Dear Editor,
Governments of the world and other related bodies need to take heed of the warning of worsening global hunger that 925 million people face. Food prices could double in the next 20 years and demand will soar as the world struggles to raise output via a failing system.
All the signs are that the number of people going hungry is going up. Hunger is increasing due to rising food price inflation and oil price hikes fuelled speculators, scrambles for land and water, and creeping climate change. Food prices are forecast to increase by something in the range of 70 to 90 per cent in real terms by 2030 before taking into account the effects of climate change, which would roughly double price rises again.
With its usual acts of inefficiency the UN has come out claiming that such reports of hunger are not always accurate; this in turn leads to governments being given the signal to put world hunger on the shelf. Today, nearly one billion people are living in hunger, not because of scarcity of production or a shortage of food on shelves in the global marketplace, but because they lack the most basic purchasing power needed to acquire it.
Currently, 35 to 40 per cent of harvests are lost due to inadequate transportation and storage facilities, while a further 35 to 40 per cent goes to the wealthy. Fighting poverty is the key to relieving hunger. The shortcomings of the food system flows from failures of government to regulate and to invest, which meant that governments, companies, interest groups and elites have been able to plunder resources; leaving nearly one billion people to go hungry in a world of plenty.
Is mise,
Michael Rooney
65 McHale Road
Castlebar
Mayo
