Quote of the Day

Malnutrition continues to afflict one in nine people globally

‘’It is unacceptable that in a world of plenty that nearly 800 million people still suffer from hunger, this represents a collective moral and political failure,’’ UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. 

Statistics and the Future of Food Production

An interesting piece of analysis by Doug Boucher who is an expert in preserving tropical forests to curtail global warming emissions. He has been participating in United Nations international climate negotiations since 2007 and his expertise has helped shape U.S. and U.N. policies. He holds a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Michigan.

“We will need to produce at least 60% more food in 2050”, a statement that has been repeated over and over again in speeches and on websites explaining why it’s necessary to raise agricultural production, whether by using GMOs, clearing forests, or totally revolutionizing the global food system. The wording may vary (sometimes it’s 70% or “doubling” or) as does the exact phrasing (often it includes phrases like “to feed our rapidly growing population”) but the message is always one of urgency and alarm.

What exactly is the analysis that this prediction is based on? Naively, one might think that you’d measure food by weighing it, so that the 60% figure meant 60% more kilograms, pounds or tons. A little more sophisticated approach could be to look at the amount of energy in the food, which would mean measuring it in calories. This would take into account the fact that some foods (e.g coffee or celery) have very little energy, while others (e.g. rice or pork) have considerably more, so that their weights are a good reflection of their value for human growth and survival. Other possibilities could include weighting foods by their protein content, or other important nutrients such as phosphorus, calcium or vitamins.

Nope.

Rather it turns out that none of these but instead the unit of measurement for the calculation, is dollars. What does it mean say that the global population will need to consume many more dollars of food in 2050? The answer is that this is an economic projection, not an estimate of need.

The authors who did the calculation – FAO experts Nikos Alexandratos and Jelle Bruinsma, for successive publications in 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2013 – made this quite clear. Here is a quote that is repeated verbatim in their 2006 and 2012 reports:

“The figures we use refer to the aggregate volume of demand and production of the crop and livestock sectors. They are obtained by multiplying physical quantities of demand or production times price for each commodity and summing up over all commodities.”

And, in more detail:

“The figure 70 percent from average 2005/7 to 2050 has been widely quoted. It is important to realize what it means: when speaking of growth rates of aggregate agricultural production or consumption, it matters what units are used in the measurement of change, in particular whether quantities of the different commodities are just aggregated in physical units …. or aggregated after making them homogeneous by multiplying each quantity with an appropriate weighting factor and summing up. The weights often considered are food-specific calorie content of each commodity (e.g. kcal per kg.) or price. ….This study uses the international dollar prices of 2004/06 …. the physical weight aggregation would not make sense and the same goes for calorie weights.”

So the authors are quite clear: this is a projection, in economic units, of the global demand for food. It weights foods not by how many calories or how much protein they contain, but by their prices.

What is the consequence of this?

It turns out that the prices of different kinds of foods, in dollars per kilo or per pound are very different. Here, for example, were the U.S. export prices of different foods in July 2005, indexed by taking maize (corn) as equal to 1.0:

Beef     33.0

Pork    17.0

Poultry 6.7

Wheat  1.9

In other words, this way of doing the calculations counts meat, and particularly beef, way out of proportion to its calorie or protein content. So that as global diets shift towards more meat as incomes increase, the projection of “need,” done in dollar terms, will go up.

FAO 2006: “At the world level, the growth of demand for all crop and livestock products is projected to be lower than in the past, 1.5 percent p.a. in the period 1999/01-2030 and 0.9 percent for 2030-50 compared with rates in the area of 2.1-2.3 percent p.a. in the preceding four decades.”

FAO 2009: “The projections show that feeding a world population of 9.1 billion people in 2050 would require raising overall food production by some 70 percent between 2005/07 and 2050.”

FAO 2012: “…global production in 2050 should be 60 percent higher than that of 2005/2007.”

CGIAR/FAO 2013: “FAO estimates that global agricultural production in 2050 will need to increase by at least 60 percent relative to 2006, a growth rate of just less than 1.2 percent annually.”

The Economist 2011: “..total demand for food will rise about 70% in the 44 years from 2006 to 2050, more than twice as much as demand for cereals.” (The Nine Billion-People Question, 26 February 2011, p. 4)

National Geographic 2014: “By 2050 the world’s population will likely increase by about 35%…. To feed that population, crop production will need to double.” (Feeding Nine Billion, May 2014, p. 45)

The false conclusion is that in order to feed the world’s growing population, more food in the next 50 years than in the past 10,000, during a 40-year period  in which global population is projected to increase by less than 40%? Hard to believe, if it’s kilos or calories of food – but perhaps the case if you measure food in dollars. The predictions are all dollar figures, not an actual measure of need.

Let’s End Chronic Hunger Now

At the 1996 World Food Summit (WFS), heads of government and the international community committed to reducing the number of hungry people in the world by half. Five years later, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) lowered this level of ambition by only seeking to halve the proportion of the hungry.

The latest State of World Food Insecurity (SOFI) report for 2015 by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Food Programme and International Fund for Agricultural Development estimates almost 795 million people — one in nine people worldwide — remain chronically hungry.

The number of undernourished people — those regularly unable to consume enough food for an active and healthy life — in the world has thus only declined by slightly over a fifth from the 1010.6 million estimated for 1991 to 929.6 million in 2001, 820.7 million in 2011 and 794.6 million in 2014.

With the number of chronically hungry people in developing countries declining from 990.7 million in 1991 to 779.9 million in 2014, their share in developing countries has declined by 44.4 per cent, from 23.4 to 12.9 per cent over the 23 years, but still short of the 11.7 per cent target.

Thus, the MDG 1c target of halving the chronically undernourished’s share of the world’s population by the end of 2015 is unlikely to be met at the current rate of progress. However, meeting the target is still possible, with sufficient, immediate, additional effort to accelerate progress, especially in countries which have showed little progress thus far.

Overall progress has been highly uneven. All but 15 million of the world’s hungry live in developing countries. Some countries and regions have seen only slow progress in reducing hunger, while the absolute number of hungry has even increased in several cases.

By the end of 2014, 72 of the 129 developing countries monitored had reached the MDG 1c target — to either reduce the share of hungry people by half, or keep the share of the chronically undernourished under five per cent. Several more are likely to do so by the end of 2015.

Instead of halving the number of hungry in developing regions by 476 million, this number was only reduced by 221 million, just under half the earlier, more ambitious WFS goal. Nevertheless, some 29 countries succeeded in at least halving the number of hungry. This is significant as this shows that achieving and sustaining rapid progress in reducing hunger is feasible.

