Hunger the Late 1960\'s and Early 1970\'s

¶ … Hunger

The late 1960's and early 1970's saw a polemical of two distinctive viewpoints on the trajectory of world hunger, food production, and global starvation. Dr. Paul Erlich, author of The Population Bomb espoused the idea that "humans would soon exhaust their ability to feed an ever burgeoning population" (Chou, H. June 7, 2010). Erlich's premise led to the inexorable conclusion that "global starvation was inevitable" (Easterbrook, G. September 16, 2009). The countervailing argument made by Nobel Prize winner Norman Borlaug was that innovative Green Revolution agricultural techniques would produce "both reliable harvests, and spectacular output" (Easterbrook, G. September 16, 2009). Borlaug's work on "high yield agriculture" (Easterbrook, G. September 16, 2009) over sixty years in the developing world resulted in massive increases in total grain tonnage produced, grain output per acre, and global grain yields. Borlaug proved that the world could in fact produce more than adequate supplies of food to feed global populations. Yet if food supply were the answer to stemming starvation, malnourishment, and hunger; the world's current production should have eradicated these scourges.

The World's food supply is abundant, not scarce. The world production of grain and many other foods is sufficient to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person per day…yet 78% of all malnourished children aged under five live in countries with food surpluses. (Knight, D. October 16, 1998)

The paradox of fulsome global supply with continued hunger and starvation is indicative that there remains a root cause of these maladies, which if identified and conquered can bring an end to the suffering of hundreds of millions. This root cause is quite straightforward according to individuals such as Peter Rosset, Danielle Knight, J.W. Smith and other experts and organizations such as World Hunger.org; "the real problem is poverty…the tightly concentrated distribution of economic power that determines who can buy the additional food" (Knight, D. October 16, 1998). An examination of this premise will explicate whether in fact "hunger is caused by decisions made by human beings, and can be ended by making different decisions" (Knight, D. October 16, 1998).

By any objective measure world hunger, malnutrition, and starvation are problems of enormity and global catastrophes. "The United Nation's Food and Agricultural Organization estimated that in 2010 the number of hungry people in the world was 925 million" (Kilman, S. September 13, 2010). 578 million of these undernourished live in Asia and the Pacific region; 40% of undernourished live in China and India; and 30% of the sub-Saharan African population are undernourished. Perhaps even more striking however, is the figure that only 19 million individuals are hungry in the developed world, leaving 906 million undernourished people in the developing world (Kilman, S. September 13, 2010). In the developing world "approximately 25,000 people die each day from starvation" (Chou, H. June 7, 2010).

In the context of the developing world the case for poverty as the cause of hunger is certainly a convincing one. "As of 2008 (2005 statistics), the World Bank has estimated that there were an estimated 1,345 million poor people in developing countries who live on $1.25 a day or less" (World Hunger.org. 2011). The implications of this statement are that the vast majority of individuals living in the developing world do not have the basic monetary means to pay for food. It is abject poverty then that perpetuates and deepens the cycle of hunger, malnourishment, and starvation. "In other words, if you don't have the money to buy food, no one is going to grow it for you" (Robbins, R.N.D.). It is the commoditization of food concomitant with lack of purchasing power for hundreds of millions which causes hunger. Fair enough. The case is compelling however; it leaves unanswered the question of why poverty exists and how to eliminate it.

The presented readings provide a poverty analysis which subscribes to the theory that economic elites in the developed and developing world through unscrupulous and illegal methods have acquired wealth and property, which is concentrated and controlled to the detriment of the preponderance of the working and lower class. The rectifying solution purported by subscribers of this theory is a deconstruction of these economic oligopolies through an egalitarian movement to redistribute wealth across society. It is then a failure of "the ordinary operation of the economic and political systems in the world" (World Hunger.org. 2011) which is the cause of poverty and in progression, hunger. Does this statement though balance with the realities of the global economy? Two scenarios can determine the veracity of the postulation.

There is no debate that the developed economies of the world hold a sizeable percentage of global wealth, a fact which can explain the fractional low numbers of malnourished individuals as compared to the developing world. Yet, there is something inherent in these developed economies which make them unique; a market oriented foundation with a free citizenry engaged in a democratic system. If the developed world has wealth it is because of this framework, not because of ordinary economic operations which acquire wealth at the expense of other nations, or are controlled by corrupt power barons.

We need only look at Sub-Saharan African nations, "the region with the highest prevalence of hunger, 30%," (Kilman, S. September 13, 2010) as an object lesson in the role of state controlled corrupt economies which offer only tyranny to their citizens in the form of economic stagnation and pillaging of personal and democratic freedom. "Of the ten countries considered most corrupt in the world, six are in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to Transparency International, a leading global watchdog on corruption. A 2002 African Union study estimated that corruption cost the continent roughly $150 billion a year" (Hanson, S. August 6, 2009). Economic and political corruption is the face of closed economies with limited market mechanisms and no measure of opportunity for their citizens. The sub-Saharan dictatorships which stifle freedom, knowledge, and innovation beget further poverty and develop "citizens who are tired of oppression, high rates of unemployment and escalating costs of living engendered by poor governance" (News from Africa.org. March 21, 2011). Could it be that poverty is caused not by the operation of the economic and political model of the developed world, but the failure of corrupt developing world dictatorships intent on subrogation of their citizenry? Hunger caused by poverty is the result then of the unequal distribution of market oriented democracies.