Comment

Comment by Katrine Hoff on August 14, 2011 at 12:29pm

LEARN 2
I Live in Cophagen in Denmark. In Denmark we believe that hunger reduction efforts must be firmly rooted in national poverty reduction strategies, and addressed as part of a broader approach towards sustainable development in order to be effective.
Huger is not a huge problem in Denmark but it truly is in other contries in the world - I fould this map that shows the world hunger problem by showing the prevalence of undernourishment in each country. Prevalence of undernourishment is measured by the share of a country's total population that is undernourished. The higher the prevalence, the more widespread the problem. To help analyse and monitor progress, five prevalence categroies have been established and are shown to the right of this text.

Comment by Lucas Chabot on June 10, 2011 at 3:42am

I live in Hamilton, Ontario Canada. Homelessness is among many social issues that our city, let alone province faces as we are one of the most poverty ridden cities in southern Ontario. Aside from homelessness, many families are on welfare, and LICO just to support their families. Due to social, environmental, economic and other factors, our food system is changing. Globally, food is becoming more expensive. The food riots around the world in response to the severe price spikes nearly three years ago were an international wake-up call: many of us could clearly see the link between rising oil prices and the surprising weakness of our food supply. Not all aspects of our current food system are the result of political decisions at the international, federal, or provincial levels. An upcoming conference called “Hammering Out a Food Policy for Hamilton: Preparing the Ground” will explore issues of food security and the role that Hamiltonians need to play in developing city-wide food policy that supports a better, more reasonable, and sustainable food system for everyone. The conference will also feature a couple of short films, community information tables, afternoon workshops, and a locally sourced meal. Growing rates of obesity, diet-related diseases such as Type 2 diabetes and increasing numbers of citizens relying on our food banks suggest that not all is well. There are environmental factors to be considered too… not just “food miles” – issues such as waste reduction and disposal are emerging. The fundamental ways that we grow, store, package, process and ship our food need to be scrutinized at the local level to develop positive solutions to these growing problems. A move to re-localize certain aspects of our food system seems prudent. Fossil fuels are the driving force behind our existing globalized food system,” explains Karen Burson, Project Manager for Hamilton Eat Local, a project Environment Hamilton.

Comment by Lauren Freeman on June 1, 2011 at 4:02am

I live in Alameda CA which is a hop, skip and a jump from Oakland CA. In just driving to the freeway from Alameda I always see homeless people asking for money or begging for the purchase of something to eat. When I see homeless people it rips me apart inside and makes me so sad but it also makes me extremely grateful for the lifestyle that I have been given by my parents and how lucky I am to have a home and food. I try and do my part my giving a couple dollars to a homeless person when I see them or give them food. San Francisco is very close to Alameda as well and there are large amounts of homeless people on the streets. It is very sad to see these people in the condition they are in. Our society has so many restaurants and in thinking about how much food they waste a night is heart wrenching to me, the leftovers from buffets or restaurants should go to people in need and not the trash.

Comment by Karoline Schnorr on May 16, 2011 at 1:09pm

LEARN2
Denmark believes that hunger reduction efforts must be firmly rooted in national poverty reduction strategies, and addressed as part of a broader approach towards sustainable development in order to be effective.

Much is said about the need to increase food production in order to ensure food security. However, millions suffer from hunger and malnutrition in spite of the fact that global food production is big enough to feed everybody. Increased food production is one aspect of ensuring food security, but it will make no difference if we do not ensure that the food reaches the poor and hungry

Comment by Kristina Corbett on May 12, 2011 at 11:46pm

Is this what it really has come too....

My hometown is Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. When people think of Canada they think a land of opportunity and wealthiness. It's sad to say but even in Hamilton which has a huge population and is a pretty big city there are families who are homeless with no food or shelter, kids out on the streets, fathers jobless. It's a sad reality to face. There are 399 women, men, and children in emergency shelters every night, 2,436 women and children stayed in a Violence Against Women shelter during 2004/2005, Emergency shelter usage has more than doubled since 1995. So if people are homeless they are definitely hungry. How much do they eat in a day? Or even a week? Thank god for the food banks and hot meal programs we have all throughout the city. I know the statistics are outdated but they have been growing In March 2005, over 55,000 hot meals were served at meal programs. All we can do is donate to the food shelters, help in our churches, and help those close to us who are in need. It's sad to see but it's reality.

Comment by Lila Bear on May 9, 2011 at 10:38pm

In my hometown of El Sobrante, there is a homeless community that has no real secure food security and they roam the streets looking for a reliable food source. All along the main street in our town there are several restaurants. Having worked in the service industry I know that restaurants throw out lots of food every day and I believe that if these restaurants decide to give food that is going to be thrown out in a few days to the homeless or let the local churches distribute the food that is still good enough to eat for that week. Food that is just before the expiration date is still good and the churches can distribute this food to those in need. These restaurants can advertise that they help support the homeless community and it would bring in more business so it is a win-win situation.

