Hunger

WORLD HUNGER AND MALNUTRITION Richard J. Estes University of Pennsylvania In September 1987 the Marxist government of Ethiopia announced that famine was once again an imminent reality for the world's poorest nation. Drought had returned to the countryside, fields of grain were wilting, and hundreds were already dead. More than 5 million persons were believed to be at imminent risk of starvation from yet another famine, the fourth to strike the country since the ousting of Emperor Haile Selassie I by a military coup in 1974. An urgent plea was made by the Ethiopian government for Western nations to come forward with large donations of foodstuffs, emergency medical supplies, and other assistance to prevent a recurrence of the human devastation that swept the country during the famine of 1984-1985. At least 1 million Ethiopians perished during that famine, with countless more left chronically disabled and homeless. The belief among world food relief organizations was that the Ethiopian government's request substantially underestimated the seriousness of the nation's new food crisis. By the end of 1990 the return of widespread famine to other areas of Africa also appeared imminent. Only the great Soviet famines of 1918-1922 and 1932-1934, in which an estimated 5 to 10 million persons died from starvation, compares in magnitude to the suffering experienced by the nations of the Sahel and Sub-Saharan regions during the decade of the 1980s. All reports indicate that the African droughts of the near future may prove more intractable than earlier ones; ultimately, more Africans are expected to die from hunger and malnutrition in the 1990s than did those who perished from hunger during the preceding 100 years. As devastating as the current famines in Africa have been, the incidence of hunger and malnutrition is greater in the poorest nations of East and South Asia. In The State of the World's Children, 1987, UNICEF Executive Director James Grant noted that "in the last two years more children died [from hunger-related causes] in India and Pakistan than in all the 46 nations of Africa together. In 1986, more children died in Bangladesh than in Ethiopia, more in Mexico than in Sudan, more in Indonesia than in all eight drought-stricken countries of the Sahel." At the June 1987 Beijing Ministerial Meeting of the United Nations' World Food Council the United Nation's Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) revised its estimates of the number of hungry people in the world upward to more than 475 million; a World Bank study reported at the same meeting placed the number closer to 720 million. Both organizations agreed that children were among the most severely affected--that, each day, more than 40,000 children die of hunger-related causes. The extent of world hunger is staggering. The authors of Ending World Hunger estimated that, as of 1985: * more than 1 billion people worldwide are chronically hungry; * every year 13 to 18 million people die as a result of hunger and starvation -- 24 every minutes, 18 of whom are children under five years of age. By comparison: * more people died from hunger between 1983 and 1985 than were killed in World War I and War II combined; * the number of people who die every few days of hunger and starvation is equivalent to the number who were killed instantly by the Hiroshima bomb; and * the worst earthquake in modern history, in China in 1976, killed 242,000 people. Hunger kills that many people every seven days. Slowed economic growth in industrial nations, political instability in the famine-affected nations, and failed efforts at social development are all believed to be major factors responsible for the recent escalations in the numbers of hungry people worldwide. Even in the richest nation on earth, the United States, the number of hungry people is estimated to exceed 20 million persons, about 9 percent of the total population. The Physicians' Task Force on Hunger in America estimated that at least 15 million Americans were living below the poverty line without food stamp or other forms of nutritional assistance. In the United States, as in many developing nations, the problems underlying hunger have less to do with food scarcity than with the price and accessibility to food that is available. Overdependence on the exportation of cash crops to other nations in exchange for hard currencies has added considerably to the food shortage problems of some developing nations, including to those of Ethiopia, India, and China. In many food-"deficit" nations, food grains and other agricultural products are produced in sufficient quantities but are not available for local consumption. The Hunger Project, as well as other international organizations concerned with world hunger, predict that the number of hunger-related deaths will continue to rise until the end of the century. Each group has advocated its own program of emergency assistance to food-deficit nations. All agree, however, that only a combination of carefully implemented approaches over the long term can succeed in significantly reducing the causes of malnutrition worldwide. In addressing the problem of world hunger prior to the recent African famines, the Brandt Commission on International Development Issues concluded: Mankind has never before had such ample technical and financial resources for coping with hunger and poverty. The immense task can be tackled once the necessary collective will is mobilized. What is necessary can be done, and must be done. With in the United States, the 1980 Presidential Commission on World Hunger arrived at the same conclusion: "If decisions and actions well within the capability of nations and people working together were implemented, it would be possible to eliminate the worst aspects of hunger and malnutrition by the year 2000." In December 1986 the Council on Foreign Relations and the Overseas Development Council issued a joint Compact for African Development in which they encouraged a highly activist posture on the part of the United States in contributing to the resolution of the world hunger situation: America has an opportunity to use publicly supported bilateral and multilateral programs, together with its universities, foundations, corporations, and private voluntary organizations, to help Africa in a coherent, lasting way. We urge private groups to marshall their own resources and to advocate a greater public response. We urge Congress and the Executive Branch to act with foresight to express our country's long-term interests in an Africa that can both survive short-term crises and assume its place as a full participant in the world economy (p. 22). Similar sentiments have been echoed for their governments by scholars and political leaders the world over. Strategies Leading to the Elimination of World Hunger The following suggestions are offered as beginning approaches to reducing world hunger. 1. Social reform in the context of international social development must begin with recognition that the most fundamental problems confronting humanity, including the dual problems of poverty and hunger, are political, social, and moral in nature. They are not exclusively problems of resource supply or resource scarcity although, indeed, * real ad serious limitations in available resources do exist. The vast bulk of the evidence confirms that the planet already possesses the material and technological resources that are needed to permanently rid the world of hunger. 2. Global reforms in dealing with problems of world hunger will require acceptance of our shared responsibility for one another's welfare. The world simply has become too interdependent for any of us to turn our back on the needs of our neighbors living in other areas of the world. To do so bankrupts us morally; ultimately, the tragic deprivations experienced by others can be expected to spread to our homes as well. 3. Global food reforms will require a speedier and more complete implementation of the economic reforms contained in the various approaches that seek to establish a "New International Economic Order." At a minimum, the initiatives that are adopted must emphasize: a. global cooperation rather than competition; b. global sharing rather than squandering; c. more generous and better sustained international subsidies and programs of international development assistance to the world's food-deficit nations. Ideally, implementation of these strategies will be carried out on a multilateral basis. They should also be formulated on an expanded system of internationally financed agricultural loans, grants, and technical assistance. 4. Global food reforms will require as well a significant shift from nationalistic attitudes to those that place increased emphasis on regionalism and internationalism. 5. Necessarily, existing international food and agricultural institutions will need to be strengthened, and new ones that focus on the underlying causes of hunger will need to be developed. Within the next decade, for example, more effective global institutions will be needed to: a. promote global peace and cooperation, especially so that a global plan for food security can be developed and implemented; b. promote, monitor, and control the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, including food production; c. oversee international efforts at arms control and reduction so that a greater share of the world's resources can be committed to human survival rather than its destruction; d. promote and protect internationally guaranteed human rights of individual citizens against oppressive governments; e. manage the global economy, especially in relation to the flow of development and other resources between the world's rich and poor nations; f. promote access on the part of all nations to the food and other resources that exist in the earth's seas and oceans and, in time, in space; g. implement a coherent international food policy for feeding all of the world's hungry; h. halt the high rates of population growth in food-deficit nations; and i. manage problems related to the preservation and conservation of the world's physical environment, especially those elements that are essential to a stable food supply. 6. To be effective, a global food strategy must respect national sovereignty, and must promote the three objectives on which concerned people everywhere agree: war prevention, economic security, and social justice. 7. A new and more dramatic approach to closing the ever widening gap in development between the world's richest and poorest nations must be embarked upon. To be successful, such an approach must emphasize: a. people working for and on behalf of themselves and for one another within the context of their own history, traditions, and national objectives; b. nations, especially food-deficit countries, must decide for themselves what their needs are and how the satisfaction of those needs should best be pursued; c. the international community must perceive its role to be that of a "partner" in development, not as that of a decision-maker or planner acting for or on behalf of what they perceive to be in the best interests of food-deficit nations; d. an invigorated strategy leading to international food reforms must emphasize the accomplishment of a broad range of varied, but interrelated, social and economic objectives. The simple reality is that, over the decade, many developing nations have slipped more deeply into poverty as a result of their efforts to emulate patters of development found in economically advanced nations; e. regionalism among developing nations should be strongly encouraged as a basis for developing programs of mutual aid, self-help, and cooperation. 