Marked differences in undernourishment persist across the regions. There have been significant reductions in both the share and number of undernourished in most countries in South-East Asia, East Asia, Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean — where the MDG target of halving the hunger rate has been reached.

While sub-Saharan Africa has the highest share of the chronically hungry, almost one in four, South Asia has the highest number, with over half a billion undernourished. West Asia alone has seen an actual rise in the share of the hungry compared to 1991, while progress in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Oceania has not been sufficient to meet the MDG hunger target by 2015.

Despite the shortfall in achieving the MDG1c target and the failure to get near the WFS goal of halving the number of hungry, world leaders are likely to commit to eliminating hunger and poverty by 2030 when they announce the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the United Nations in September.

To be sure, there is enough food produced to feed everyone in the world. However, hundreds of millions of people do not have the means to access enough food to meet their dietary energy needs, let alone what is needed for diverse diets to avoid ‘hidden hunger’ by meeting their micronutrient requirements.

With high levels of deprivation, unemployment and underemployment likely to prevail in the world in the foreseeable future, poverty and hunger are unlikely to be overcome by 2030 without universally establishing a social protection floor for all. Such efforts will also need to provide the means for sustainable livelihoods and resilience.

The Second International Conference of Nutrition in Rome last November articulated commitments and proposals for accelerated progress to overcome undernutrition. Improvements in nutrition will require sustained and integrated efforts involving complementary policies, including improving health conditions, food systems, social protection, hygiene, water supply and education.

 By Jomo Kwame Sundaram from here

It is widely acknowledged that there is more than sufficient food produced worldwide to meet all human needs. The paragraph in bold reaffirms that. We would add that attempting to refashion some aspects of capitalist principles to achieve the goal has been a regular and ongoing failure. Evidence shows that each time there is a review of the state of the millenium goals figures are cleverly manipulated to show progress, whatever the actual numbers reveal. 

What is really needed if, as a global population, we are serious about eliminating hunger and poverty is the removal of the cause, thereby enabling us to deal with the situation immediately, not by 2030. Profits being the number one priority in capitalism are the reason that the hungry can't access food. To eliminate profit we must eliminate capitalism. Let's do it and get serious about feeding everyone now!

Ten US Cities With Many Hungry People

1. Memphis
In 2010, a study by the Food Research Action Center declared Memphis to be the hunger capital of the U.S. and found that 26% of its residents had suffered from food insecurity at some point during the previous 12 months. And four years later, Memphis had the worst hunger problem of the 25 cities examined in the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ new report: 46% of the requests for emergency food assistance in Tennessee’s largest city—almost half—were being unmet. Food pantries in Memphis are overwhelmed with requests, and according to the report, they are having a hard time “securing funds to purchase the food needed to meet the need.” Unemployment, low wages and poverty were cited as the main causes of hunger in Memphis, where the official unemployment rate is 7.5% and 26.2% of its residents are living below the poverty line. And the Conference of Mayors noted that in 2015, “city officials expect requests for food assistance to increase moderately and resources to provide food assistance to decrease moderately.”

2. San Antonio
In the Conference of Mayors’ report, there is both good news and bad news where San Antonio is concerned. The good news is that requests for emergency food assistance in San Antonio have “decreased over the past year by 18%.” But the bad news is that 38% of the requests for emergency food assistance are still going unmet in that Texas city, where the Conference said that the number of homeless families “increased by 19 percent” over the past year. For 2015, city officials expect a “moderate” increase in food requests combined with a “moderate” decrease in the resources to meet them—and almost half of the San Antonio residents facing food insecurity next year are likely to be the working poor. The Conference found that 46% of the people requesting emergency food assistance there were employed.

3. San Francisco
San Francisco has long been one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. Extreme gentrification in the Northern California city has gone from bad to worse in recent years, making it even more difficult to stay afloat without at least an upper middle class income. And the U.S. Conference of Mayors reported that of the 25 cities analyzed, San Francisco is among the worst for hunger: 37% of the requests for emergency food assistance in San Francisco went unmet in the last year (compared to 15% in Denver or 10% in Charlotte, NC). Nonetheless, food pantries in the Bay Area are working hard to meet the heavy demand for food assistance: the Mayors Conference reported that the San Francisco/Marin Food Bank Pantry Program feeds, on average, 30,000 households every week and distributed an impressive 30 million pounds of food through its pantry network in 2013. And it also fights hunger in San Francisco with an aggressive food stamp outreach that includes special “SNAP in a day” events in which the poor can receive EBT cards the same day they apply for them. But in a city with such a high cost of living, the San Francisco/Marin Food Bank Pantry Program needs a lot more funding. And the Conference of Mayors predicts that in 2015, the need for emergency food assistance in San Francisco “will increase substantially” while funding for the city’s anti-hunger programs “will decrease substantially.”

4. Washington, DC
The U.S. capitol is a city with glaring income inequality: houses that sell for half a million dollars and up are the norm in many parts of town, yet 18.5% of Washington, DC’s population lives below the poverty line. Officials in DC, according to Conference of Mayors, estimate that requests for emergency food assistance “increased by 56 percent over the past year”—and 30% of those requests (almost one-third) went unmet. The three top reasons cited for hunger in Washington, DC were poverty, high housing costs and high health care costs. In other words, the high cost of living is contributing to food insecurity in the nation’s capitol. And the problem is likely to worsen in 2015: DC city officials, according to the Conference, “expect requests for food assistance to increase moderately and resources to provide food assistance to decrease moderately.” The report also pointed out the link between poverty and a poor diet, noting that “the Washington metro area is seeing growing numbers of low-income individuals suffering from diet-related illnesses such as diabetes and hypertension.”

5. Des Moines
At 4.0%, Des Moines’ official unemployment rate is below the national average. But unemployment figures never tell the whole story because they don’t factor in long-term discouraged workers or things like wages and cost of living—and with 17.7% of Des Moines residents living below the poverty line, the working poor are plentiful in Iowa’s largest city. The Conference of Mayors found that requests for emergency food assistance “increased by 20 percent over the past year,” and three reasons cited were low wages, high housing costs and poverty. The Conference also found that 30% of Des Moines’ emergency food requests were going unmet and predicted that in 2015, such requests will “increase substantially” while resources for food assistance will “decrease moderately.”

