TWQ: How To End Hunger - Spring 2010

For  the more than one billion people on earth without enough to eat, and for the 80 percent of the world’s population with no access to social safety nets, risk and volatility are the new normal. With climate and population pressures on food supply systems mounting, the world is entering an era when hunger solutions will be driven not only by compassion but also by pressing global peace and stability concerns.

Beyond the extreme poverty that unites them, the particular challenges and circumstances of the hungry vary widely. Strictly by the numbers, the face of hunger in the world today is most likely to be that of a smallholder farmer in rural Asia. If such a person were truly representative of all hungry everywhere, the solutions might be simpler.  But the situation of those struggling daily without enough to eat is complex and their specific challenges often unique to gender, age, location, culture, and means of subsistence. The poor become hungry for many reasons, ranging from the disastrous combination of high prices and  global recession to conflict, disease, marginalization, discrimination,  bad governance, and natural disasters. The hungry are urban dwellers as  well as rural smallholder farmers in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. They are often women, children, and others traditionally marginalized in societies. Their needs can vary by degree, duration, and  condition, from the acute starvation of famine to the hidden hunger of micronutrient deficiency. Among the hungry, pregnant and lactating women, small children, and those living with HIV/AIDS as well as other diseases have special nutritional requirements.

Make no mistake: the battle against global hunger vulnerability is winnable. The risk paradigm that has long placed the burden of managing food uncertainty on the hungry poor can be transformed to build lasting resilience. Combined with strong national policy frameworks and essential farm trade and subsidy reforms through a successful Doha round  of global trade negotiations, these initiatives can drive investments in food and agriculture. This transformation and these investments will be a victory for all nations, especially for small and medium enterprises and for women farmers across the world, both of which must serve as pillars of sustainable access to food.  

Josette Sheeran