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Global Food Security Index 2014

Last May, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) published its annual DuPont-commissioned Global Food Security Index (GFSI). The index aims to “provide a robust and consistent analytical framework for measuring and deepening the understanding of food insecurity around the globe.”

The index showed that food security in 70 percent of countries increased from 2012 to 2013. In that time span, the number of people suffering from chronic hunger decreased from 868 million to 842 million, with a 17 percent decline over the past 24 years.

However, the index also highlighted numerous obstacles inhibiting the growth of food security that both poor and rich countries have yet to surmount.

One hundred nine countries were ranked. The top five, in order, were the United States, Austria, the Netherlands, Norway (tied with the Netherlands) and Singapore. The bottom five were Burundi, Togo, Madagascar, Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Of all 109 countries, Uganda saw the biggest increase and Myanmar saw the biggest decrease in food security.

To determine these rankings, the GFSI incorporates three categories: Affordability, Availability and Quality & Safety.

The Affordability category incorporates measures like food consumption as a percentage of household expenditure, the proportion of a country’s population living under the $2 dollar per day global poverty line and import tariffs on agricultural goods. This category, a combination of six indicators, seeks to determine the degree to which people can purchase nutritional food without depleting their financial resources. In the top performing countries (U.S. and Singapore), people spent less than 15 percent of their budget on food.

This all matters little if food is affordable, but unavailable, so the GFSI assesses how easily people can access food as well. Acquiring the food one needs can be difficult in countries plagued by corruption, a lack of infrastructure and unpredictable agricultural outputs. Low-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa scored the lowest in Availability, though the region experienced a notable increase in overall food security.

Lastly, the GFSI analyzes the quality and safety of diets in different countries. It looks at the availability of micronutrients like vitamin A and vegetal iron, protein quality and diet diversification, among other indicators.

According to the index, the majority of countries made gains in Affordability, but many countries lost points in Availability and Quality & Safety. In many countries grouped in the “Asia & Pacific” region, food indeed became more affordable, but only because diet diversification had been markedly reduced.

Two new indicators were added this year: food loss as part of the Availability category and obesity as part of the Quality & Safety category. Both have been controversial in recent years. In India, for example, a lack of food-chain infrastructure results in tremendous food loss—as much as 25 percent of produce every year.

Furthermore, obesity has become a growing concern even in countries with high food insecurity, though experts are still at a loss to explain this phenomenon.

The upshot of the index seems positive, with food security increasing in most countries. Despite this progress, areas for improvement have been pointed out. For one, women farmers across the globe still lack the same access to education, land and machinery that men have. Moreover, governments in developing countries are still struggling to make food more affordable without sacrificing dietary quality.

– Ryan Yanke

Sources: Economist, Blouin News, Dupont, Global Food Security Index
Photo: BlouInNews blog

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Three Simple Ways We Can Help End Starvation

Nearly 25,000 people die every day from starvation. While in richer countries nutrition isn’t always a paramount problem, there are still 947 million people living in developing nations who are undernourished; we have the ability to help lower this number. Below are a list of ways you can help easily end starvation.

1. Raise Money

During the 2011 East African famine, relief organizations such as Save The Children and UNICEF launched campaigns to raise money for feeding starving children. By using clear and simple incentives (“just $10 can feed a child for seven days!”), smart organizations allowed even those halfway across the world to help those in need. Donating money is simple, easy and can usually be done online with just a click of a button.

2. Urge your Congressional Leaders to Support Crucial Legislation

Calling or emailing your congressional leaders is a simple and a sure way to increase their chances of supporting a bill which could save millions of lives. One such bill still waiting to be passed in the House of Representatives is the Global Food Security Act of 2013, which would improve nutrition and strengthen agriculture development in developing countries. Other similar legislation that could use your support includes the Food Aid Reform Act and Water for the World Act.

3. Limit Your Daily Intake

Over the past three decades, the average intake of dietary fats has dramatically increased in almost every country except Africa. With a recommended range from between 15 to 35 percent, we are seeing a stark contrast in dietary intake. In fact, many countries in North America and Western Europe exceeded this recommended daily intake, while countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia fell dramatically below.

Despite our growing intake, we are quickly running out of natural resources. In an overpopulated world, it is up to each of us to individually be cognizant of our daily intake. By limiting our intake in richer countries, we are ensuring that our world is capable of growing enough food in the first place for all of our global citizens.

By helping others who suffer from malnutrition, we are also helping ourselves in return. The most common causes of death around the world—including heart disease, obesity, cancer and chronic illness—can be a result of unhealthy eating habits.

