rd world nations, nowhere does population density explain hunger!

• birth rates have been rapidly falling worldwide

Let’s look at Ethiopia

Once again it is faced with famine, because...

• the rains didn’t come• it does not have the kind of infrastructure and markets to move food.

Ethiopia, like many third world countries, has surplus food production in some areas, and deficit production in others. Because food can’t be moved, people are starving in the areas where the rains didn’t come.

• Drought resistant cropsThis has been accomplished in many areas, and is where modern biotechnology might be one of the solutions.

Hunger in the midst of plentyThere is more food available today on the planet per person than ever before in human history.• and yet, 800 million people go hungry every day. 36 million of them, according to the USDA statistics, are right here in the richest nation on Earth.

The real crime is the crime of distribution and access to food. How can we help people who are currently unable to obtain enough food?

• Helping build infrastructureThe Peace Corps, and VISTA are two agencies that have tried compensating for this problem

The Peace Corps traces its roots and mission to 1960, when then Senator John F. Kennedy challenged students at the University of Michigan to serve their country in the cause of peace by living and working in developing countries.

From that inspiration grew an agency of the federal government devoted to world peace and friendship.

AmeriCorps VISTA is US version of the Peace Corps. It is the national service program designed specifically to fight poverty in the US.

Founded as Volunteers in Service to America in 1965 and incorporated into the AmeriCorps network of programs in 1993, VISTA has been on the front lines in the fight against poverty in America for more than 40 years.

• The world is not going to redistribute its food. • The world is not going to redistribute its incomes.• The world is not going to redistribute other assets that are poorly distributed.

• We could assist by plowing small farms for the needy• We could assist by helping improve agricultural techniques• We could help the needy adopt the drought tolerant crops we introduce• We could help the needy learn how to produce a food surplus in their own villages so they could withstand a crop failure now and again, and not rely upon vast infrastructure.

Beginning in the mid-1940s, American researchers in Mexico developed a short-stemmed, disease-resistant wheat that had an extremely high-yield with a little water and fertilizer.The improved seeds were instrumental in boosting Mexican wheat production and averting famine in India and Pakistan, earning the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for Norman E. Borlaug.

The Green Revolution brought high-yield crops and advanced growing techniques to developing countries and improved nutrition and health for most parts of the world.

While advanced agricultural techniques have made it possible to grow more food on fewer acres of land, there are costs associated with high-yield methods.

• Heavy reliance on pesticides and fertilizers

• Runoff and erosion • Reliance on irrigation

To reduce reliance on pesticides, methods such as biocontrol and genetic engineering helped to create pest-resistant crops

The Green Revolution has depended greatly on fertilizers, and irrigation and other factors that poor farmers could not afford, and that may be ecologically harmful. The use of these crops has promoted a loss of genetic diversity.

Maintaining biodiversity is crucial to the wellness of an ecosystem. It is obvious that pesticides pose a threat to our water supply.

The debate over the safety of genetically modified (GM) crops has been heating up in the US.

• Golden Rice

This crop was created with a gene for vitamin A spliced into it. Regular rice doesn’t produce vitamin A. Some people who rely mostly on rice are missing this important nutrient.

Producing a rice that could provide this nutrient seemed like a great idea.This rice, however, provides so little vitamin A that a woman would have to eat 16 lbs of cooked rice every day in order to get sufficient Vitamin A, and a child would need 12 lbs a day!

Even if the rice did provide more vitamin A, we need adequate amounts of zinc, protein and fats in order to absorb it, and make it useful!

The Green Revolution of the 60s and 70s replaced diverse cropping systems with monocultures (singular plant species) of new wheat and rice varieties.

These required irrigation, fertilizers, and herbicides to deliver increased yields.

• killed many leafy green vegetables which had been important sources of vitamin A• poisoned the rice paddy waters, causing

steep declines in fish and shrimp populations in areas such as Bangladesh

• led to less diverse diets, reducing vegetable consumption by nearly 12% over the past two decades

An impoverished diet that consists of little else but rice (golden or not) will never provide a solution to world hunger or malnutrition.

About 24,000 people die every day from hunger or hunger-related causes. This is down from 35,000 ten years ago, and 41,000 twenty years ago. Three-fourths of the deaths are children under the age of five.

Famine and wars cause about 10% of hunger deaths, although these tend to be the ones you hear about most often. The majority of hunger deaths are caused by chronic malnutrition. Families facing extreme poverty are simply unable to get enough food to eat.

Today our world houses 6.8 billion people

Remember, one child dies every 5 seconds from hunger related ailments.

Sub-Saharan Africa

The number of undernourished people has risen in the last decade, mainly because there has been little progress in reducing poverty.

On which continent do the largest number of undernourished people reside?

Asia!