I’ve seen large sums of money put in terms of how many times it could solve the world hunger crisis. For example, the defense budget is blank amount which could solve world hunger 5 times over. How do they actually come up with this price? Is there really a permanent way to solve world hunger?
In: Economics
World hunger is not a problem of food production or even food distribution. It is a problem of politics.
When you hear about a famine or other food shortage in the modern era, it is almost guaranteed that it is the direct result of political action taken against those starving.
In essence, starvation is a *strategy* for eliminating your political opposition.
That’s why all those charitable attempts to feed people tend to fall flat. The local government requires bribes to even put on a show of getting food to people – and then proceeds to let just enough trickle through to keep the bribes coming while not letting enough through to actually keep people from starving.
Indeed, many ‘feed the poor’ programs in the Third World actually make the problem worse. The starving people who were merely being killed to serve political ends become a revenue stream for the corrupt government trying to kill them, solidifying the power of that government. As strange it might sound, when you see large numbers of people starving in a Third World autocracy, you shouldn’t send them food. You should send them guns.
The biggest problem is there’s only a few places in the world that can actually grow food in sufficient quantities to feed everyone. So, the world hunger problem is mostly a problem of getting it to everyone.
If you can’t grow your own food, you have to buy it from someone who can grow more than they need. But what if you have no way of making money? Then you depend on other people’s ability to be nice to you.
It’s all about distribution, not quantity. We just have to figure out a way to get it from where there’s excess to where there’s not enough. That costs money for purchase and transportation, which can be roughly calculated. The poorer countries can’t afford all that, so the rich countries with all the extra food would have to pay for it, for a very marginal benefit, if any, to them. No way countries in sub Saharan Africa and other places with food shortages could afford to pay for all that, so they’d be relying on the goodwill of countries who do not have this problem, such as the United States, China, etc.,
I’m going to attack the second question from a different angle from the rest, and I’d have to say: No, there is no *good* permanent solution to hunger.
Assuming that you can solve the problems of production, distribution, and politics, it’s very difficult to get people to stop having kids. Population goes up, there are more people to feed, and, eventually, you’re going to run out of space to grow food. You can push that limitation back by growing food in more and more difficult places like in climate-controlled buildings, but you’ll eventually run out of resources to build and manage those buildings.
On the other hand, generally speaking, it’s possible to delay the problem for a few more generations, which is the best that can be practically hoped for in most major problems.
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