By remaining aware that we have a much larger role in helping to end global hunger and poverty than we may believe, we can help put an end to millions of those going to sleep hungry at night.

– Nick Magnanti

Sources: CNN, Borgen Project, McCollum House, Food for the Poor, Green Facts, Green Facts 2
Photo: Action ContrelAfaim

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Hunger in Djibouti

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Djibouti is a small country on the Eastern coast of Africa populated by malnourished people. Because of its location, Djibouti is a shipping hub for Eastern Africa, and so it has a large urban population. Still, a World Food Programme Emergency Food Security Assessment in 2012 found that three-fourths of assessed households were “severely or moderately food insecure.”

In rural areas, where one-third of Djibouti’s population lives, there is a severe hunger crisis. One in five children aged one to four  years is malnourished and, in the rural areas, about 70,000 people were food insecure in 2012. In the slums, Arhiba and Balbala, there is a high rate of child mortality from malnutrition.This is in part due to the fact that the country has very little natural resources and there have been recurring severe droughts in the region.

Additionally, in recent years Djibouti suffered from a cholera epidemic. The droughts have damaged food production from crops and livestock in rural areas, and because the rural villages are spread out across the country, it is difficult for aid organizations to send food and healthcare to each community.

Many rural families have moved to cities in search of work and a better life. However, work is often difficult to find and, with more people migrating to the cities, the unemployment rate has increased quickly. Other rural families are fleeing to the slums to escape the harsh conditions of rural life.

Most households are receiving assistance, without which they could not survive. Fewsnet found in a 2012-2013 report that, in some areas, “households are marginally able to meet minimum food needs only through accelerated depletion of livelihood assets and adoption of unsustainable coping strategies such as charcoal sales.”

Prices and unemployment are rising as the droughts continue. The people of Djibouti need strategies for clean water, agriculture, health and nutrition. Until these needs are met, World Food Programme, Action Against Hunger and other organizations and governments are working to provide citizens with basic needs and helping the government develop programs for sustainability.

-Kimmi Ligh

Sources: Relief Web, Action Against Hunger, World Food Programme, The Guardian
Photo: Flickr

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10 Facts about Hunger in Asia

Hunger is a serious global issue that affects millions in developing countries, and hunger in Asia is particularly devastating. According to the World Food Programme, there are 842 million people suffering from hunger across the world, and 98 percent of that total amount lives in developing areas within Asia, the Pacific, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

As the largest and most populous continent, Asia is home to approximately 4.427 billion people. Unfortunately, a large amount of that population suffers from hunger.

 

Top Facts about Hunger in Asia

 

1.  Asia has the largest number of hungry people, with more than 500 million suffering.

2. About 62.4 percent of global hunger exists in both Asia and the South Pacific.

3. More than 20 percent of Asian children are underweight, meaning they are too thin for their age, and more than 70 percent of malnourished children live in Asia.

4. The lack of essential vitamins and minerals in one’s diet is a leading cause of hunger and malnutrition. Both Asia and Africa are iodine deficient areas. Iodine deficiency disorders (IDD) greatly impact the mental and cognitive development of children, and if pregnant women do not receive the proper amount of iodine, there is a greater chance the pregnancy will result in abortion, stillbirth and congenital abnormalities.

5. About 75 percent of all those suffering from hunger live in rural areas, and a large majority of them live in the villages of Asia and Africa.

6. Out of the 553 million malnourished people living in Asia, six out of ten live in South Asia and eight out of ten are malnourished children living in those areas.

7. The poor and hungry in Asia face difficulties as the demand for food increases while water and land resources decrease, causing food prices to rise. If these food prices did not rise during the 2000s, approximately 112 million people in Asia could have escaped poverty.

However, there is some good news and socio-economic progress in Asia:

8. The 2013 Global Hunger Index (GHI) score for South Asia decreased by 34 percent when compared to the 1990 score.

9. Although 553 million people are still hungry in Asia, this represents a 30 percent decrease from the previous 739 million hungry people. Malnourishment has also decreased from 23.7 to 13.9 percent.

10. The U.N. launched the Zero Hunger Challenge on April 29, 2013, which has led governments, scientists, businesses, civil societies, farmers and consumers to work together to end poverty and hunger in Asia and the Pacific. To achieve this goal, the Zero Hunger Challenge outlined five objectives: ensure everyone always has access to nutritious foods, end childhood stunting, develop sustainable food systems, increase the productivity and income of small farmers and prevent the loss and wasting of food.