6. Boston
Boston is among the most expensive of the Northeastern Corridor cities, and the combination of poverty and a high cost of living can easily lead to hunger when food assistance is inadequate. For Boston, the Mayors Conference reported that requests for emergency food assistance “decreased by 1.7 percent” in the past year but that among those still requesting food assistance, 36% of the requests went unmet. And the report cited the high cost of health care, housing and utilities as three major causes of hunger in that city. Roughly 21.2% of Boston residents live below the poverty line, and clearly, many of them have become food-insecure as a result of having too many expenses and not enough income. To make matters worse, the Greater Boston Food Bank has reported that even Bostonians who make too much to qualify for food stamps might be struggling to eat because they spend so much of their income on housing and utilities.

7. Santa Barbara
Sun Belt cities tend to attract the homeless and the working poor because of their milder climates: being homeless is brutal under any circumstances, but it is especially harsh in places where sub-freezing temperatures, snow and ice are the norm during the winter months. And one of the Sun Belt cities with an abundance of hunger and homelessness is Santa Barbara, California, where requests for emergency food assistance “increased by 8%” this past year and 30% of those requests went unmet. The three main reasons cited for hunger in Santa Barbara were unemployment, low wages and high housing costs, although the Mayors Conference report said that most of the Santa Barbara residents seeking emergency food assistance were the working poor rather than the unemployed: roughly 70% of them had jobs.

8. Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City is a perfect example of a place where one finds lower-than-average unemployment but widespread poverty: Utah’s largest city has an official unemployment rate of 3.3%—definitely below the national average—but the fact that 19.4% of its residents are living below the poverty line points to an abundance of low-paying jobs. And among the people requesting emergency food assistance in Salt Lake City in the past year, the Mayors Conference reported that 74 percent were employed. The Conference found that such requests “increased by 16 percent over the past year” and that around one-fifth of that need was going unmet. Three reasons cited for food insecurity in Salt Lake City were low wages, high housing costs and poverty.

9. Philadelphia
Although Philadelphia is doing relatively well in some respects (from nightlife and the arts to jobs in health care and higher education), the East Coast’s second largest city still has a great deal of poverty and economic deprivation. And gentrification in historically low-income sections of the city does nothing to help the poor out of poverty; it simply chases them out of those neighborhoods and contributes to homelessness. The Conference of Mayors’ report found that among the homeless, 49% of requests for shelter in Philly were going unmet—and among the city’s hungry, 20% of requests for food assistance were going unmet. In other words, one in five hungry Philadelphians isn’t receiving food assistance when it is needed. The Conference also found that in Philly, many of the people seeking emergency food assistance were the working poor: 60 percent of them were employed. Nonetheless, unemployment was cited as one of the leading causes of hunger in Philly along with “low wages” and “poverty.” And Philabundance, one of the organizations fighting hunger in that city, has said that its anti-hunger efforts become more difficult every time members of Congress vote to decrease food stamp benefits.

10. Norfolk
The Conference of Mayors reported that in Norfolk, there has been a 3% increase in “the number of homeless individuals” and a 3% increase in the number of people requesting emergency food assistance—and Norfolk officials estimated that about 30% of those requests are being unmet. Food pantries in Norfolk, clearly, don’t have the resources to help everyone in that city who is suffering from food insecurity. Norfolk officials expect the number of residents seeking food assistance to “increase moderately” in 2015, and many of them will no doubt be the working poor. The Conference of Mayors estimated that 51% of people seeking food assistance in Norfolk are employed and cited “low wages” (along with “inadequate benefits” and high health care costs) as one of the main causes of hunger in that city.

taken from here

Yes, it's appalling and yes, it's happening all over the world and yes, it's an integral aspect of capitalism. If that shocks you you're new to this blog. But as a roof over your head and food on the table all require money that should explain the problem. Look at it in the cold light of day and it's obvious that food banks (and it's a great job that people are doing) and food stamps, welfare, charities, tax reforms, etc etc, never get anywhere near solving the problem. What is required is a drastic change, a change of system. The one way out of this horrendous situation is the abolition of capitalism in favour of socialism, and we need it now.

 

Homeless In Washington DC

They occupy alleys and benches, the side doorways of office buildings and dead spaces behind dumpsters. They hobble along sidewalks, looking for change, food and clothing. “Can you spare quarters, dimes, nickels?” A homeless man asks each night near McPherson Park. Others linger near the metro entrance waiting for the van from Martha’s Table to serve dinner.
 

By the thousands, Washington, DC bears witness to the displaced who congregate in its parks and sidewalks. They wait for meals and clothing that are delivered by civic groups after the last of the rush hour traffic has dribbled back to the suburbs. A few days before Christmas, vans pull up and the hungry appear from the night driven by the cold for a warm meal.

There’s temporary protection from weather which whips around the facade of the Veterans Administration building as it stands firm like a sentinel guarding them. The metro staff accepts that they’ll always inhabit this place. At midnight the night staff lower the metal gates and turn off the escalators and though there is a shelter at 4th & D, it’s a long trek for those who have no bus fare. 

In McPherson Park, a cold rain blows through the square, whistling through tree branches and wetting the grass. The homeless huddle in the nearby metro entrance a block from the White House. On this night the entrance finds only a few dozen waiting and offers them a damp marble floor. They share muffled conversations while some lay on cardboard. Among them is a woman with a dog hovering under a blanket.

Connie ‘Cookie’ Knight has been a metro employee for 14 years and hasn’t seen it this bad in the seven years that she has been assigned to work in the District. “There are more folks here than ever,” she says. “There are more Spanish folks out there now and even Asians are coming here.” She spoke of the changing demographics of the homeless and how it has changed over the last few years. “It is getting mixed more now than ever, there are more women than before and the change has largely come over the last five years.” She spoke of recent efforts metro has made to put people on buses during the coldest nights when temperatures drop . . .

from here with more on the homeless 

Hungry Britain

Millions of the poorest people in Britain are struggling to get enough food to maintain their body weight, according to official figurespublished in the Government's Family Food report.

The poorest 10 per cent of the population – some 6.4 million people – ate an average of 1,997 calories a day last year, compared with the average guideline figure of about 2,080 calories. For the first time since the Second World War, the poor cannot afford sufficient calories.

The report also highlighted a widening consumption gap between rich and poor. In 2001/2, there was little difference, with the richest 10th consuming a total of 2,420 calories daily, about 4 per cent more than the poorest. But in 2013, the richest group consumed 2,294 calories, about 15 per cent more than the poorest.

It also found that the poorest people spent 22 per cent more on food in 2013 than in 2007 but received 6.7 per cent less.

