24,000 die each day from starvation

[Blasphemy]

UN General Secratary, Kofi Annan, said today that the leaders of the world have no time to waste if they wish to stanch the problem of world hunger. The French news agency reported that Annan talked in the opening of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization which assembles in Rome, Italy. The Organization's goal is to reduce by half the number of people suffering from starvation in the world by 2015.

The General Secratary called for more than 180 representatives in the assembly to agree on a "determined action" to solve the problem within the 4 days of the assembly. According to Annan, 24,000 people die every day as a result of malnutrition.

The General Secratary explained that the situation can be solved by enhancing agricultural products, and by raising the amount of land given to farmers. He added and said that the state must give more financial aid and technological knowledge to people who make their living off farming.

The head of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN critizied the fact that only a handful of the industrialized countries came to the international assembly in Rome. According to him, the industrialized countries pass only half the amount of money to developing nations, than what they pass to farmers in their own country.

[Dan Majerle]

Is Castro attending that? Ironically Mugabe is.

[Felicia]

The death rate is unbelievable. It's disgusting to hear that not many industrialized nations represented themselves!

[Fires of History]

Certainly puts September 11 into real perspective. There are many forms of terrorism.

[James]

http://www.brown.edu/Departments/World_Hun..._and_facts.html (http://www.brown.edu/Departments/World_Hunger_Program/hungerweb/intro/6_myths_and_facts.html)


Myth 1: THERE JUST ISN'T ENOUGH FOOD PRODUCED IN THE WORLD TO FEED EVERYONE.
Fact: World production of grain alone is over 1.5 billion tons, enough to supply the entire world population with two pounds a day. This, with the current production of vegetables, fruits, nuts and meat, is enough to supply each man, woman and child with 3000 calories a day - equal to the consumption of an average American. There is enough food: the problem is that some people cannot afford to pay the price of available food. World hunger and malnutrition is a matter of poverty and accessibility, not production.
Myth 2: HUNGER IS CAUSED BY FAMINE AND NATURAL DISASTERS WHICH CANNOT BE CONTROLLED BY PEOPLE.
Fact: Most hunger is not the result of famine or disaster. These recurring conditions are devastating, but they are the cause of only a small portion (10%) of the hunger problem, even though they tend to be the most publicized portion. People could still eat when famine and natural disaster occur if they had enough food in storage nearby. Furthermore, some famines are in fact man-made. For example, wars and revolutions often produce famine and mass migration of refugees. Primarily, hunger results from chronic undernutrition; people lack access to enough food, lack the resources to purchase or grow their own food, or the food they eat lacks sufficient nutritional value.
Myth 3: HUNGER IS THE RESULT OF OVERPOPULATION. IF PEOPLE HAD FEWER CHILDREN THEY WOULD NOT BE HUNGRY.
Fact: Contrary to popular belief, overpopulation is not the cause of hunger. It is usually the other way around: hunger is one of the real causes of overpopulation. The more children a poor family has, the more likely some will survive to work in the fields or in the city to add to the family's small income and, later, to care for the parents in their old age. High birth rates are symptoms of the failures of a social system - inadequate family income, nutrition, education, health care and old-age security.
Myth 4: PEOPLE WHO ARE POOR ARE UNABLE OR UNWILLING TO HELP THEMSELVES.
Fact: In less developed countries people who are poor work for long hours at low wages, sometimes only pennies a day. In order to survive in these circumstances, they must be hard working, innovative, and resourceful. Poverty lending in Latin America, Asia and Africa has proven that by giving destitute people access to credit (loans averaging $50) they are able to successfully start a small business and work their own way out of poverty.
Myth 5: WE NEED TO TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN HUNGRY AND THE POOR PEOPLE IN AMERICA FIRST, BEFORE WE TRY TO HELP OTHERS.
Fact: Actually there is no reason that we have to choose between helping people in the U.S. and people in other countries. Both domestic and global hunger and poverty are blights upon humanity; both cause immense and unnecessary suffering and both must be tackled simultaneously if the world is to prosper. The resources are ample, if we decide to put people who are hungry - wherever they are to be found - first. In an interdependent world the good done for any part will benefit the whole.
Myth 6: INDIVIDUALS CANNOT AFFECT THE WORLD HUNGER SITUATION: ONLY GOVERNMENTS OR VERY RICH AND POWERFUL PEOPLE CAN MAKE THE NEEDED CHANGES.
Fact: Individual citizens collectively hold public power. In countries that adhere to democratic principles, it is much easier for that power to be expressed. This ability to influence and participate in public policy-making gives each of us the responsibility to act. Not only do we have the power to influence the course of events, but the moral obligation to exercise that power. Recent history shows what individuals working collectively can do to affect policy (Civil Rights, Environmental, and Eastern Europe Democratic movements, for example). Changing government policies and achieving sufficient funding of programs that work to empower poor people are essential. Each of us can help create that change.

