Getting Angry about World Hunger

Jeremy Irons makes a great appeal in this video for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (F.A.O.) campaign called 1billionhungry.

With the G8 and G20 meetings coming up in Huntsville, Ontario, the attending nations need to understand that there is outrage in their own nations that 1 billion people are hungry in this world.  And here is why:

• According to the U.N. F.A.O., there were approximately 923 million undernourished and starving people in the world in 2007
• this was an increase of over 80 million since 1992. 
• As of last fall, this number had jumped to over 1 billion or 15 percent of the worlds population. 
• One sixth of the world's population is malnourished and surviving on less than $1.25 (U.S.D.) a day. 
• It is estimated that the number of undernourished people in the world will reach 3 billion by 2050, assuming that contributing factors do not worsen

According to Oxfam International, this unprecedented crisis can be contributed to many factors which include:

• climbing food and oil prices
• the recent global economic crisis
• increased demand in India and China,
• climate change and the resulting crop failures
• the co-opting of crops for biofuel production
• the increasing dominance of large agriculture companies
• and gross mismanagement of agricultural and food policies.

Sadly, for many people in the west, there is very little empathy or concern for what they see as a far away problem.  Even the fact that there are far to many hungry children and families within their own borders is of no matter.  However, this is an issue that affects us all very deeply and could have some very serious effects as we move into the future.  For example, there has been a serious decline in global food reserves, down to only a 90 day supply of staples such as wheat, as well as unprecedented hoarding on a global scale.  When these factors are combined with the massive crop failures of late and the world wide financial crisis, there has been a flurry of price speculation which has resulted in a tripling in the cost of the world's basic foods such as rice, maize and wheat.

We need to get angry because one of the greatest obstacles to finding effective solutions and carrying them out is the general apathy of Western nations to the plight of those in countries so far away.  There is a sense among many that it is a problem affecting a far away land, unrelated and unconnected to our own.  We need to let our leaders, the multinationals, and the speculators know that enough is enough, we're not going to accept any more of their self-serving crap.  They need to known that we see right through their empty rhetoric and that we are not going to accept it any more.  Its time to take action against those who would benefit from the mass suffering of others. 


Click here to sign the U.N. F.A.O. petition to let your anger and your outrage be heard.

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