World Hunger

World hunger is an issue that should affect us all. Everyone has felt hunger pains, or claimed that they are “starving” if it’s been a while since their last meal. But most of us have never experienced real hunger - chronic hunger. Chronic hunger means not having enough daily nutrition to meet the requirements for days, weeks, or even months. It means being too weak to fight off disease, and dying from common infections. It means kids going blind from a lack of Vitamin A, or having brittle bines from a lack of iron (wfp.org). Most of us will never experience it, but we should all be concerned by it.

There are two sides to every argument, and that includes the disagreements over population and world hunger. New Malthusians are people that agree with the theories of Thomas Malthus, who said that if the people do not control the number of births occurring each year, the population will eventually outstrip its food supply. This theory is supported by the incredible boom in population in recent years, especially in the Least Industrialized Nations. Anti-Malthusians see things differently. They believe that the population goes through transitions in stages. This is based on the demographic transition of Europe. They believe that right now the Least Industrialized Nations are in Stage 2, a population explosion, and that soon they will enter Stage 3, when the population will stabilize. The Anti-Malthusians also make a point that there is more food in the world now for each person than there was in 1950. There is enough food, it is just not making it to the places that need it the most.

One fact you can’t argue with is that 852 million people around the world are hungry, up from 842 million last year. Every year, 10.5 million children under the age of five die from disease and malnutrition as a result of hunger (30hourfamine.org.). these are some scary numbers, and they would seem to support the New Malthusian’s theory. What’s more startling about these numbers is that most of these people are condensed into a few large areas – not just spread out all over the world. Almost all of the most-starved populations are located throughout South Asia and Central, Southern, and East Africa (wfp.org). In these areas, especially the rural areas, the parents are to poor to feed themselves or their children, who in turn cannot feed themselves or their children. They cannot afford to buy tools to create income to help better their situation. These people are part of a poverty cycle they cannot escape from without help (wfp.org).

There is a lot being done to help these starving people: The 30 Hour Famine is a Christian program that encourages youth groups to get together and do their part to help raise money and awareness for the hungry and poverty-stricken families in places like Sudan and Kenya. Once