[James]

http://www.kids.maine.org/hunfa.htm

World harvest of wheat, corn, rice and other grains produce enough to meet the minimum nutritional requirements for every child, woman and man in the world. Despite this, hunger continues to plague an estimated 841 million people around the world, including 30 million in the United States. World Watch Institute

Hunger kills. Every day, 34,000 children under five die of hunger or preventable diseases resulting from hunger. Bread for the World

One in twelve people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of 5. United Nations Food and Agriculture

It is estimated that 3,100,000 people die each year from diarrhea and most of the victims are children. United Nations Food and Agriculture

The Indian subcontinent has nearly half the world's hungry people. Africa and the rest of Asia together have approximately 40%, and the remaining hungry people are found in Latin America and other parts of the world.
Hunger in Global Economy

Around the world the most vulnerable to hunger are: children, pregnant and nursing women, single mothers, the elderly, the homeless, the unemployed, ethnic and racial minorities, and the working poor. United Nations World Food Program

Poverty is the main cause of hunger. Poor people often lack access to land to grow food or inadequate income to buy food. Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion - a majority of humanity - live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world's people. UNICEF

Seventy percent of the world's poor are female. UNICEF

100 million people are homeless and 2.5 billion people have no access to proper sanitation. UNICEF

800 million people lack access to basic health care, and 1.2-billion lack access to safe drinking water. UNICEF

Often it takes just a few simple resources for impoverished people to be able to become self-sufficient. These resources include quality seeds, appropriate tools, and access to water. Small improvements in farming techniques and food storage are also helpful. OXFAM

Many hunger experts believe that ultimately the best way to reduce hunger is through education. Educated people are best able to break out of the cycle of poverty that causes hunger. UNICEF

[Reuben]

As that wonderful capitalist theorotician said "The Market wll provide"

Lot of shit

[I Will Deny You]

Time to Come Clean on the Dirty Secret of Starvation
This week's World Food Summit will once again avoid the real issues
by John Vidal


If you want to see a hideous sight in the next few days, head for Rome where the second World Food Summit will be taking place. Held over from last year following September 11, it will feature 60 heads of state and thousands of bureaucrats and politicians. Even as they pledge yet again to feed the 800 million people who go hungry every year, they will be tucking into the world's finest produce.

Parma hams, wild salmon and canapes are a world away from the roots and berries that S, a Malawian woman I met last month, will be eating this week. She, like tens of thousands of people in southern Africa, has completely run out of food through no fault of her own; her life, from now until next April at the earliest, depends on northern governments and charities sending their surplus food across the world. The UN believes that 11 million people now face severe malnutrition if not starvation in the region. They say four million tons of grain will be needed but so far governments have pledged less than 100,000 tons Thousands have already died, tens of thousands more inevitably will.

The global food situation has barely improved since 1996 when the first food summit was held and politicians hollowly pledged to halve the proportion of hungry people by 2015. If present trends continue, 122 million people will have died of hunger-related diseases by then, and the UN admits it will take 60 years to reach even that modest target. Governments, in short, have utterly failed to address one of the world's greatest scandals.

