America is Fat.. but the World is Hungry

The Scarcity Fallacy by Stephen Scanlan

Today, there are more hungry people in the world than ten years ago. The immediate thought would be that people are hungry because there isn't enough food to go around. This article argues that hunger is more a result of lack of accessibility rather than lack of availability. Organizations like the Food and Agriculture Organization and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have solutions aimed towards fixing scarcity. However, food production is at an all time high and globally there is a surplus of food. Famines and food shortages are on local scales.

Poverty is one of the larger factors leading to hunger, for obvious reasons. Other factors include demographics like gender and race. Ethnic discrimination in some countries leads pushes people towards lower income jobs and living in less productive regions. Gender restrictions keep women from being educated in many countries, and this prevents them from having an equal chance of earning enough to afford an adequate amount of food.

Hunger remains persistent in areas because some of the assistance has encountered obstacles. Emergency food delivery can be redirected by corrupt groups who bribe inspectors and officials to claim the food was properly delivered.

The best way to fight hunger is to treat it as a byproduct of underlying causes such as social inequality and organization faults. Only by working to resolve conflict from these other problems can hunger ever be reduced.

Hunger may be a byproduct of problems like inequality, organizational flaws, and social conflict, but it still seems like people will always be labeled as 'hungry'. Personally, I think hearing that someone is going hungry draws more sympathy than someone who is treated unjust socially or doesn't have an equal opportunity for education. Do you think people are given more aid for their hunger than other problems leading to hunger because it is more of a concern or because it is easier to do? When you hear that someone is hungry, its natural to think that they are in poverty. But when you hear someone is in poverty, do you naturally think that they are hungry?