As these facts reveal, too many people across the world still suffer from hunger. Like in any other country, hunger in Asia affects the development of entire societies and communities.

– Meghan Orner

Sources: World Food Programme, International Food Policy Research Institute, Asian Development Bank 1, Asian Development Bank 2, Hunger Notes, UN News Centre
Photo: WSJ

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The Three Hungriest Countries

Today, there are over 870 million people in the world who are hungry. The World Food Programme estimated that 98 percent of these individuals live in developing countries that actually produce the majority of the world’s food supplies.

There are nineteen countries that the Global Hunger Index name as having “alarming levels of hunger.” However, there are three countries in particular that top the list — the three hungriest countries — harboring the greatest number of people suffering from hunger.

This Index takes into account three main indicators: the proportion of the population that is undernourished, the proportion of young children who are underweight, and the mortality rate for children under five years old.

The first is Burundi, with 73.4 percent of its population undernourished. Over 50 percent of Burundi’s population of 9.85 million live below the poverty line and nearly 35 percent of the adult population are completely out of work.

The second is Comoros, with 70 percent of its people undernourished. Comoros, a collection of three small islands off the coast of Mozambique, has a population of only 800,000. However, half of this small population lives below the country’s low poverty line.

The third is Eritrea, with 65.4 percent of its population undernourished. The country is located at the horn of Africa, and although it has experienced significant economic growth in recent years, no progress has been seen when it comes to the country’s dire hunger crisis.

Why are these countries struggling? Severe hunger in many of these regions is a product of immense political strife, economic turmoil, violent conflict, as well as other particular circumstances.

For example, although the amount of underweight children in Burundi has decreased within the past decade, 15 years of civil war has plagued the nation with extreme poverty, which reflects directly on the nation’s economic and nutritional well-being. Nearly 58 percent of Burundians remain chronically malnourished.

Comoros has also experienced immense violence in the form of nearly 20 attempted and successful coups since gaining independence in 1975. Eritrea has lived through intense political isolation under President Isaias Afewerki, who led the country in a 30-year war with Ethiopia.

Regardless of the causes, more action is needed to alleviate the suffering of these 870 million starving people, and especially in the three hungriest countries. The international community is beginning to focus greatly on prevention of future food crises in addition to responding to the current one. Dominic MacSorley of the organization Concern stressed that, “Aid agencies, governments and international organizations need to learn lessons from the past and boost future protection measures to reduce the impact of extreme weather events and other hazards on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.”

– Cambria Arvizo

Sources: Thomson Reuters Foundation, All Africa, Ecointersect, Global Citizen
Photo: Action Against Hunger

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The Relationship of Hunger & Poverty

hunger
The world currently produces enough food to sustain the entire global population, yet nearly a billion people around the world still suffer every day from hunger. The U.S. alone could end global hunger with only $30 billion a year — a mere fraction of the $530 billion the U.S. spends annually on the military.

If we have the power to feed the world, it begs the question — why is hunger still such a monumental problem?

The primary and most obvious cause of hunger is poverty. While enough food exists to feed the world, a significant portion of the population still live in such abject poverty that they cannot afford even the most basic food items.

This creates an incessant poverty trap. The global poor can’t feed themselves or their families, so they become weak and malnourished which makes them unable to work. In turn, they fall deeper into poverty. This phenomenon is affecting millions of people around the world. Any solution to hunger must also be in part a solution to poverty.

Another major cause of hunger is natural disasters and climate change. Storms and droughts — both of which are on the rise — damage crops and lead to massive food shortages. Often, the poorest countries are the ones least equipped to deal with these disasters, and the greenhouse gases that lead to climate change originate from the richest countries.

One way to remedy this problem is to increase foreign investment in agriculture. By establishing adequate infrastructure, cultivating the land properly, managing water usage and ensuring storage facilities are used effectively, the fallout from natural disasters can be handled much more easily.

Unfortunately, most poor countries lack the resources and the knowledge to shore up their agricultural sector by themselves. However, foreign investment in the agricultural sector of developing countries would go a long way towards helping them becoming self-sustainable. A U.N. study found that investments in agriculture reduce hunger five times more than investments in any other sector.

Finally, war represents another major cause of hunger. The most war-torn areas in the world also tend to suffer the most from hunger. In war, food is often used as a weapon. Farms and livestock are ravaged in an effort to starve the opposition into submission. In Africa, countries with the most conflict — like Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo — are often the hungriest. On the other hand, in more peaceful countries — like Ghana and Rwanda — hunger is on the decline.

