forever hungry

One tenth of the US population goes to bed hungry. For the richest and most powerful country in the world, these are shocking numbers. Yet the issue fails to resonate with voters. Attempts to make poverty a campaign issue in the upcoming election failed miserably. According to pollsters, poverty does not even rank in the top 10 of voter concerns. Experience has shown that trying to rally support for any cause that is not in the top three is a losing proposition. Poverty failed as an issue even in areas where it was blatantly obvious as in states suffering in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.

World wide the figures are much worse of course. Anywhere between a quarter and a third of the population may be hungry or malnourished according to the World Health Organization. Attempts to reduce world hunger by one half have failed over and over again. The issue was raised once again at the World Economic Forum in Davos, but we doubt it will make any difference. It never has before. Hunger is down somewhat from its all time high, but the reductions are minimal to say the least. In essence world hunger is an issue that is here to stay.

Somewhat ironically the world has enough food to feed its current population an oversized meal three times a day. Estimates are that we produce enough food to give everyone on the planet in excess of 2,700 calories per day. That is more than the recommended daily intake for adults, which is set at 2,000 calories for women and 2,500 calories for men. In essence, the world produces enough food to make everyone moderately overweight.

Various explanations are given as to why hunger persists. Usually these are linked to distribution. It has been argued that getting the food to the poor is nearly impossible because of bad infrastructure, conflicts, wars, natural disasters, political matters, and so on. At first glance these arguments look very plausible and they make sense to a lot of people. Most of know or think we know how dangerous it is to travel in Africa, Latin America, or SouthEast Asia. Blood thirsty dictators, drug dealers, rogue governments, terrorists, guerrilla fighters, and the like are everywhere waiting to kill us. Every night America gets its daily dose of terror-scare on the evening news.

All these arguments make a great deal of sense until one wonders how the weapons get to all these evil doers. Nearly all weapons are manufactured in the industrialized world and need to be shipped to the same conflict areas. Yet weapons dealers do not suffer from the same problems that make food distribution so difficult. Granted, maybe weapons don't spoil as easily, but to offset that they often cannot be shipped in the open like food can. It seems weapons always find a way.

The distribution argument also fails miserably at home. Surely there is no impediment to reach the 10% of Americans that go to bed hungry every night. America has excellent infrastructure and there are no wars, regional conflict, or other problems in distribution here. America's poor are easily accessible. Yet their numbers are growing year over year.

It is not distribution or other logistics that is keeping food away from the hungry. It is willful intervention by other humans. Sometimes humans purposefully want to inflict damage to others. They want to engineer what is called "genocide." Other times they want to grab whatever they can grab for themselves and leave others out. Often they just want to "get ahead." Now that major predators are out, humans are in competition with other humans for resources. And food is a key resource. It is also a source of wealth. Just ask the agricultural corporations that dominate American food production.

Increased food production quickly leads to more humans, as was evident in the last century when the green revolution occurred. More humans beget even more humans. It happens surprisingly quickly too. And it keeps going until resources run out. The scenario has been played many times over, in boom and bust cycles of increasing magnitude. We are about to witness it happening on a planetary scale. It will be a first, but unfortunately it could also be the last -for everyone that is.