Liz Dowler, a professor of food and social policy at Warwick University, said it was clear that "there are substantial numbers of people who are going hungry and eating a pretty miserable diet. The story of people struggling is now beginning to show up in national data sets and that's a pretty bad sign." Professor Dowler said people who were struggling to get enough calories would often turn to high-energy food, such as chips, that can have a low nutritional value. "You can stave off hunger by just having some relatively cheap calories but if you live like that day after day your health will suffer significantly." She went on to explain "At the extreme, malnourishment is a cliff edge, but mostly it's not. It's a slow, miserable grind of bodily impoverishment, where you're gradually depleting your body's stores and your strength is way below what it should be. Your skin is very pale, you are exhausted all the time, you feel very low, often extremely depressed and you find it difficult to work. Children who are malnourished cannot concentrate at school, have endless coughs and colds and they get sick all the time. It's a pretty negative existence."

Susan Jebb, a professor of diet and population health at Oxford University and a member of Public Health England's obesity programme board, said "There are sub-groups of the population who are in food poverty and who are struggling to have enough to eat."               

                       

The use of food banks in the UK has surged in recent years. The Trussell Trust, a charity which runs more than 400 food banks, said it had given three days worth of food, and support, to more than 492,600 people between April and September this year, up 38 per cent on the same period in 2013. Chris Mould, the chairman of the Trussell Trust, said people who used food banks were genuinely desperate. "We talk to people who have had nothing but toast to eat for a week – usually parents because they are trying their best to keep their children fed," he said.

Niall Cooper, the director of Church Action on Poverty, said the situation was "deeply worrying". "People are desperate and those using food banks are only the tip of the iceberg," he said. "There are lots of people who are too ashamed and who don't want to approach a professional to get a referral to a food bank."

And Imran Hussain, the head of policy at the Child Poverty Action Group, said: "The cost of the basics in life – rent, food and heating – has far outstripped headline inflation, earnings and benefit levels. "Rather than spending billions on tax cuts largely benefiting the rich, we should be choosing to protect our children from hardship through prioritising affordable housing, tackling low pay and protecting the purchasing power of benefits."

Feed the World - Abolish Capitalism

The anticipated global population by 2050 is 9 billion and the obvious first question by many people is “How are we going to produce enough food to feed the hungry?”

Try this : 

“Place yourself in the poorest place you can think of. Imagine yourself in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example. Now. You are hungry but are you going to go hungry? Are you going to have a problem finding food?”

The answer, obviously, is “no”. Because you would be in that country with a wallet filled with cash and credit cards. So all you would do is go find a restaurant or food stall and buy yourself something to eat.

The difference between you and the hungry is not food availability or the level of its production; it is money. There are no hungry people with money; for them there is no shortage of food.  For the poor, there is “I-don’t-have-the-land-and-resources-to-produce-my-own-food, nor-can-I-afford-to-buy-food” hunger problem.

Their poverty and the resulting hunger are not matters of bad luck but often as a result of people buying the property of traditional farmers and displacing them (landgrab), appropriating their water, energy and mineral resources, and even producing cash crops for export while reducing the people growing the food to menial and hungry labourers on their own land.

There is also the virtually unregulated food system that is geared towards making money rather than feeding people. (Look no further than biofuels, for evidence.) A majority of the world is fed by hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers, some of whom are themselves among the hungry. The rest of the hungry are underpaid or unemployed workers. But boosting yields does nothing for them. Claiming that increasing the yields of farmers would feed the poor is like saying that producing more cars would guarantee that everyone would get one.

Poverty creates hunger yet it also teams up with the food system to create another form of malnourishment: Obesity (and what is called “hidden hunger”, the lack of micronutrients). If you define “hunger” as malnutrition and accept that overweight and obesity are forms of malnutrition as well, then almost half the world is malnourished.

Is there hunger and malnutrition in the United States? Yes, quite a bit. It has the highest percentage of hungry people of any developed nation, a rate close to that of Indonesia.  Is there a lack of food? Not at all. The supermarker shelves are over-flowing with food but it is only available for those who can pay its price at the check-out.

The solution is to end poverty. To eliminate poverty we must eliminate capitalism. And how do we help those who have malnutrition? We can help them — and help preserve the Earth’s health — if we recognise that the industrial model of food production for profit is neither inevitable nor desirable. There is plenty of food. Too much of it is going to feed animals, too much is being converted to fuel and too much of it is being wasted. We do not have to increase yield to address any of those issues. We simply require the appropriate economic system to make it possible.

Our slogan should not be “Let’s feed the world”, but “Let us end capitalism”

Adapted from here

Mind The Gap - Hunger, Poverty and Gender

Empowering women and girls is critical to ending hunger, extreme poverty, and malnutrition around the world—including in the United States—according to a new report released Monday by the Bread of the World Institute.

The report by the Institute, a non-partisan, Christian citizens' movement aimed at educating policymakers, opinion leaders, and the public about hunger, shows that discrimination against women is a major cause of persistent hunger and that increasing women’s earning potential by boosting bargaining power, reducing gender inequality in unpaid work, increasing women’s political representation, and eliminating the wage gap between male and female labor could help stem the worldwide epidemic.

"Neither women nor men living in poverty have much economic bargaining power—that is, an ability to negotiate favorable economic outcomes for themselves—especially in developing countries, as the vast majority of people do low-paying, low-productivity work," reads "When Women Flourish…We Can End Hunger" (pdf). "Even within the constraints of poverty, however, working conditions for men and women are far from equal: women suffer many more forms of discrimination, which worsen the effects of poverty on their lives. Discrimination that establishes and reinforces women’s lower status in society starts within the family and extends through community customs and national laws."

"Discrimination," the analysis continues, "is why women farmers labor with fewer productive resources than their male counterparts, why women in all sectors of the economy earn less than men, and why girls are pulled out of school to work or to marry."

Yet women are the ones the world relies on to combat hunger and malnutrition. And when they are afforded more agency—when they are given control of their own earnings, allowed to participate in the development of agricultural programs, protected from domestic violence, or permitted to stay in school longer, for example—health outcomes improve.
"Eliminating barriers and empowering women around the world is key to ending hunger in our time," said Asma Lateef, director of Bread for the World Institute. "We must not tolerate discrimination against women and instead, demand a comprehensive approach to women’s empowerment that includes applying a gender lens to all programs and policies."

While the report examines hunger worldwide, it devotes an entire chapter to "The Feminization of Hunger and Poverty in the United States." To reduce hunger and poverty in the U.S.—issues that are compounded by high levels of incarceration, a persistent wage gap, and insufficient childcare benefits—the report declares, "we must identify and adopt policies that help eliminate entrenched and interconnected sexism and racism."

The report includes a joint statement from U.S. Representatives Kay Granger (R-Texas) and Nita Lowey (D-New York), urging policymakers at home and abroad to consider the implications of giving women the tools they need to survive and thrive.