There are a number of insidious causes to the problem of global hunger, but the good news is that all of them are preventable. First and foremost, the problem of hunger must be tackled by facing poverty head-on. From there, we should turn our attention away from feeding impoverished peoples through aid, and towards helping them become self-sustainable.

– Samuel Hillestad

Sources: WFP, Global Concerns Classroom, DoSomething, FAO
Photo: OoCities

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Hunger in Tajikistan

hunger in tajikistan
Hunger in Tajikistan is a major challenge. The World Food Programme reports one third of the country is affected by food insecurity, while the World Bank casts Tajikistan as the poorest former Soviet country in the Central Asian region. Only seven percent of the land in Tajikistan is capable of producing food, and that number is reduced by consistently harsh winters. Low-income combined with reduced access to food means thousands in Tajikistan go hungry.

After achieving independence from the Soviet Union, Tajikistan fell into civil war in the 1990s and the result was high levels of hunger and poverty that permeate the country to this day. AnneMarie van den Berg is the Deputy Country Director in Tajikistan for the WFP. She explains the WFP sponsored school feeding programs which combat hunger in Tajikistan.

“Tajikistan is a landlocked country and a net importer of food, which means that the country has been particularly hard hit by the high food and fuel prices,” AnneMarie describes why Tajikistan is suffering.

The WFP program provides hot meals for primary school children in the areas hardest hit by the food crisis. Beginning in 1999, 5,000 school children were served meals. By the 2007-2008 academic year, that number had increased to 265,000 primary school children. Another program was also implemented which rewards attendance for secondary school girls with food to take home to their families, 105,000 girls were able to take advantage of that in the 2007-2008 school year.

The effect has not only been higher nourishment levels among the children, but also higher concentration and school performance. Many children come to school without having had anything to eat, and find it difficult to maintain focus throughout the day. Both teachers and parents agree the hot meals provided by the WFP improve the children’s education quality.

The school feeding program directly impacts the lives of children such as Matona, age 10, and her brother Hofiz, age 9. Matona and Hofiz live in Kalai-Sheikh, a village in eastern Tajikistan. On March 21 the children, with the rest of the country, celebrate Navruz, the Central Asian New Year. They are particularly excited about the traditional Navruz dish, Sumalak. In school, Matona and Hofiz water wheat seeds on metal plates and watch as they grow into green shoots.

“The greatest joy of all for Mastona and Hofiz on this holiday is the return of their father, Firuz Bekov, from Moskow. Firuz is one of the half-million Tajik migrants in Russia working as laborers to send money home to their families,” writes the WFP.

— Julianne O’Connor

Sources: The Examiner, World Food Programme 1, World Food Programme 2, Global Voices
Photo: The Feed

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WhyHunger Mobilizes Artists to Fight Hunger

“Grassroots” is a favorite term of WhyHunger, a New York-based nonprofit addressing hunger and poverty in the United States, and worldwide. The organization supports over 8,000 community-based projects that are helping to create “a just food system that provides universal access to nutritious and affordable food.”

WhyHunger was founded in 1975 by musicians Harry Chapin and Bill Ayres in response to rampant hunger in Africa, and elsewhere. The friends decided that their new charity would need to go beyond providing emergency food aid if it were to create a just and sustainable food system. Chapin and Ayres became dedicated to digging deep to the roots of poverty in order to find long-term solutions to the global problem of hunger.

In an open letter, co-founder and current Executive Director Bill Ayres defines WhyHunger’s global mission as “[helping] people to help themselves through food production, job-training programs, nutrition education, community economic development, healthcare, youth programming, leadership development and more.”

WhyHunger brings much-needed publicity and funding to small, community-based organizations that are working hard to chip away at hunger in their communities. This feat is accomplished through WhyHunger’s various programs, including Artists Against Hunger & Poverty.

AAH&P partners with accomplished and rising musical artists to raise funds for outstanding local projects that are fighting hunger. So far, the campaign has funneled close to 10 million dollars into grassroots initiatives.

Some of the artists involved with AAH&P and WhyHunger include Bruce Springsteen, Carlos Santana, Chicago, Brandi Carlile and O.A.R., among many others. WhyHunger connects the management of the different artists to organizations that focus on hunger and poverty in towns near their tour stops. The artists then set aside time during their concerts to speak about the different nonprofits, and to collect donations. Typically the organizations are given the best tickets in the house to auction off, and the artists generally donate to the cause, as well.

