New Horizons |
Poverty and hunger share a tragic intertwined relationship, where each condition can both cause and perpetuate the other. Widespread poverty results in chronic and persistent hunger. The physical expression of continuing the enacted tragedy is the condition of undernutrition which manifests itself among large sections of the poor, particularly women and children. This condition of undernutrition reduces working capacity and productivity among adults and enhances mortality and morbidity amongst children. Such reduced productivity translates into reduced earning capacity, leading to further poverty; the vicious cycle goes on.
Poverty and hunger have dogged mankind throughout its existence on earth. The 20th century witnessed the largest numbers of deaths owing to hunger, more than the numbers killed by the wars waged in the century. If we take into account the hidden hunger (malnutrition), victims of the hunger will be much more than the actual deaths it caused. The cruel irony is that despite the impressive increase in food production in the last 50 years, the world grapples with the chronic problem of undernutrition and hunger. Theoretically there is enough food to feed everybody, but the world’s “margin of safety” has declined substantially. The J-shaped curve of the early rapid growth of agriculture worldwide slows down, reaches its limit, and levels off becoming an S-shaped curve.
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According to the UN World Food Programme (WFP) the impending global food crisis is being driven by intensifying conflicts, economic volatility, climate change, and reduced humanitarian funding. Thomas Robert Malthus famously observed in his “An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) that “the power of population is infinitely greater than the power of the Earth to produce subsistence for man.” Old -fashioned Malthusianism is very much out of fashion. But ecological neo-Malthusianism sees population growth in conjunction with the progressive degradation of food-producing environmental resources as the cause of the impending food crisis. The current global population is approximately 8.2 billion as of mid-2025. It is estimated to reach about 9.7 billion by 2050, before peaking at around 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s. Hunger has already surged worldwide.
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Moreover, those who get to eat are not eating healthy food. As a result, there is now high prevalence of malnutrition, particularly undernourishment. Nearly every 10th person in the world does not have proper nourishment, as per the UN’s “State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World” report. As to the availability of land, the increase of population indicates that the area of land that provided enough food to feed 27 people in 2010 will need to support 43 people in 2050. On the other hand, owing to the incessant increased........