8. To be effective on a global level, national agricultural and dietary reforms must take place within the context of a larger, more fully integrated, plan of world social development. To achieve its objectives, this global social development strategy must a. encompass development planning for all nations, not just those of the South; b. differentiate between the specialized development needs and objectives of individual nations and groups of agriculturally similar nations; c. specify specific objectives that can be completed within designated time intervals; d. include a mechanism for ongoing review and revision of planning efforts once implemented; e. include a mechanism for continuous reporting to the word community concerning progress in achieving world food security objectives; f. contain the mechanisms necessary to generate the financial and human resources needed to finance development worldwide. 9. The new strategy for global food reform must: a. foster maximum self-reliance within each nation for planning and implementing its own program of national development; b. foster mutual participation and cooperation among all the world's nations in a co-equal partnership focused on improving the adequacy of social provision for people everywhere; c. advance creative and flexible solutions to matters of subnational, national, regional, and global social development; d. emphasize working for the benefit of all of humanity, while advancing the right of each nation to develop its own approach to social development that does not do harm to others. To eliminate the current food crisis, serious consideration should be given to the implementation of at least each of the following action strategies. Immediate Actions 1. The flow of international food, financial, technical assistance, and other essential supplies to food-deficit nations must continue; so, too, must the flow of medical assistance, help with the resettlement of famine refugees, and help with other difficult physical, social, and economic problems experienced by persons facing imminent starvation. 2. Methods for increasing food production in food deficit nations must be found. Consideration should be given to such methods as: a. the cultivation of new lands; b. the use of less costly organic fertilizers; c. increasing the supply of water for agricultural use; d. improved food and water collection, distribution, and storage facilities. Actions for the Near Term (3-7 Years) 1. Food-deficit nations need help in developing agricultural reforms that provide economic supports to small farmers and to women farmers, groups that have been all but ignored in earlier development plans. 2. An increased emphasis must be placed on a. vegetarianism, for North and South nations alike, rather than the consumption of meet (production of each pound of beef requires 20 pounds of grain); b. a return to breast-feeding for infants rather than the use of expensive and widely misused commercially packaged formulae. 3. Critical attention must be given to the development of effective water management policies and infrastructures within food-deficit nations that depend either exclusively or primarily on rainfall for crop irrigation. At a minimum such policies must include a. the establishment of underground water storage facilities and irrigation networks; and b. the creation of cross-national irrigation systems that make possible the transfer of critically needed water from water-surplus nations to water-deficit nations. 4. Emphasis must also be placed on the conservation of food that is already being produced in food-deficit countries. Currently, between 20 and 40 percent of the total food production of developing nations is lost to pests, blight, and other forms of shrinkage because of inadequate food storage, transportation, and distribution systems. 5. The steady migration of rural workers into the cities must be either reversed or substantially slowed down so that the numbers of food-dependent persons living in cities will be reduced while those available for food production will be increased. Actions for the Long Term 1. Multinational planning for ensuring global food supplies over the long term must begin. Past efforts in these areas have faltered over political or economic issues, but the global stakes are such that the planning process must begin once again. 2. An international grain reserve designed to minimize the effects of local crop failures must be established. With it, the volume of per capita daily global food reserves must be increased. 