I AM HUNGRY!

Despite technological advancements and modernization of agricultural practices, a large number of people continue to sleep hungry. That half of the world sleeps hungry every night is something most of common westerners haven’t even ever heard.

Reports say that over 100 kg food is wasted every year for each person in the developed countries.
Over one-third of all food produced — as much as 1.3 billion tonnes — is wasted every year says an FAO report.

The wastage is highest in the West, for the West controls the largest resources and have more than ample food it needs for its people, much of which therefore go waste. Had the additional produce been distributed in a judicious way, all of world’s hunger could have been eliminated.

“It is important to focus on greater efforts at awareness creation and attitudinal change in the developed world which will enable us to save huge amounts of food,” Member of Parliament Supriya Sule said few months back at the discussion on Agriculture Development, Food Security and Nutrition.

Food is a valuable commodity, especially in poor countries. Consider the example of India where the number of malnourished children and anemic women is one of the highest in the world, closely preceded by sub-Saharan Africa. The world produces enough to feed every mouth living in every corner of the world. The problem lies in the inequality of distribution which aggravates the issues.

The major problem is food wastage. Majority of the resources are limited in the hands of a few, who control their consumption and distribution. These few, who own and control the resources, are also privy to huge wastages of those resources, willy-nilly being a part of this hunger in poor countries.

Lack of concern for fellow human beings in the first place, followed by lack of proper planning and management leads to this wastage of precious resources. This malady is spread across all segments of the material world but the pain is most pronounced in case of lack of food and that too in poorer and developing countries, which suffer the most due to this wastage. Consumers in developed countries waste as much food as all of sub-Saharan Africa produces every year.

Awareness is need of the hour. Not only the common people, who are reckless in their food habits, even the governments in the West need to be aware of the food problems of the world and judiciously use their resources for the benefit of all. They won’t lose anything but a large section of perishing humanity will survive by their graceful gesture of generosity. It is a moral act of benevolence which must be promoted in a big way across the developed world for they have a great ability as well as a big responsibility to share and spare.

Much of the West doesn’t get involved in such acts of humanity not because of their unwillingness but because of their lack of awareness and subsequent lack of action plan as to how to tackle the menace of wastage.

They doesn’t yet even know what wastage is when they throw away food, so amply stocked they are and much less understand the global implications of such wastage of a scarce resource. This attitude needs to be changed through spread of awareness across various platforms.

The United Nation teams and other organisation across the world should try to ensure measures that can be taken so that the food that is surplus to the people of the west is stocked and distributed to the needy. This step alone can change the food scenario of the world and we will have a universe where no one sleeps hungry.

–windowtonews