Over one billion people live in chronic hunger by Food & Agricultural Organization (FAO) 10:20pm 14th May, 2010   For the more fortunate, it’s only the feeling in your stomach that says “it’s time to eat.” If you are less fortunate and don’t get enough to eat each day, hunger makes you feel weak, tired, unable to concentrate, even sick. All you can think about is when you are going to eat next.    For many hundreds of millions of people worldwide, this feeling lasts all day, every day, except they never know if and when this feeling will go away. For them, hunger can lead to illness and temporary or permanent damage to their health. They have insufficient food to keep them active and healthy, and they don’t get all the vitamins and minerals the body needs to function well. This is chronic hunger.    When hunger is extreme and after days of insufficient or no food, the body begins to feed on the only thing it can: itself. It breaks down its own fat and body tissues, which eventually leads to starvation and death.    Lack of food is not the problem. Enough food is produced in the world today for everyone to be properly nourished and lead a healthy and productive life. Hunger exists because of poverty. It exists because natural disasters, like earthquakes, floods and droughts, sometimes occur in places where poor people have little or no means to rebuild once the damage is done. It exists because in many countries women, although they do much of the farming, do not have as much access as men to training, credit or land.    Hunger exists because of conflict, which takes away any chance people have to earn a decent living and feed their families. It exists because poor people don’t have access to land or solid agricultural infrastructure to produce viable crops or keep livestock, or to steady work that would otherwise allow them access to food. It exists because people sometimes use natural resources in ways that are not sustainable. It exists because there is not enough investment in the rural sector in many countries to support agricultural development.    Hunger exists because financial and economic crises affect the poor most of all by reducing or eliminating the sources of income they depend on to survive. Sharing a vision of a world without hunger is the first step.    Ending gender inequality and empowering women to play a bigger role in agricultural development is another. The problem of hunger should be a top priority in impoverished countries. Small-scale farmers should be given the opportunities and education they need to produce enough food and income to feed their families. Rural economies need to grow to expand job opportunities for those who need them and slow the pace of rural-to-urban migration.    More emphasis needs to be placed on improving small farmers’ access to both domestic and international markets. Our natural resources need to be properly managed to ensure the land is not being over-used. The public and private sectors need to work together to end poverty and inequality and improve access to safe food for all. Visit the related web page
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