3. Economically advanced nations need to cooperate with food-deficit nations in establishing Agricultural Research Institutes within the borders of LDC regions. The research agenda of these institutions, among other topics, should focus on: a. the development of new varieties of grains and other foods that are resistant to drought, infestations, rodents, molds, and other environmental stresses; b. the development of highly nutritious foodstuffs other than the grains and starches that can be grown quickly within the limited growing seasons available to the arid nations of the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa; c. improved methods of cultivation, harvesting, storage, and food transportation; d. the development of more technologically appropriate farming equipment, implements, and irrigation methods. The research agenda of these institutes should also devote a major share of their attention to studies of the transferability potential of the agricultural methods that succeeded in helping 41 developing nations become food self-sufficient since 1960. Through the use of agricultural extension workers, these institutes should also serve as centers of technical assistance to local farmers. Nothing less than a major international commitment to eliminating world hunger will prove effective in solving this most tragic of human problems. Fortunately, the tools and resources needed to eliminate hunger are already available to us; all that is required is for the nations of the world to join together in pursuit of the goal. And only then can the World Food Conference's Declaration on the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition, a document to which the majority of nations have already committed themselves, be implemented: Every man, woman and child has the inalienable right to be free from hunger and malnutrition in order to develop fully and maintain their physical and mental faculties...Accordingly, the eradication of hunger is a common objective of all the countries of the international community, especially of the developed countries and others in a position to help. RESOURCE MATERIALS ON WORLD HUNGER AND MALNUTRITION BASIC BOOKS Barraclough, Solon L. 1992. _An End to Hunger?: The Social Origins of Food Strategies_. (London: Zed Books, Ltd.). Bennett, Jon. 1987. _The Hunger Machine: The Politics of Food_. (New York: Polity Press). Berg, Alan. 1987. _Malnutrition-What Can be Done?_ (Washington: World Bank). Brandt, Willy. 1986. _World Armament and World Hunger: A Call for Action_. (London: Gollancz). Brown, Lester R. 1991. _State of the World, 1991_. (New York: W.W. Norton Company). Dreze, Jean and Amartya Sen. 1990. _The Political Economy of Hunger_. (New York: Oxford University Press). Dreze, Jean and Amartya Sen. 1989. _Hunger and Public Action_. (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Eagleburger, Lawrence and Donald F. McHenry (co-chairs). 1985. _Compact for African Development_. (Washington: ODC). Eide, Asbjorn et al. 1984. _Food as a Human Right_ (Tokyo: United Nations University). Fenton, Thomas P. 1987. _Food, Hunger, Agribusiness: A Directory of Resources_. (Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books). Forbes, Malcolm and Lois McPherson (co-editors). 1986. _Global Hunger: A Look at the Problem and Potential Solutions_. (Evansville: University of Evansville Press). Gabel, Medard. 1979. _Ho-Ping: Food for Everyone_. (New York: Doubleday). George, Susan. 1977. _How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger_. (Montclair NJ: Allanheld). Griffin, Keith B. 1987. _World Hunger and the World Economy: and Other Essays in Development Economics_ (NY: Holmes & Meier). Hunger Project. 1985. _Ending Hunger: An Idea Whose Time Has Come_. (New York: Praeger). Kellman, Mitchell. 1987. _World Hunger: A Neo-Malthusian Perspective_. (New York: Praeger). Kutzner, Patricia L. 1991. _World Hunger: A Reference Book_. (Santa Barbara: Clio Books). Lappe, Frances Moore and Joseph Collins. 1979. _World Hunger: Ten Myths_. (San Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Policy). McNamara, Joseph S. (ed.). 1989. _The Politics of Hunger_ (Hillsdale MI: Hillsdale College Press). Newman, Lucile F. (ed.). 1990. _Hunger in History: Food Shortage, Poverty, and Deprivation_. (New York: Blackwell). O'Neil, Onora. 1986. _Faces of Hunger: An Essay on Poverty, Justice, and Development_. (London: G. Allen and Unwin). Physician Task Force on Hunger in America. 1985. _Hunger in America: The Growing Epidemic_. (Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press). Reyes, Lilia and Laura DeKoven Waxman. 1987. _The Continuing Growth of Hunger, Homelessness, and Poverty in America's Cities_. (Washington DC: United States Conference of Mayors). Twose, Nigel. 1984. _Cultivating Hunger_ (Oxford: OXFAM, 1984). U.S. Presidential Commission on World Hunger. 1980. _Overcoming World Hunger: Report of the Presidential Commission on World Hunger_. (Washington: Government Printing Office). Warnock, John W. 1987. _The Politics of Hunger: The Global Food System_ (New York: Methuen). World Bank. 1986. _Poverty and Hunger: Issues and Options for Food Security in Developing Countries_. (Washington: World Bank). AUDIO-VISUALS PBS Nova Series: "The Politics of Food" (2 hours). DATA BASES Grant, James. 1991. _The State of the World's Children, 1991_. (New York: Oxford U. Press). United Nations. 1991. _Human Development Report, 1991_. (New York: United Nations Development Programme). World Bank. 1991. _World Development Report, 1991_. (Washington: World Bank). World Resources Institute. 1991. _World Resources, 1990-1991_. (Washington: WRI). INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS International Food Policy Research Institute United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization UNICEF UNDP OXFAM US-BASED ORGANIZATIONS Hunger Project Institute for Food and Development Policy InterAction InterFaith Hunger Appeal World Game, Inc. World Hunger Program World Policy Institute World Watch Institute ------------------- Excerpted from Richard J. Estes (1992) _Internationalizing Social Work Education: A Guide to Resources For a New Century_ (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work).