Causes World Hunger? The Most

¶ … Causes World Hunger? The most common belief concerning the cause is that it is simply a result of the unavoidable result of the forces of nature (Knight Pp). However, according to Peter Rosset, director of the Institute for Food and Development Policy, "The way people think about hunger is the greatest obstacle to ending it" (Knight Pp). In Rosset's report "World Hunger: Twelve Myths," he states that powerful myths block understanding of the true causes of hunger and prevent effective action to end it (Knight Pp).

The true source of world hunger is not inevitable scarcity but policy and politics (Knight Pp). According to the report, it is economies that fail of offer opportunities and societies that value economic efficiency over compassion (Knight Pp). It is not scarcity, but abundance that best describes the world's food supply, which produces enough grain and other commonly eaten foods to provide approximately 4.3 pounds of food per person per day (Knight Pp).

A 1997 report from the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that even in countries that have excess food, people still go hungry, with seventy-eight percent of all malnourished children under the age of five live in countries with food surpluses (Knight Pp). Many people of too poor to buy readily available food, "even though 'hungry countries' have enough food for all their citizens many are net exporters of food and other agricultural products" (Knight Pp).

Increasing production cannot alleviate hunger because it fails to alter the "tightly concentrated distribution of economic power that determines who can buy the additional food," says the report (Knight Pp). For example, in countries such as India, Mexico, and the Philippines, grain production and exports have increased, yet hunger persists (Knight Pp). Although nature is easy to blame for the world's hunger, food is always available for those who can afford it (Knight Pp).

In places such as south Asia and Africa, many people are deprived of land ownership by a "powerful few," and/or are "trapped in the unremitting grip of debt, or miserably paid" (Knight Pp). Another common myth concerning world hunger is population growth, however, according to the report, "For every Bangladesh, a densely populated and hungry country, we find a Nigeria, Brazil or Bolivia where abundant food resources coexist with hunger" (Knight Pp). Costa Rica, with only half of Honduras' cropped acres per person, has a life expectancy.