Global Food crisis

Hunger is the world’s biggest health threat. About 900 million people suffer from not having enough to eat every day. Hunger kills more people than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined.

Global Food Crisis

In the past year food prices around the world have gone up sharply. There are many reasons for this:

• Rising oil prices have increased transport costs.
• China and India – the two most populous countries in the world – need more and more food.
• The United States and many other western countries have begun to use crops to make bio fuels.
• More and more people around the world have stopped farming and began to move to cities in search of a better job.

Western countries can pay for the rising costs of food but in developing countries this has been causing unrest. In Haiti, where people spend an average of 60% of their income on food, riots have forced the prime Minister to resign.

Most of the world’s population suffers from chronic hunger. They eat enough to survive but always remain hungry.

Food relief organizations say there are many ways to combat hunger. Here are a few of them:

• Increase food production.
• Governments should help smaller farms in areas with little food.
• Affected countries should prepare better for disasters like floods, hurricanes or earthquakes.
• Provide safe drinking water.
• The best food doesn’t help if you wash it down with a glass of unsafe, dirty water.
• Diarrhoea causes 8 % of all deaths in Asia and Africa every year.