World Hunger

One Mississippi. In the amount of time it took to read the first sentence, five people in this world would have died of starvation. We live in a country where obesity is a growing concern and starvation is rarely noticed. But as we sit here, eating our way to a better life, it is important to realize that hundreds of millions of people in this world starve day after day. According to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Origination (FAO), world hunger has increased from 847 million in 2005 to 985 million in 2012. Even worse than that, approximately 25,000 people die of starvation and malnourishment every single day. Though there are many ways that we can help reduce world hunger, I believe that food banking, providing free meals at schools, rain-fed agriculture, and producing Genetically Modified Food (GM Food), and having a safety net programs are the most efficient ways to reduce world hunger.

One of the simplest ways to reduce world hunger is by reducing the amount of food that is wasted. In the past year, roughly 2.3 billion tons of food was wasted throughout the world (Sanchez). Food banking is one of the most efficient ways to eliminate food waste. Food banks gather food from consumers, manufactures, and retail stores, and it make it available to agencies that can distribute it locally and internationally. Doing this alone, can help reduce the hunger rates drastically. It was stated that an individual food bank in the UK feeds anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 people each year (Sanchez). A few years ago, such food banks were unheard of in the UK. However, due to the increased demand of these facilities, there is one food bank opening every four days. The addition of these facilities to the struggling communities has decreased the hunger rate by more than half (Sanchez). Success of the food banks in the UK is one of many example of how such facilities have helped reduce hunger in communities across the world. Despite of its contribution to society, one...