“I’ve always said that working with WhyHunger is the perfect antidote to dealing with the whims and challenges of the music industry,” says Jen Chapin, an artist-supporter and longtime board member of WhyHunger. “In the food justice movement, you always get to interact with inspired and intelligent people who are driven by a sense of mission, which is — ahem — not always the case in the music biz.”

Artists Against Hunger & Poverty is a strategic program that utilizes the existing charisma surrounding musical artists to draw in fans and mobilize support for small-scale nonprofits that would otherwise not have access to such large audiences.

WhyHunger has received a four-star rating on Charity Navigator. The nonprofit places a great emphasis on keeping profits at the grassroots level, in community-based nonprofits that are helping eradicate hunger and poverty, person-by-person.

-Kayla Strickland

Sources: WhyHunger, American Songwriter, Charity Navigator, AAH&P
Photo: WhyHunger Twitter

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How Many People Go Hungry?

how many people go hungry?
Hunger and malnutrition plague millions of people globally, but just how many people go hungry?

Statistics show that 842 million people in the world do not have enough to eat. The vast majority of these hungry people, about 827 million, live in developing countries, where 14 percent of the population is undernourished. Asia currently has the largest number of hungry people, over 500 million, but it is Sub-Saharan Africa that has the highest prevalence of hunger and malnutrition. One out of six children, 100 million children in developing countries, is underweight. Throughout the world, one in four children’s growth is stunted from malnutrition, particularly in these developing countries. Poor nutrition causes nearly half of deaths under the age of five, totaling 3.1 million children a year.

Since 1990, global hunger has been reduced by more than 34 percent, but roughly one billion men, women, and children are still food-insecure. Since the federal government began Food for Peace in 1954, more than three billion people in over 150 countries have benefited directly from U.S. food aid. An increase in this assistance would make substantial changes throughout the world. WFP calculates that $3.2 billion is needed per year to reach all 66 million hungry school-age children.

The world produces enough calories for every person on earth to eat around 2700 per day for each human. Millions of people go hungry not because food is lacking. Rather, many of these calories are not used to feed humans. One-third is used to feed animals, 5 percent is used in the production of biofuels, and up to a third is simply wasted. The current system in place allows the wealthy half of the planet to eat well while the rest of the world struggles to eat at all.

Many organizations and programs aim to reduce global hunger. Supporting peasant farming is one key factor in this goal, but it is equally important to rein in Western-style culture and the standard the American diet creates.

-Elizabeth Malfaro

Sources: World Food Programme, Bread for the World
Photo: USAID

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The Effects of Hunger

Everyone knows the feeling of an uncomfortable stomachache. If a person misses a single meal for one reason or another, he or she can feel the effect it has on mood, ability to concentrate and sometimes ability to even think straight. Thus, people try to avoid this feeling as much as possible, but what if one had no other choice but to be hungry?

Unfortunately, this is the reality that millions of people live with every day of their lives. According to the U.N., about 870 million people suffer from hunger, meaning one in eight people are hungry globally. Hunger has serious effects on the entire body, and extreme hunger only serves to continue the cycle of poverty.

Although hunger is normally a feeling associated with the stomach, hunger also directly affects the brain in several ways. Due to the lack of essential nutrients, vitamins, protein and minerals, severe and continuous hunger can inhibit the brain from developing cognitively, socially and emotionally, all of which affect an individual’s ability to read, concentrate, memorize and even speak.

Other key organs are also directly affected by hunger. Impaired vision and other eyesight issues result from a lack of Vitamin A, and the gums and teeth can become damaged due to calcium deficiency. Possibly even worse is the effect that extreme hunger has on the immune system. If the immune system lacks basic vitamins, nutrients and minerals, then it cannot properly defend the body against disease, which is why developing countries are constantly battling a variety of diseases.

As mentioned above, hunger can make it difficult to study and learn, which is why extreme poverty and hunger are often related to a lack of proper education. Especially in developing countries, children who experience hunger from a very young age tend to struggle academically and have a lower IQ when compared to the academic performance of well-nourished children.

Although all children should have access to nourishment, it is critical that newborns and infants receive the necessary nutrients. According to 30 Hour Famine, 70 percent of the brain develops during the first two years of life alone. If young children experience malnourishment, especially during that time frame, the brain could become damaged forever.

The effects of hunger and malnutrition are not only damaging, but can also be irreparable. Aside from a lack of comfort, hunger also causes serious health issues, which is why ensuring that everyone, especially those in developing countries, has access to the necessary nutrients they need to live a long and healthy life is such a critical issue.

– Meghan Orner

Sources: UN, 30 Hour Famine, The 40-Hour Famine
Photo: Poverty Around the World