"There is no greater force multiplier than empowered women," they write. "In developed and developing countries alike, from conflict zones to refugee shelters, when we make women’s rights and opportunity top priorities, we stand a much better chance of defeating intolerance, poverty, disease, and even extremism."

 

from here

 

SOYMB would add to this that global capitalism thrives on entrenched patriarchy causing yet another unequal struggle within the system. Socialism, on the other hand, recognises just two classes - capitalists and workers. As with men, the vast majority of the world's females are part of the working class and their real liberation will come from the overthrow of the capitalist system, nothing less.

JS

 

 

Feed The World

Agribusiness abound with dire warnings about unsustainable population growth and looming resource constraints. How can we produce enough food to feed this growing population?

“Between now and 2050, we need to double the food supply,” said Dr. Robert Fraley, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Monsanto, “That's probably the greatest challenge facing mankind.” But offering policies and practices that have changed little. That is in part because they are the old tried-and-failed solution of increasing commodity food production. For companies like Monsanto that sell agricultural inputs, producing more is indeed the solution to just about everything; after all, that lets them sell more seeds and chemicals. It is not surprising that Monsanto and other agribusiness firms might overstate the situation. Increasing the global supply of agricultural commodities might bring food prices down for a while, but it won’t feed the hungry.

The claims about the need to double food production are unfounded, according to ActionAid’s report, “Rising to the Challenge: Changing Course to Feed the World in 2050.” Solutions to the world's food insecurity lie not in the rush to increase industrial food production but in supporting sustainable and productive farming practices among small-scale farmers – particularly women – in developing countries while while halting the diversion of food to biofuels and reducing the obscene levels of waste and spoilage that keep one-third of the world’s food from nourishing anyone. Reliable international projections from the United Nations suggest the need to increase global agricultural production – not food production – by 60 percent, not 100 percent, to feed a population of 9.3 billion by 2050. What’s more, they estimate that, with important caveats, we are on track to do just that with yield improvements and land use changes.

The hungry are not hungry because the world lacks food. We grow enough food right now to feed about 10 billion people, yet according to the U.N. nearly one billion of today’s seven billion people are chronically undernourished and well over one billion suffer from significant malnutrition, in a world of plenty. They are hungry because they are poor. Seventy percent of the hungry live in rural areas and rely primarily on agriculture for their livelihoods. A U.N. report confirmed the consensus that the best area to invest in agriculture is small-scale farming, where the “yield gaps” are the largest and where hunger in the most prevalent.

Yet policymakers and multinational firms continue to promote large-scale industrial agricultural projects – some denounced as “land grabs” – such as those encouraged by the G8 countries’ New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. Many displace small-scale farmers without their consent to grow export crops that offer few jobs and contribute nothing to local food security.

There is no question that socialism will we need to continue to develop appropriate technologies to enhance productivity, reduce environmental damage (including greenhouse gas emissions), and adapt to climate change if we’re going to achieve the goal of zero hunger. It can be done by increasing the availability of land and food by reducing biofuel production, getting more of the food we grow to the table by reducing food waste, and helping the most important food producers in the world: small-scale and family farmers. It is time to stop the Malthusian fear-mongering. We can feed the world in 2050 if we change the system at its roots.

Adapted from here

Capitalism's Failed Agricultural Policies

Much of agricultural policy is rooted in a view that considers small farms as inefficient. Efficiency and productivity in agriculture, it is argued, can only be delivered by consolidating land, using advanced technology, investing in large-scale irrigation and massive fertilization, and encouraging monoculture in big-scale farms.

After 50 years of applying these practices globally, however, this dictum of conventional wisdom on agriculture is being questioned more than ever before. Simply adding to the pile of food and promoting monocultural crops will not end hunger or malnutrition. Efficiency and quantity-based agricultural policy alone might solve acute hunger for a while, but cannot eradicate chronic and hidden hunger forever, let alone move towards sustainable resource use, food security, and social and economic equity in a dramatically unequal world.

The world is increasingly hungry and malnourished because small farmers are losing access to farmland. According to a new report by GRAIN, Hungry for Land, small farmers produce most of the world’s food but are now squeezed onto less than 25 percent of the world’s farmland: “The overwhelming majority of farming families today have less than two hectares to cultivate and that share is shrinking. Corporate and commercial farms, big biofuel operations and land speculators are pushing millions off their land.”

The report claims that small farmers could feed all nine billion people expected to be on the planet in 2050, provided they have the land, support, participation in decision making, financial, and technological power. But the current global food system is not set up to support them or designed to feed the most people, but rather to provide fuels and food for western markets.
Fortunately in recent years the important role of small farmers in relation to food security is finally being acknowledged in the US and Europe. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) celebrated the year of 2014 as the International Year of Family Farming.

Even in the US – where global agroindustries dominate - the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has undertaken several initiatives to support local and regional food systems. “Know Your Farmers, Know Your Food Initiative” coordinates government policy, resources, and outreach efforts related to local and regional food systems.
Besides high nutritious value and reduced fossil fuel use, the “local food” movement from Oregon to Vermont is creating an exciting new laboratory for agricultural innovation. Small farming is even becoming profitable, with recent financial crises prompting many young Americans to return to rural life as they faced difficulty in finding jobs and housing in cities. The rural sector provides food.
 In a sustainable world, the rural and urban sectors must support each other. With modernity and industrialization, urban areas experienced unprecedented growth, while rural communities, dependent on agriculture, were left behind. A large portion of the rural population migrated to cities, which overwhelmed the infrastructures of many cities. Especially in developing world rapid urbanization poses huge environmental challenges.
To reverse such a trend, governments and civil society should encourage rural life. Young farmers should be given subsidies to enable their return to the countryside. Although, it is difficult for most governments to oppose the logic of competitive markets skewed to favour the big agroindustries, it is clear that a food policy based on everyone – except the most powerful – becoming food importers is neither just, effective nor sustainable. It is time to break with failed practices and refocus agricultural policy towards supporting those who produce the majority of world’s food, the small-scale farmers.

from here

'Breaking with failed practices' in all areas is the call from The World Socialist Movement and SOYMB. In reality this means breaking with the capitalist system totally in order to bring democracy to the population of the world. SOYMB and Africa's Socialist Banner posts frequently on matters related to 'small', 'peasant' farmers, family farmers and land holders and the many associated problems with land grabbing, transnational corporations, environmental degradation, poverty and disenfranchisement. Food, being one of our most basic needs, is recognised within the capitalist system as an area ripe for exploitation for profit, at whatever cost to the environment, the producers and the consumers alike. A socialist system, on the other hand, will celebrate the achievement of sufficient, healthy food for all produced by farmers freed from the monetary yoke.
JS

US's Widespread Hunger Problem Continues

Critics and anti-poverty advocates are questioning the so-called economic recovery as a USDA study (PDF) published Wednesday revealed that while the nation's wealthiest enjoyed record gains, nearly 50 million Americans continue to struggled with food insecurity in 2013.

