Apprx. 25,000 people die of hunger throughout the world EACH DAY.

Reference( You-Tube) Chicken-a-la-carte- Great Video.

- Maybe it has something to do with people being concerned about themselves moreso than their communities?
– Or perhaps it could be that a large majority of people who know what it’s like to be really hungry are not in the position to be able to help?
– Or that we will stand up for individual rights moreso than saving the world from hunger? The last time I mentioned we should require Celebrities/Sports Members/People who make a certain amount of money to donate a percentage of their pay to a reliable charity I was chastised. Forget the people who are starving, let’s argue for the individuals rights to keep their insanely large paychecks to themselves.
– Or that many people who actually do help do so with ulterior motives? Such as people who go as part of their church and require people to participate in the church meeting before getting food. Or people who donate food just to get their face on TV. Both have happened.
– Or that we think when we feed people they have to convert to our belief systems?
– Or that we try and solve surface problems but not the root causes of the problem? Like bringing people food instead of finding ways to allow people to grow their own food.

BTW I hope this isn’t taken the wrong way. I would love to see this problem tackled. In fact I have personal issues with thinking people are going hungry because of not always having enough food myself as a child.

Because people are selfish and ignorant.

Seeing people suffer, especially children just rips me to the core.

Malthusian Catastrophe

I think some people are TRYING aren’t they? But don’t get me started on football players!!!!

In the international aspect, famine is a symptom, where the underlying causes are the real problems. Globally, we have more than enough to feed every mouth on the planet, and then some.

War, lack of infrastructure, education, political unrest, corruption, corporate greed, class and ethnic oppression are some of the major causes of the worlds problems that leads to famine.

We can’t donate away those problems, and we can’t feed people into democracy, while the underlying causes remain.

With that I don’t say that donating to help organizations is of no use. They do help, in many different ways. It’s just that, people will keep starving unless major changes are made. No help packages in the world can do that, just keep people alive for the moment.

Micro loans, education and changing systems takes time to take effect, and we will see people starve for years to come before that has changed. And it takes the combined effort of the international community, NGOs, and political consciousness to make a change.

Today this is self evident. But it is hard to get consensus about what to do. We even have trouble cooperating to help save the environment that sustains us,

laureth; Thank you for the Malthusian Catastophe Theory. Very interesting, but I think it applies to 18th century Europe. We throw away enough food in this country alone to feed all of the hungry that are dying on a daily basis.I believe we lack the desire, passion and motivation as a people to solve this problem. Maybe Mr. Obama will help us out.

Along the lines of what @oratio said, it is because the problem is far more complex than it might seem. The most glaring difficulty of which I am aware is that, even though wealthy nations may easily produce enough food to feed the rest of the world, to distribute this food freely would be to destroy the livelihoods of farmers in recipient areas; those farmers could continue to survive on handouts, but they would lose their capital. Since impoverished nations are generally dependent on agriculture, this would essentially reduce them to passive dependents, and would prevent them from building viable economies in the future. The people would be saved in the short run, but the structure of society would be devastated for generations to come. Far better, therefore, to help local farmers, with loans of capital, tools, animals, seed, equipment, etc., to be able to feed themselves and to produce a salable surplus, and to develop surrounding areas to allow them to better reach the people who need to buy their food. Those people must in turn be given jobs at fair wages so that they can afford that food, or in a pinch subsidies can be used to lower prices, which requires industrial development and the fostering of international fair trade.

All of this, however, is exceedingly difficult. In large part, this is due to the greed of corporations which have an interest in squashing that industrial development and free trade, and of banks that are unwilling to lend to small farmers on fair terms. But a very significant factor is that the poorest regions are often the most volatile. It is a vicious cycle; when people suffer, they seek immediate relief, and they can find that relief in crime: piracy, banditry, drug and arms trafficking….Naturally, these activities destabilize the region and make it almost impossible to create a self-sustaining economy; and so, the region gets poorer, and more people turn to crime. Humanitarian efforts must therefore wait for the slow grind of politics to forge stability from this mess, while the political efforts rely in turn on humanitarians to reduce the suffering that threatens stability; a constructive loop, if you will, that must try to wear down the destructive loop of suffering and instability. As you can see, this is a delicate and slow process, much complicated by ideologies, cultural differences and political blunders, no doubt on top of innumerable factors of which I am ignorant.

So that is why we have not ended world hunger. Give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, feed him for the rest of his life; but you have to make sure that his boat isn’t going to be commandeered by a paramilitary group, that the trawler downstream isn’t going to depopulate the reservoir, that the price of fish isn’t going to plummet to the point that he would rather buy someone else’s fish, sell his rod, and be unable to fish later…the world’s a complicated place, yo.

I wish I could give you more Lurve, Jayne.

We need education everywhere. Next comes birth control.