Global Food Insecurity and Undernourishment
In 2017 there were 1.9 billion people that were moderately or severely food insecure. The director of product sourcing of protein, for Feeding America, the largest hunger relief organization in the United States, Joseph Weeden talks about these numbers.
Food insecurity and undernourishment is something people all around the world face on a daily basis. 1.9 billion people across the world suffer from moderate or severe food insecurity, that is one-in-four people globally, there are about 663 million people that are undernourished globally. There are organizations like Feeding America that are dedicated to battling food insecurity and undernourishment. Feeding America is largest hunger relief organization in the United States, prior to the pandemic there were 35 million food insecure people in the United States, and at the height of the pandemic, they estimated that there is about 60 million people that were receiving food assistance and looking to the charitable food system for support.
Listen here:
Victor Herrera: Undernourishment numbers across the world have been steadily falling in recent years, but recently, that number has increased to 663 million in 2017. According to different regions of the world, why do you think that number has been going up?
Joseph Weeden: A lot of it is due to climate change, due to droughts, and due to a lot of climatic conditions that have really lessened agriculture in a lot of these countries, mass floods and those kinds of things. Then the other part of that is just economics, a lot of the countries that suffer from this have very low GDP (Gross Domestic Product), so the challenge with that is that they don’t have the sources of funds to import food into their countries. That becomes a real challenge, definitely there are organizations like ours globally that try to assist, but we’ve seen, and especially during the pandemic, again, a big rise in the need all around the world, not just in the United States.
In 2017, there were 1.9 billion people that were food insecure, with those numbers coming mostly from Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Why do you think those numbers are going up in those parts of the world compared to North America?
There’s a lot of climatic conditions that go on in a lot of these countries, you know, are susceptible to drought, susceptible to flooding, we’re lucky that we’re in a country that has a lot of agriculture and a lot of rich land. That’s why I would say it is the main reason for that, you can talk about the economics of it as well but just, we have an agricultural base and a lot of these countries just don’t have that.
According to these charts 8.8% of the world’s population is undernourished. What do you think would require for the number to go down?
There’s a lot of factors at play, but definitely we need more money injected in these countries we need to create agricultural basis that can supply in self-sustain these countries, we’ve got to have crops that are drought resistant, so many different things, the governments in these countries to really put plans in place so that the farmers can make money and the farmers can be productive and really provide for their populations. There’s also a lot of trade in agricultural products around the world, so a lot credit facilities and these kinds of things will help these countries get back on their feet and really, really support them that way. It’s unfortunate, but you know, there’s a lot of these countries that you mentioned, they have very desert-like conditions, we can’t grow a lot in that type of land, so they’re very limited on what they have. If the governments can get organized and really create, a productive area for their farmers and really, look to other nations to support in different areas, as you can see, the United States is actually one of the largest exporters of food products, but they’re also one of the largest importers of food products, so it’s really important to have that balance
A lot of people that suffer food insecurity have low income, what do you think they could do to get some help?
The US government’s done a tremendous job with their programs and you know, last administration had the farmers to families food box program. They spent over $3 billion in supporting the food insecure population, the current administration has like a billion dollars in one bucket of funds, to support the emergency food assistance program.
When it comes down to it, a lot of these people, rely on their jobs, they rely on, earning a decent wage so that they can be productive and balance their budgets, at home if these neighbors in need, if we can help them find jobs, if we can provide a living wage is what we talk a lot about is making sure of that when they do earn money.
That’s why you hear about the 15 minimum wage because when you look at how much rents have gone up and how much the cost of transportation has gone up, when you look at all those different factors it’s really important to factor that all in and for a society like America, it’s really important to support those that are less fortunate, those that are vulnerable, those that have high medical bills, for instance, some people get in trouble that way. There’s a myriad of ways that we can support people and it takes a village. That’s what we’d like to say.
Although there is a lot of work to be done to continue and help the undernourished and the food insecure population, it is reassuring that there’s people trying to fight it and trying to help those in need.
