I just read "True Cause of World Hunger", an interview with Anuradha Mittal of Food First. http://www.foodfirst.org/media/interviews/2002/amittalsun.html Why do people go hungry? Because they don't have food. Why don't they have food? Because they cant afford it. "Hunger is a social disease linked to poverty, and thus any discussion of hunger is incomplete without a discussion of economics." It is estimated that 830 million go hungry. Yet, the world food supply produces an adundant and more than sufficient 4.3 pounds of food per person per day. Famines are commonly blamed on extended droughts or bad harvests. Parched rivers and shifting global weather are prominent in media explanations. Historically, there have been periods of drastically reduced production of food, but rarely did this result in a famine. This is because surpluses from previous harvests were stored and allowed communities to more than survive the odd bad year. Mass hunger began with the advent of colonization, when subsistence crops were replaced with cash crops. When the colonizers showed up, and claimed the country for their respective Empire, they told the natives that as subjects they owed taxes. Since the natives had no money for the taxes, they were told to raise cash crops which were then sold in foreign markets. In addition, money earned from the sale was then cycled back as taxes. The colonized farmer was left with no subsistence crops to feed himself and nor was there any money to buy food. Droughts are just the final, killer blow and they are not even required when the world market price fluctuates. Development aid meted out so generously in contemporary times follows a similar cycle in the transfer of wealth and the flow of capital. Huge projects such as dams financed by the World Bank produce business for Western consultants and companies. Arguably they have value for the recipient country, but that country basically gets a massive amount of debt to be serviced. Mittal mentions the state of affairs in India, which illustrates these factors: "Of the 830 million hungry people worldwide, a third of them live in India. Yet in 1999, the Indian government had 10 million tons of surplus food grains: rice, wheat, and so on. In the year 2000, that surplus increased to almost 60 million tons - most of it left in the granaries to rot. Instead of giving the surplus food to the hungry, the Indian government was hoping to export the grain to make money. It also stopped buying grain from its own farmers, leaving them destitute. The farmers, who had gone into debt to purchase expensive chemical fertilizers and pesticides on the advice of the government, were now forced to burn their crops in their fields. At the same time, the government of India was buying grain from Cargill and other American corporations, because the aid India receives from the World Bank stipulates that the government must do so. This means that today India is the largest importer of the same grain it exports. It doesn't make sense - economic or otherwise. " (from the interview quoted above) A sad irony in the excerpt above is that the very people who produce the food, the farmers, are the ones who go hungry. This has plenty of precedence, for example during the Irish famine of late 19th century, when 2 million Irish perished, Ireland was exporting food to Britain. During the Ethiopian famine of 1980s, green beans were exported. Farmers in the West, particulary in the US, enjoy huge food subsidies. Mostly this is thinly disguised protectionism in global trade. Here is an excerpt from the Economist: "Rich countries protect their farmers with subsidies, high tariffs, import quotas and a tangle of other barriers masquerading as health and safety standards. This makes it hard for farmers in poor countries to sell their produce in rich countries. The World Bank says that ending northern protection would boost poor countries' annual GDP by $30 billion, which would buy quite a few lunches. Unlike aid, freer trade does not foster dependence. And whereas aid costs money, cutting farm subsidies would save rich-country taxpayers a billion dollars a day, as well as letting those who eat do so more cheaply. Some northern farmers might suffer, but supporting them while they look for other work would be far cheaper than the current system. Besides, most of the rich world's subsidies go to the richest farmers, many of them millionaires. They certainly won't starve." (Economist, June 15 2002) Browsing through the various literature, land reform, better governance, less war (particularly in woeful Africa) are all placed central to any lasting solution to tackle hunger in the stricken Third World. These solutions place the burden squarely on the bewitched countries to sort out their mess. To be sure if defense budgets in the sub continent are realigned with the actual needs of the people, it would make a tremendous difference. So would giving the landless property. However, as some of the discussion on the causes of hunger above should suggest, efforts in developing countries to sort out their mess are largely peripheral to lasting solutions. The real changes need to happen elsewhere. Some references: Food for Beginners (available at amazon) This well illustrated comic format book is very clear in its explanations. It is a little old (1982 edition), but highly recommended. 12 Myths about World Hunger http://www.foodfirst.org/pubs/backgrdrs/1998/s98v5n3.html http://www.wfp.org http://www.foodfirst.org/ http://www.foodfirst.org/media/interviews/2002/amittalsun.html http://www.oxfam.org