According to the government figures, while a majority of people who were not always able to afford food last year were adults, 16 million children also went hungry at times, with 360,000 households reporting that their kids skipped meals or did not eat for an entire day because there was not enough money.
Joel Berg, executive director of the NYC Coalition Against Hunger, said the country's widespread hunger problem is deeply connected to the government's pro-corporation, anti-worker policies. "A country that combines massive hunger with record Wall Street markets is so derailed we can't even find our tracks anymore," Berg said. "These startling numbers prove there has been no true economic recovery for tens of millions of struggling U.S. families."
Overall, food insecurity is 35 percent higher than in 2007, before the recession began. In 2013, the average food-secure household spent 30 percent more on food than the average food-insecure household of the same size.

 Of all the food-insecure households that participated in the 2013 survey, 62 percent received assistance from federal food and nutrition assistance programs. "It is vital to note that this new data was collected before most of the recent SNAP (food stamps) cuts kicked in," Berg wrote in a press release for the coalition. "Given the pain measured in these numbers, I can only imagine that next year's report, which will include the impact of the recent cuts, will more formally document the mass suffering we are already seeing on the ground from coast to coast."

from here

Quote of the Day

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will expire in 2015 and be replaced with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are intended to strengthen the international community’s engagement with eradicating poverty and hunger. Yet, the World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that there are still 842 million people who are under-nourished, representing one in eight globally.

 “In a world that produces enough food to feed everyone, there is no excuse for anyone to go hungry.” David Taylor, Economic Justice Policy Advisor for Oxfam International, told IPS.

 Olivier de Schutter, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, have argued that the 18 targets of the MDGs had been decided on the basis of the most easily compiled data available, neglecting the deeper causes of poverty and hunger. 

Empty Wallets Mean Empty Stomachs

“Hunger is actually the worst weapon of mass destruction. It claims millions of victims each year.” Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, former President of Brazil, pointed out. While Presidential Commission on World Hunger member, David W. Brooks explained “If we are going to stop wars on this earth, we are going to have to make war on hunger our number one priority.”

The war on poverty is often described as a battle for hearts and minds but the battle to fill bellies takes place every day, everywhere. Hunger is winning the war. Why?

The shortfall of grain in the Sahel region during the 1984-1985 famine was a mere three or four million tonnes at a time when world grain stocks were 190 million. Grain stocks in the then named Common Market were 25 million. There was plenty of food around in 1985. The grain reserves of the 1980s were sufficient to feed the whole of Africa five times over. In the US, the grain stock was equivalent to two years of all the grain traded internationally.

The problem of global famine begins with the supply of food. The problem is not one of the
availability of food. There is more than enough food in the world to resolve problems of hunger, malnutrition and consequent disease, and that is before we even look at productive capacity. The distribution of food depends on the ability to pay. If people do not have the money to buy food, they may as well live on the moon as far as the market is concerned. When it comes to the problem of famine, purchasing power counts for more than production. The food economy is rigged to make profits and keep profit margins up, not to get the available food to the people who need it most. If you can’t afford to buy the food, you don’t receive it. People starve and die in the midst of abundance.

Famine is part of the system, not a part of nature. Famine is the product of the way that world economy is arranged, not the result of a failure of agriculture in this or that country. A change in the weather in the US or Europe does not produce famine. There is more than enough surplus food in the world to ensure that no-one in the world suffers from hunger. Famine is the result of economic crisis, high import prices and high debt servicing charges, along with the collapse of export prices and the suspension of new loans by the banks. Famine is only a problem for the starving, just as poverty is only a problem for the poor. The rich gain in famine and in depression:they buy the assets of the bankrupt, they retain control of resources.

For all of the talk of GM crops being the solution to global famine, the fact isthat there has never been so much food produced in the world than there is today. Those proselytising for GMfood should not be allowed to pull the debate away from distribution by inventing a non- problem with respect to production. The problem is not one of production, but distribution. The food is not produced to meet the needs of the people who demand it but to make profits for those who control the supply. As every economics student learns, demand is not desire, indicating what people need, but effective demand backed by the ability to pay. The market neither knows nor cares about needs not backed by money. Food is available but to demand it and to consume it you have to be able to buy it. The problem of famine is a problem of poverty, and poverty is caused by the iniquitous and exploitative relations of global trade. The claims made for GM food are phoney. GM crops is being advanced as the solution to a non-problem. People starve not on account of a failure of production, but as a result of poverty and diminished purchasing power. Famine is a failure of distribution. In recent years the problem has not been one of production but of overproduction in relation to the available market, i.e. purchasing power.

GM food? We already have more than enough food, and have had more than enough food for so long as to beg the question why it doesn’t reach the mouths of the people who need it the most. When someone insists that we need GM food, we need to present these facts on world overproduction of food and ask why? They need to look at these facts and explain why there is a famine problem at all. The food is being produced and can be produced. Why is it not distributed according to need? Why is it rationed by price and ability to pay? Why do profits come before people? Who is in control of the food supply? Who will be in control of GM technology? If the problem is one of distribution, how will the production of GM food end famine?

Who gains from controlling the food supply in such a way as to maximise profitability? Do you need any clues? Try the giant grain traders; fruit, meat and vegetable companies; food processors; storage companies, transport and shipping companies, exporters; the bankers who finance the food trade. Their names are well known. There are very many snouts in the trough, the vast majority of them having no connection whatsoever with farming. The production of the food is the least important aspect of the whole chain of money making. Who gains from GM food? The above, of course. Is GM food going to be given away? Or is it going to be distributed via market mechanisms, at a price and for a profit?

There are no technological solutions to the problem of famine. Technology haslong since solved the problem of natural necessity. The world produces all the food it needs, and can produce even more if required. The problem of famine is not a problem of the niggardliness of Nature to be solved by technology. That problem has long since been solved. GM food is not the answer, particularly since such proposals come from the very companies and countries that control the obscene surpluses of world food, making them available only on such terms as are profitable to them.Telling the starving that they could be fed if only the world embraced GM food ignores the fact that rich and poor, the well-fed and starving are locked together into a global economy in which the rich and powerful control production and distribution on their terms

To repeat, there are no food shortages. The problem of famine is one of distribution. The world can produce as much food as it needs. The Financial Times stated the obvious but dangerous truth on 4 September 1986: 'People are not hungry these days because food supplies are not available; they are hungry because they are poor.’ Prices and profit margins matter, first and last.

