Last Friday, professor of Anthropology Ellen Messer spoke about Food and Security: Crisis, Challenges, and Choices. She addressed hunger, defined as access to nutritionally adequate food. Although enough food is produced worldwide to feed everyone a nutritionally adequate diet, there are the problems of access, unhealthy food choices, and underdeveloped community food organizations.
Photo source: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/356.cho/children_in_poverty_worldwide
One problem decreasing access to wholesome foods is high prices. High prices can result from decreased production (due to weather, politics, and warfare), increased demands for commodity crops and biofuels, a decreasing economy, and more. Because farmers see so little returns for their crops, many end up growing a combination of cash and specialty crops in order to have enough food to eat, while still making enough money to survive.More than half of the hungry live in 7 countries: Bangladesh, China, DRC, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan.
There are controversial solutions to these problems, including biotechnologies vs. agroecological/organic technologies, large-scale vs. small-scale farming, and free vs. fair trade.
What the individual can do: You can become more a more informed consumer: suggested reads included What to Eat by Marion Nestle and Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé. Several international organizations involved with sustainable food systems worthy to look up are Oxfam International, Care, and Global Exchange.
The next lecture in the gastronomy series: Henry Ford, Colonial Kitchens, and the Performance of National Identity by Abigail Carroll on March 27!
And if you haven't checked out the Culinary Historians of Boston yet- they have a monthly speaker series always open to the public!
2 comments:
The hunger crisis is a big issue. I didn't know that 7 countries account for the majority of people in hunger. Its actually the United Nations number one Millennium Development Goal, to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
Annabelle, your blog site is very well constructed with lots of blogs. Its nice to see your interest and passion for food and nutrition come out in such a fun and creative way. Keep it up~!!
thanks, Sonja! and i completely forgot to mention the UN's development goals! here's some more info.:
The target of the UN's #1 Millenium Development Goal was to halve the proportion of hungry people/people whose income was less than $1 a day between 1990 and 2015. The trend so far has been in the right direction, but they still have a long way to go. The % of hungry people have gone down, but the # of hungry people have gone up. Here are some #s:
# people hungry
(2006-2008, FAO): 923 million
(2002-2005, FAO): 832 million
% people hungry
(2006-2008): 17%
(1990-1992): 20%
for more info, look here: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
Thanks again for visiting! :)
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