Response to Article of the Week: Fighting over Food
The Week newspaper states that the uprising in prices in food is helping the
spread of hunger throughout the world and causing revolts in the Middle East. This
rising is the highest one in history. This lead 44 million people into poverty. The
prices have gone up due to supply and demand. Horrible climates and changes in
weather haven’t lead production evolve and produce enough food for the entire
population. At the same time the increase in population and economic growth are
both factors of the consumption rate going up. We still don’t know if the prices would
continue going up, but it is probable because of the instability of our world economy.
Conventional wisdom has it that normally people starve due to the lack of food
and resources. I agree on that “statement” but in my opinion a country’s economy is
the one who allows this to happen. If a country’s economy is very successful well there
is a less probability of poverty. What I’m saying doesn’t mean that if a country has a
great economy it won’t have poverty, all countries have poverty. What I am trying to
say is that a country which economy is more advanced and more successful would
have a better probability to overcome and to try to avoid poverty. Also that poverty in
this moment is occurring all around the world and we need to stop it and the only way
to stop it is by giving employment, improving education and many others. At the same
time we should focus on not wasting so much food. Scarcity is occurring due to the
waste of food. Instead of throwing the food away we should give it to the less
fortunate because they will appreciate it and then we can save a lot of food and
probably the rising in prices would decrease.
While reading this article, I began to wonder how much food is wasted each
year. To learn more, I decided to research the topic online. I was surprised to learn
that 1.3 billion tons of food is lost or wasted each year. Also, those consumers in rich
nations waste a combine 222 million tons a year, according to the report that was
done. This amount of food that is being wasted almost the same quantity of food
produced in sub-Saharan Africa. According to Ben Rooney (writer of article that was
published in CNN) he says that: "The issue of food losses is of high importance in the
efforts to combat hunger, raise income and improve food security in the world's
poorest countries," the report states. "Food losses have an impact on food security for
poor people, on food quality and safety, on economic development and on the
environment." In other words Ben Rooney believes that the biggest factor to combat
hunger if to control the food that is being wasted. This waste is creating a lot of
problems because those problems cannot be solved until we find a way to manage the
total quantity of food that we are wasting.
My research activity does not change my initial conclusions as state din
paragraph two. I still think that to combat poverty we need to take action and start
working on the solution because the only way we are going to succeed is by working
together. While starvation cannot be solved overnight, we must continue to work on
not wasting so much food in order to prevent starvation. My hope is that one day we
can learn how to not waste food and give it to the least fortunate instead of wasting it.