The struggle against famine does not start with the countries vulnerable to famine, nor with technology, but here in the struggle against an economic system which produces sufficient food to feed the world but distributes it so unevenly according to ability to pay that millions starve in the midst of abundance.

 There is already enough food to feed the world, and there would be no problem in increasing supply. The same goes for clothing, shelter, heat and light, not to mention education, health, and transport. The figures for actual and potential production are available in all the statistics. The whole of humankind could be advancing in comfort and plenty. Instead, the capital economy is diverting the potential for peace and plenty into war-making machines. Instead of a safe and comfortable world, the human race faces an insecure, war-ridden, impoverished, hungry reality. And that is before we even mention the looming environmental crisis. There is no need for the poor, the needy or the hungry to be with us anymore. The technological capacity exists to solve all of these problems. The problem is not one of natural necessity and technological failure, but of the way the market mechanism operates within capitalist relations of  production.

We say again, there is no shortage of food, scarcity is produced by the way that resources are distributed according to ability to pay. The needs of those lacking the money do not register on the market. Humanity today has an unprecedented productive capacity with which to feed, clothe and shelter everyone. However, this capacity is governed by the narrow, profit-centred purpose of the capitalist economy. This productive potential can be realised for the common good only when the people who make theworld's wealth decide to take control of the productive means and employ them for need rather than want, use rather than for profit. The abundance that is now produced will be produced evenly. Famine is a sure sign that the capital system has long exhausted its historical potential and that the new productive forces demand an alteration in the production relations.

Once more, there is no problem in producing sufficient food to feed the world. There hasn’t been a technical problem for a long time now. At some point, people see what is happening before their eyes and start to ask some impertinent questions. Why is there poverty amidst abundance? People will start to get angry but, to become effective, this anger has to get political.

Abridged and adapted from a Peter Critchley article to be found in full here

After The Rich List - The Poor List

UK:

More 13m people in the UK (about one in five) live below the poverty line. According to a recent survey for Tesco, the Trussell Trust and FareShare, a staggering 30% of UK adults have either skipped meals, gone without food to feed their family, or relied on relatives or friends for food during the last year. With growing numbers of people having to choose between heating and eating, food banks are reporting that increasing numbers of people are returning food items that need to be heated, as they cannot afford the associated energy cost.
The Trussell Trust, a charity dedicated to providing food in the UK, reported a 170% increase in the number of people who have turned to its food banks over the past 12 months. The number of people receiving a minimum of three days emergency food more than doubled between 2010-11 and 2011-12. The organisation helped 346,992 people in 2012-13, more than a third of which were children. To keep up with demand, the charity is launching three new food banks every week. It and now runs over 400 across the UK.

US:

n the US, the number of people without secure access to food has also increased in the wake of the crisis to 49m people, or 15.9% of the population). The number of participants in the new federal food stamp programme has increased from 17.2m in 2000 to 44.8m in 2011.
Children are particularly badly affected. In 2009, one fifth or more of the child population of 40 states and Washington DC lived in food insecure households. More than 31m children now receive free or reduced-price meals through the National School Lunch Program.

Read more here

Back to the 1800s

In a letter to the British Medical Journal, a group of doctors and senior academics from the Medical Research Council and two leading universities said that the effect of Government policies on vulnerable people’s ability to afford food needed to be “urgently” monitored. The authors of the letter include Dr David Taylor-Robinson and Professor Margaret Whitehead of Liverpool University’s Department of Public Health,

A surge in the number of people requiring emergency food aid, a decrease in the amount of calories consumed by British families, and a doubling of the number of malnutrition cases seen at English hospitals represent “all the signs of a public health emergency that could go unrecognised until it is too late to take preventative action,” they write.

In their letter, they cite figures recently released by the Government which revealed a surge in the number of malnutrition cases diagnosed at English hospitals since the recession – up from 3,161 in 2008/09 to 5,499 in 2012/13. They also draw attention to reports from the Institute for Fiscal Studies which found a decrease in the number of calories purchased by families, as well as “substitution with unhealthier foods, especially in families with young children”.

“Malnutrition in children is particularly worrying because exposures during sensitive periods can have lifelong effects, increasing the risk of cardiovascular diseases and other adult chronic diseases,” they write. “Access to an adequate food supply is the most basic of human needs and rights.”

There is NO shortage of food

 SOYMB will keep going on repeating facts until the food shortage myth has disappeared

Reducing world hunger and malnutrition has been on the global political agenda for decades. The United Nations' World Food Program say one in eight people are undernourished. And it says poor nutrition causes nearly half of infant deaths. The UN's Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter says that doesn't need to be the case.

Associate Professor in Public Health Nutrition at Deakin University in Melbourne, Dr Mark Lawrence explains:
“We produce in the world about 4,800 kilocalories per person - this is twice as much as what we need to feed the population of 7 billion. yet we have almost 1 billion people who are hungry - I believe we have more than one billion people hungry - and that is clearly not because we're not producing enough.”

Solving Hunger

The Socialist Party often receive demands to explain its solutions to the world's problems. Our answer is that these solutions already exist and often only require implementation or further expansion. There is no single technical or managerial fix to the interlinked problems of global hunger, poverty and environmental degradation. In India millions of households suffer from chronic undernourishment and malnutrition despite the fact that favourable years produce more than enough grain, and there is a public distribution system designed to supply poor households with subsidised grain.

Who Is Benefitting? Wholesale Landgrab Further Impoverishes The Poor

Yet another account of the damaging effects of foreign companies acquiring land in other countries with the single aim of accumulating profits. The oft-repeated claim of great swathes of 'unused land' is again here just not true. Also note that whilst 70% of Sierra Leone's population survives on less than $2 a day (below the national poverty line), the country's smallholder farmers account for nearly 50% of GDP.

Whilst ALLAT and other similar benevolent alliances and associations work extremely hard to reveal the truth and make great efforts to minimalise the negative outcomes on local populations and their livelihoods and environments, unfortunately the best they can hope for is to ameliorate some of the effects of the entrenched capitalist system wreaking havoc around the globe. Righting the wrongs such as we read of here can only be achieved by complete system change. JS

Sierra Leone land grabs increase poverty and hunger says ALLAT Action for Large Scale Land Acquisition Transparency (ALLAT)

Media Release 26 July 2013

The rush for farmland by foreign investors engaged in industrial-scale plantation agriculture in Sierra Leone has increased poverty and food shortages among communities who have lost their access to land, the report launched by ALLAT reveals. The report estimates that one fifth of the country’s arable land has been leased since 2009 for industrial farming purposes, many of them for producing biofuels from crops such as oil palm and sugar cane.

