The 20th century is the century of globalization and scientific progress. Mankind has conquered space, tamed the energy of the atom, unraveled many secrets of mother nature. At the same time, the twentieth century brought us a number of global problems - environmental, demographic, energy, socio-economic. In this article, we will talk about one of them in detail. It will be about the causes, scale and possible ways to solve the food problem.
Hunger problem: facts and figures
The world's population is steadily growing. But natural resources, alas, no. If at the beginning of the last century our planet fed one and a half billion people, today this figure has grown to 7.5 billion.
Such a rapid demographic growth simply could not but lead to an aggravation of the food problem. Actually, they first started talking about it a hundred years ago. For example, the Brazilian scientist José de CastroIn his work "The Geography of Hunger", published at the beginning of the 20th century, he wrote that almost two-thirds of the world's population is in a state of constant hunger.
Today, the situation has improved markedly, but the problem itself has not disappeared. According to UN reports, one in nine people in the world today is still undernourished. Most of the undernourished and hungry people (about 85%) are in developing countries. These are, first of all, the poorest states of Central and Southern Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. For example, one third of people in Haiti (the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere) do not get the daily amount of calories they need.
The world food problem is one of the most important and most acute global problems of our time. It is expressed in a banal food shortage caused by insufficient development of productive forces, adverse natural and climatic conditions, military conflicts or political upheavals.
Geography of hunger
In social geography, there is such a thing as a “hunger belt”. It stretches on both sides of the equator and covers the territories of tropical Africa, Central America, South and Southeast Asia (in general, about 40 countries of the world).
The most difficult situation is observed in countries such as Chad, Somalia, Uganda, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Mali and Haiti. Here the number of hungry and malnourished people exceeds 40%. At present, the food problem is quite acute in Yemen, Syria, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, andalso in eastern Ukraine.
Along with quantitative indicators, one should also take into account the qualitative indicators of people's nutrition. After all, malnutrition or malnutrition not only reduces performance, but also provokes the development of a number of dangerous diseases. Thus, according to the World He alth Organization (WHO), approximately 40% of the inhabitants of our planet regularly experience a lack of certain vitamins and minerals.
Main causes of the food problem
So, what causes the problem of hunger and malnutrition? There are a number of possible reasons. We will highlight only the most basic of them:
- The rapid growth of the world's population.
- Uneven distribution of the world's population.
- Increase in the degree of urbanization and industrialization of territories.
- Socio-economic backwardness of some countries of the world.
- Land degradation, in particular soil pollution with pesticides, heavy metals and other harmful substances.
- Declining yields of cereal crops.
- Irrational use of land resources.
- Decrease in arable land.
- Clean fresh water shortage.
Ways to solve the food problem
Today, a number of international, public and private organizations, intergovernmental commissions and institutions are engaged in solving the problem of hunger. They are joined by global financial andcommercial structures, in particular, IBRD (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) and OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries). They finance numerous projects aimed at developing the agro-industrial sector in developing countries.
At the same time, scientists are working on the theoretical aspects of the crisis. Their competence is to search for possible ways to solve the food problem. Among these, it is worth highlighting the following:
- Qualitative and structural changes in the food production process.
- Modernization of agriculture, the formation of a steadily growing agro-industrial sector in backward countries.
- Active development of biotechnology.
- Infrastructure improvement outside major cities – rural branding.
- Conducting economic reforms in the developing countries of the world, increasing the purchasing power of their population.
- Introduction of the fruits of scientific and technological progress into the agricultural sector of the economy.
- Developing human capital, providing conditions and opportunities for the education of the poor.
Humanitarian assistance to poor and developing countries plays a role in mitigating the effects of the food crisis.
UN Food Program
Among the key goals of the United Nations is to ensure peace and security on the planet, as well as the elimination of all kinds of global threats. United Nations World Food Program(World Food Program, abbreviated as WFP), founded in 1961, is the world's largest humanitarian organization. Every year it provides real help to at least 300 million people living in 80 countries. Approximately 20 million of them are children.
The main objectives of the mission are to fight hunger and improve the quality of nutrition in third world countries. Each year, the organization distributes over twelve billion food parcels worth $0.31 each. Every day, about a hundred planes and almost five thousand trucks deliver food to those who need it most. Including hard-to-reach or war-torn regions of Africa and Asia.
In conclusion…
Among the most urgent global problems is food. Every year it only worsens, primarily as a result of the rapid growth of the population of our planet. The search for optimal ways to solve the food problem is one of the main tasks of mankind at the present stage of its development. Let's hope that the globalization processes in the world economy, as well as the achievements of scientific and technological progress, will help us solve this problem as efficiently as possible.
