World Hunger Essays

Hunger in India

Did you know that India currently has the highest hunger rates in the whole world? This has been a problem for decades and it’s time for it to stop. Over the past few years, multiple organizations and charities have been trying to help make a difference, and we can all help to solve this problem. We know this is a big problem when, according to Mrinal Singh, in the 1990’s, 172.4 MILLION people in India were starving (Singh 2018). People in India experience hunger because of food getting wasted, poverty, and gender inequality.

Firstly, India is experiencing hunger due to food waste, Some supporting evidence for this is, “​One-third of food gets lost or wasted. According to the Indian Food Bank, 40 percent of vegetables and 30 percent of cereals produced are lost due to inefficiencies in the supply chain. New agricultural methods and the overall industrialization of India have sought to increase efficiency” (Singh 2018). This tells us that 1/3 of India’s food gets wasted and lost, because of a lack of supplies to make that food. To put it in perspective, imagine that you’re making a cake, and you are almost done with it when you realize that you don’t have eggs, and you have to throw everything away. This happens to a third of the food in India, which is a ton of food that could be eaten by India’s residents.

Second, India’s population is experiencing poverty, and can’t afford to feed themselves. Another piece of helpful insight from Singh is that “21 percent of the population lives on less than $1.90 per day.” (Singh 2018). This tells us how little 21 percent of the 1.353 billion people living in India spend per day, just to keep themselves alive. This may not seem like a big deal, but “Americans shell out $164.55, on average, in a given day” (Dickler 2019). When you compare $1.90 to that, it’s a tiny amount compared to what we spend every day.

Finally, the women of India experience hunger because of gender inequality. In the article “Challenges in Achieving Food Security in India,” Upadhyay and Palanivel tell us how 60 percent of India’s starving population are women because of gender inequality. In their article, they state that “Gender inequality places the female child at a disadvantage compared to males and causes them to suffer more because they are last to eat and considered less important” (2011). This tells how in India, women are thought to be less important than men, so they are always last to eat when having dinner, and generally get less food, causing India’s hungry population to be 60 percent, women.

Hunger in India is a problem because of food waste, poverty, and gender inequality. Because of all these things, 15 percent of India is starving. So take action. Donate to a charity like Amma, or Rise Against Hunger India, that helps stop hunger in India, and make a difference in someone's life. You could end up saving it.

            Gearhart 2

Works Cited

• Dickler, Jessica. “Here’s How much the average person spends per day.” cnbc.com, 3/13 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/13/heres-how-much-the-average-person-spends-in-a-day.html. Accessed 10/2020

• Prakash, Upadhyay. “Challenges in Achieving Food Security in India Iran J Public Health.” ncbi.nlm.nlh.gov, 12/31 2011,https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3481742/. Accessed 10/2020

• Singh, Mrinal. “TOP 10 FACTS ABOUT HUNGER IN INDIA 9/21.” borgenproject.org, 2018, https://borgenproject.org/top-10-facts-about-hunger-in-india Accessed. 10/2020

Hunger in Somalia

 Imagine living somewhere were everyone is hungry, and some even on the run or taking long journeys to find food. There isn’t enough food for you or your family, and you are trying to figure out what to do. In Somalia, there are multiple causes of this reoccurring hunger problem. This is a huge problem because people are getting sick and dying of starvation. War, famine, poverty, and government problems are some examples of why Somalia is struggling to find food. This has been a problem for quite some time, but we are try our best to fix this. Many people across the globe have been trying their best to help this cause through donations, providing aid, ect. ​The people of Somalia experience hunger because of the ongoing war, and the droughts causing famines.

 One of the things causing hunger in Somalia is war, and problems with their government. Vanda Felbab-Brown, senior fellow at the Brookings Institutions, in the beginning of her summary on developments in Somalia says, “Since 1991, Somalia has been battered by undulating phases of a civil war playing out among the country’s many fractious clans.” Later on she also says, “the official state has been mostly unable to deliver even a modicum of governance to local populations while battling strong and agile military opponents and separatism.” To relate this conflict to hunger, Clare Ahern reveals, “hundreds of thousands of people were still forced to abandon their homes and millions were left in desperate need of food. Right now, 1.2 million children are malnourished. That is half of all children under the age of five.” What Vanda Felbab-Brown and Clare Ahern uncovered helps us understand more how the war and hunger problems are connected, and why they are problems. As we have gathered, the war is causing many problems, and on top of those problems the people are hungry, so it is much harder to get food with the war going on on top of everything else.

 Another huge thing impacting hunger in Somalia is the drought. It caused many problems and you will see why. In this article from Relief Web International, they describe the disaster and in the 4th paragraph they say, “3.2 million people are severely food insecure. This situation is expected to persist throughout 2017 given the high likelihood of a third consecutive poor harvest in July.”then, the article goes on to say, “Food security has improved significantly in many of the areas worst affected by the 2016/17 drought, as a result of large-scale humanitarian assistance and improvements in seasonal performance.” In the article, they say that many people are hungry due to not enough food being produced after a drought. They then say that this situation is getting better, due to humanitarian assistance. So, to sum this paragraph up, many people are hungry because of the drought, but this is getting better fast.

 The last thing we are going to talk about that causes world hunger in Somalia is famine. In a Brookings resource covering drought, famine, and conflict in Somalia, it says in the first paragraph of the second section, “rains were meager, resulting in the worst annual crop production in 17 years, excess animal mortality, and very high food price.” It also states, “While all of the countries of East Africa were affected by drought and associated declines in food production, it was in Somalia that the drought led to famine.” These quotations state clearly that the drought caused this famine, and the way it caused the famine was by not providing enough water for crops to grow. It also says that even though many other countries experienced the drought, Somalia was the one that led to a famine, most likely because if previous circumstances.

 People in Somalia are hungry. This is because of a drought leading to a famine, then conflict on top of that. They aren’t getting all the resources they need, and many people are getting sick and suffering severe consequences because of this. think that we should make an effort to help end this hunger, and prevent many innocent people from dying.

Works Cited:

Felbab-Brown,Vanda. “Developments in Somalia.” brookings.edu, Wednesday, November 14, 2018, https://www.brookings.edu/testimonies/developments-in-somalia/. Accessed Sep.-Oct. 2020.

Ahern, Clare. “War and hunger in Somalia.” reliefweb.int, 13 Dec 2018, https://reliefweb.int/report/somalia/war-and-hunger- Accessed Sep.-Oct. 2020.

Gladstone, Rick. “U.N. Aid Chief Warns of Looming ‘Horror’ as Somalia Again Faces Famine.” nytimes.com, June 5, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/world/africa/africa-famine-united-nations-somalia.html#:~:text=Somalia%20has%20suffered%20more%20than,near%20famine%20in%202016%2D17. Accessed Sep.-Oct. 2020.