How to Feed a Growing Population

2765 words 12 pages
How to Provide Food for A Growing Population
According to the United Nations Secretary-General, 17,000 kids are dying everyday due to hunger. However, the world today has more people who are overweight than people who are undernourished (Popkin, 2007). This shows the imbalance in our distribution of food and resources, as well as a system that promotes injustice in scarcity. Scarcity is an economic problem that arises because people have unlimited wants that never seems to end, but we have limited resources to begin with. Furthermore, the World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life” (WHO, 2011). The
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The underlying disparities show that addressing institutional and political obstacles is vital in the work of providing food for a growing population.
Besides improving productivity by introducing production methods that will last in the long-term, interventions in policies will also help us in dealing with the increase of food demand. As discussed earlier, poor farmers may be left behind in a system that promotes injustice. According to Leahy (2006), the current food production system is profit oriented and is not concerned about hundreds of millions of people being left unfed. Thus, interventions in policies, which aim at improving economic access and social access to food of people who are left behind, need to be established. Economic access to food means that people can afford to obtain healthy meals. Improving economic access to food will help in feeding the growing population because research has shown that food intake responds positively to income growth (Bouis and Haddad, 1992). An increase in household income will also mean that people have more access to food that are necessary for physical growth, ensuring food security. Furthermore, social access to food is one of the key elements in interventions of institutional policies. This is because the lack of secure land rights and social involvement of small-scale farmers can be a problem for many poor

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