The first paradox is that the world has never grown so much food; there is no overall scarcity and food has seldom been so cheap. The simple equation in the politics of food today is that hunger equals poverty. What we see now is the relatively new phenomenon of increasing hunger amid ever-greater plenty. Just because a country produces more food does not mean it has no malnourished people. The US grows 40% more food than it needs, yet 26 million Americans need handouts. India's grain silos have been bursting for the past five years and a record surplus of 59 million tons has been built up, yet almost half of all Indian children are undernourished, tens of millions of people go hungry and many hundreds of poor farmers have committed suicide.

The second paradox is that farmers in poor countries are, in this time of global plenty, abandoning agriculture because they just cannot compete with the heavily subsidized foods which are flooding into their countries on the back of world trade rules and IMF conditions that force them to open up their markets.

Farmers in Indonesia have been queuing to sell their rice even as the government imports it from Vietnam. In Pakistan, many farmers have reportedly burnt their harvests in desperation because the prices they can command are too low. The local rice market in Ghana has collapsed under US and Thai imports.

From Haiti to Mexico and Mozambique to Tanzania, small farmers are selling up, unable to compete with the barons of world agriculture and unable to take advantage of the increasingly global trade in food. The US has recently introduced a farm bill which will increase subsidies to the largest agri-businesses by $18bn a year for 10 years. The effect this will have on third world farmers in incalculable.

It is easy to foresee the slanging match which will take place in Rome. Much of the talk will be how to "feed the world" and increase food production; the specter of more than two billion more people to feed within 30 years will be raised and out will come all the arguments for miracle GM technologies and the further intensification of farming.

Rich countries will be admonished for not having increased international or domestic resources for agriculture in the past five years and for having presided over a steep decline in official aid for farming in poor countries. Some of the most food- insecure countries will in turn be accused of governing badly and doing little to help their people while at the same time increasing their military expenditures.

But all this will be peripheral to the main agenda which is being pushed massively in all global talks these days, and which led directly to last week's collapse in Bali of the final meeting before the Johannesburg summit on sustainable development.

The US, EU and other OECD countries will ruthlessly use Rome to push the case for further and faster economic liberalization of markets. When it comes to food, this means countries are being forced to surrender their food security, to sell off their emergency stocks and to dismantle the state marketing boards which traditionally control prices in times of need.

What will not be up for discussion in Rome, at least in the main meeting, will be the alternative to the present system which has led to this mess. Governments will pay little attention to the potential of fairer trading systems. No commitment will be made to remove food and agriculture from the World Trade Organization or to end the dumping of cheap food in poor countries which undermines small farmers and local markets.

No attempt will be made to end the trading cartels which dominate the world food market and no money will be pledged to stimulate local food production. Traditional, publicly funded plant breeding techniques will continue to be starved of cash. The right to food will not be addressed and the dirty secret that rich countries profit handsomely from the daily hunger of hundreds of millions of people will be ignored.

But the delegates might like to chew on one of the thousands of initiatives which are taking place around the world to help the poor help themselves. In northern Darfur, one of the most drought-prone areas of Sudan, 14,000 households have learned to increase the yields of a wide range of crops and vegetables just by collecting water in a different way and by introducing simple donkey ploughs and better manuring techniques.

Households have doubled the area they farm and yields have exceeded traditional cultivation methods by up to 400%, reports the Inter-mediate Technology Development Group. It did not take much money, it did not need expensive new technologies or any global agreement, just a little education, a recognition that hunger is caused by poverty and a commitment to help the poor, rather than the rich.[hr]http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0610-01.htm

[LeonardoDaVinci]

I think one of the biggest problems with western ideology is that it idealizes secularism and pragmatism while it undervalues humanism. Most people in the west are more than willing to turn a blind eye to the wretched state of their fellow men in many countries, after all, why should they bother, they are driving their Ford cars, eating at fancy restaurants and then can go back to their warm and cosy homes.