Food Scarcity

Food Scarcity

See also food production and consumption. See also Third World Development (and its associated topics). Genetically Modified Organisms. For labor issues, see Labor page.

More than 862 million people in the world go hungry.

In developing countries nearly 16 million children die every year from preventable and treatable causes. Sixty percent of these deaths are from hunger and malnutrition.

In the United States, 11.7 million children live in households where people have to skip meals or eat less to make ends meet. That means one in ten households in the U.S. are living with hunger or are at risk of hunger.

Articles/Reports

Is Walmart the Answer to "Food Deserts"? 1/12.

Preparing for drought in Sahel, Africa 3/12

Video

TEDtalk video by Josette Sheeran, the head of the UN's World Food Program, who talks about why, in a world with enough food for everyone, people still go hungry, still die of starvation, still use food as a weapon of war.

Louise Fresco shows us why we should celebrate mass-produced, supermarket-style white bread. She says environmentally sound mass production will feed the world, yet leave a role for small bakeries and traditional methods. TEDtalk video.

Food Stamped2010 documentary in which a couple with kids live on a food stamp budget for a week.

Food Fight! The Battle to Bring Healthy Food to the State's Poorest. Nov 4 2011 Commonwealth Club panel.

The Authors@Google program welcomed the Wall St Journal's Scott Kilman and Roger Thurow to Google's New York office to discuss their book, "Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty" Link.

Books

Thomas Keneally, author of Three Famines: Starvation and Politics, about the modern history of famines. author interview 10/11

In his new book, World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, Earth Policy Institute's Lester Brown looks at the state of the world's resources ( a "food bubble"), warning that the outlook does not look good when it comes to feeding the world's population.

Global food crisis studied by Raj Patelin Stuffed and Starved video interview and discussed in videos. Colbert Report. See also Extensive talk (video) based on book. He works with Food First. 2010 Panel with Anna Lappe (video) His newer book The Value of Nothing also has extensive info on food. Video talk for example, the real cost of a hamburger.

Review of book The End of Food

A historical view can be found in Late Victorian Holocausts (searchable) By Mike Davis, see also his modern take City of Slums.

Websites

Hunger in California

Ironically/tragically, today in US kids of migrant laborers are going hungry (audio). (December 10, 2009) Nearly a million migrant children crisscross the U.S. with their families, from harvest to harvest and from job to job. In North Carolina, migrant families struggle to find work, and many rely on schools for food and clothing. The people who run the state's migrant program say living conditions and financial hardships for laborers are the worst in memory.

More info from Bread for the World.org

A Seat at the Table is a game/simulation from Oxfam.

We can feed 10 billion, but we have to change. 10/11

Maps

A tool that maps and grades "food deserts" to lure supermarkets. USDA version.

US organic farms

Food Insecurity (hunger) in US by state/county.