A report launched today, ‘Who Is Benefitting?' (pdf) examines the impact on local communities of large land leases held by three investors. The research was commissioned by Action for Large scale Land Acquisition Transparency, with support from ALLAT’s development partners. ALLAT views that government contracts on lease hold for up to 99 years with industrial scale agro- investors, is too long. The acquisition of these leases must be more transparent adhering to the principles of free prior and informed consent and should respect the country’s laws. The government and companies must pay cognizance to international guidelines including international human rights laws that emphasise the protection of local people and the environment.

ALLAT is also worried about the tax breaks offered to foreign companies to persuade them to invest. ALLAT believes that Sierra Leone is losing many millions of dollars each year in revenue. For instance tax breaks enjoyed by two of SLCGG the leaseholders, Addax Bioenergy (SL) Ltd, and Socfin Agricultural Company Ltd, along with a third company, Goldtree Ltd, reveal that an estimated total of US$18.8million a year is lost in revenue to the government in respect of just those three deals.

One problem identified by Joseph Rahall of Green Scenery, a member organisation of ALLAT, is the government’s claim that just 11-15 per cent of the country’s arable land is being ‘used’ and that there is plenty of room for foreign investors. ‘This claim ignores from the debate the farming system practiced in Sierra Leone showing the lack of understanding of the way the country’s smallholder farmers, who account for nearly 50% of Sierra Leone’s GDP, use the land,’ he asserts.

Frank Williams, ALLAT’s Coordinator, observed that ‘communities in the three impact areas investigated reported increased levels of poverty, poorer and fewer meals eaten each day, children, especially girls, are taken out of school and increased incidents of social ills such as teenage pregnancy, broken marriages and theft.’ In all three lease areas, local people said they would not have agreed to the land deals were it not for promises made to them about jobs, and the building of roads, along with improved health and education facilities, electricity, and water wells. These had not been fulfilled to their expectations, with the companies maintaining that they need to start full production and receive returns on their investment before they can create all the jobs that have been promised.

Sierra Leone, which is struggling to rebuild after a lengthy civil war, ranks among the world’s least developed countries, at 180th of 187 nations on the 2011 United Nations’ Human Development Index. Life expectancy at birth is 47.8 years, under-five mortality is one of the highest in the world at 192 per 1,000 live births, and adult literacy is about 41%. In total, some 70% of its population of about 5.5 million falls below the national poverty line of US$2 a day. ALLAT believes that these figures can change if as a country we pay particular attention to the governance of our natural resources and design cohesive and comprehensive national development agenda.

The Agenda for Prosperity is a launch pad for the progress of the country but it should carefully navigate development paradigms that hurt our nation. The leases examined are held by Addax Bioenergy (SL) Ltd, Sierra Leone Agriculture and Socfin Agricultural Company Ltd.

From the findings of this report ALLAT therefore calls for the following actions by government:

• A moratorium on further large scale land investments including those in the pipeline until existing concerns raised by various stakeholders are addressed,

• A review of all existing contracts, ensuring that they adhere to the UN FAO Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests in the context of National Food Security,

• Develop environmental regulation that will guide and regulate how industrial scale agricultural businesses should carry out their operations.

• Reviewed Tax incentives to allow for revenue to be generated by the government from the investments.

• Undertake a land use plan that will help Sierra Leone attain sustainable land management; this should include a land cadastre.

- See more here.

Hunger - The test-tube solutions

Capitalism wastes food

Test-tube meat, protein grown from stem cells in a lab has been acclaimed as the solution to hungry and now we can feed the planet. Except that we can already provide an adequate diet for everybody in the world.

"There is enough food in the world today to feed every adult 2000+ calories per day," according to Emelie Peine, an assistant professor of international economics at the University of Puget Sound.

The cause of most actual hunger that people experience is not because of a lack of food in the world -- lab-grown or otherwise -- but rather the result of poverty. They cannot afford to buy food. And with this lab-grown meat, they will still not be able to pay for it.

If  the test-tube burger did go into mass production it may make normal, cow-based meat cheaper, but that would mainly just help people who can already afford food but want to buy more meat, according to Gawain Kripke, director of research and policy for Oxfam America.

 Joshua Muldavin, a professor of human geography at Sarah Lawrence College thinks the connection between high-tech food production techniques and hunger happens because the people behind it "need to find ways to legitimate ongoing investment in this form of technology.

The "Rights" and Wrongs of Capitalism

870 million people, or one in eight, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2010-2012. The report further revealed that the vast majority of the hungry, 852 million live in developing countries - around 15 percent of their population.

Analysis of the world food production clearly tells that accumulative food produce is more than enough to safe every child from hunger and malnutrition. However, there exists needless deaths of millions  mainly in poor and developing countries, due to malnutrition and its respective effects, no matter which geographical part of the globe they belong.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in its In Article 25 clearly stated that;
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

 Pakistan faces a high level of malnutrition. 22 to 25 percent of the country’s population is undernourished. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have estimated that approximately 37.5 million people in Pakistan are not receiving proper nourishment. Malnutrition in Pakistan is directly linked with the high incidence of poverty. The poverty stricken people have very little choice for food; therefore, usually the quantity and quality of their food is blow the required level.

 Dr. Tausif Akhtar Janjua, Director, Micronutrient Initiative, explains “The chronic malnutrition levels in Pakistan have not changed in the last 40 years as nearly half of Pakistan’s children and mothers suffer from under-nutrition.”

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in its Article 24 stated;
1. States Parties recognize the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health and to facilities for the treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health. States Parties shall strive to ensure that no child is deprived of his or her right of access to such health care services.
2. States Parties shall pursue full implementation of this right and, in particular, shall take appropriate measures:
(a) To diminish infant and child mortality;
(b) To ensure the provision of necessary medical assistance and health care to all children with emphasis on the development of primary health care;
(c) To combat disease and malnutrition, including within the framework of primary health care, through, inter alia, the application of readily available technology and through the provision of adequate nutritious foods and clean drinking-water, taking into consideration the dangers and risks of environmental pollution...

 300,000 children die in Pakistan every year before their fifth birthday.

Capitalism is full of “rights” that are never delivered. It is impossible to legislate away poverty and deprivation with well-meaning international treaties. It requires a change in the economic system to end unnecessary suffering and hardship.