Comment by Lauren Predmore on May 3, 2011 at 6:30pm

I am shocked to learn about how many homes are affected by hunger in are very own neighborhoods. Living in the United States, you would think most of us are blessed with not having to worry about lack of food and malnutrition. I would have thought with the obesity rates growing and growing in our country, lack of food intake would not be an issue. Seems to me that the happy medium of healthy people are slowly disappearing and the percentage of obese people and underweight, hunger affected people are becoming the norm. Although most of these malnutrition issues are in third world countries, its amazing how often it happens in our very own country. Some of these people are not able to afford the nutritious foods that they need, so they resort in feeding their families McDonalds and other nutrient lacking foods. To help solve this issue, when considering donating foods to the Community Food Banks, we need to make sure we are donating the RIGHT foods as well. We can also help fight this issue by providing more food education in our society. So many people have no idea how much of certain foods they should be intaking. If people were able to eat more dense, nutritional foods that were more beneficial to their bodies, we would be off to a great start.

Comment by Isidor Cardenas on April 22, 2011 at 10:51am

LEARN2 - You can view my complete blog post here. In summary, in the Philippines Rice Breeding and Nutrition Management of Crops via SMS is being utilized. Another on-going project is the C4 Rice Project which is trying to develop faster photosynthesis of rice crops

Comment by Saira on April 20, 2011 at 10:43pm

1 in 6 residents are affected by hunger in the Alameda County. 43% are children and teens.

The Alameda County Community Food Bank has a mission that states "To alleviate hunger by providing nutritious education to people in need, educating the public and promoting public policies that addresses hunger and it's root causes.

Bay Area Food Banks
Feeding America
Bread for the World
California Association of Food Banks.

Comment by Sophia Smith-Grunder on April 18, 2011 at 4:08pm

A huge problem all over the world, including the United States, is food security. Not only are people dying everyday from malnutrition, but citizens in our own communities are struggling to put food on their tables. There are many things we can do to help. Simply going through the pantry and finding canned food to donate is helping someone tremendously. Volunteering to help make sandwiches for the homeless will make a person’s day unbelievably less stressful, and definitely more healthy. Having to worry about where the next meal is coming from is something no being should experience, and by doing very simple things to help, they shouldn’t have to.

Comment by Carol Mendenall on April 10, 2011 at 7:01am

For starters... more families (that have access to large quantities of meat) need to do at least one meal a week without it.... then grow to two+.

Also, meat per meal is WAY too high! Most men should have 6 ounces of meat or less, but have more, 2 to 3 times more. Women, 2-3 ounces!

Meat, the right meat can be so beneficial but the body can only absorb so much. We consume meat and bread in much larger quantities then vegetables. This is a fatal mistake.

Besides meat consumption being way to high to be healthy, overall consumption is mostly from over processed foods that contain little value and cause weight gain. People eat in sporadic intervals and then eat mostly empty calories. Dead foods instead of 'live' ones.

Food education through media and schools is the fastest way to solve this but teachers are inundated with testing. Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution is a great start. Harvest Foods program from a few years ago put fresh vegetables into the hands of elementary school children. It came with curriculum and a poster too. School gardens are great too. Ours is a lot of fun and educational.

Comment by Bjoern Roehr on April 7, 2011 at 7:31pm

The first link isn't functioning anymore. Here is the (still) running map: Interactive hunger map.

My father was a farmer himself (now retired) and shared some interesting insights about the northern agriculture in Germany in the last 30 years with me.

First of all: The green revolution (= increasing productivity with modern knowledge, genetic engineering, fertilizer and so on) is the basic for affordable, secure food production. Without it, the increasing demands of the rising world population can't be satisfied. Therefore, ecological, mainly natural food production is a luxury that we (western world) can afford for ourself, but the rest of the world not.

Second: The meat production requires far too much food for raising animals.
For 1 meal consisted of beef, you could serve 30 meals with soy as main ingredient. Source.

And thats just one bad thing, more co2 production and other damages to the environment (and our own health) are directly related do meat production and consumption. Environmental vegetarism.

Therefore: A vegetarian diet is absolutely essential for sustainable agriculture.

What follows is: We need a culture in favor of vegetarians and vegans, we need to reward those who care about healthy food and embrace food related technology usage. We can do much with the technology we already possess, but we need the politics who will provide the the necessary rules and laws for this. (A tax for unhealthy food or less insurance charges for vegetarians for example).

My own little contribution: I am a vegetarian by myself (don't believe the haters, its very easy) and telling my social surroundings how healthy, tasteful and social it is to be one.

Comment by Pia on April 4, 2011 at 5:14pm

One of the increasing problems in the world is the watershortage. Companys like Coca Cola came under criticisme more than once. Organisations like the catholic youth demonstrate against those.
http://www.weihnachtsmannfreie-zone.de/index.php?id=773
Here is a summarization of the main topics of Coca Cola and water:
http://www.weltladen-rottweil.de/seiten/info/wasser/text.pdf
I think Companies like Coca Cola should take on global responsability for global problems.

Comment by Hannes Wiedermann on April 4, 2011 at 4:46pm

I think a big problem is the usage of useful plants to create fuel.
here some links from germany/Braunschweig who describe the problem.
http://www2.braunschweig.de/sdw/tgdw/070210biodiesel.html
http://www.regenwald.org/mailalert/677/e10-und-sogenannten-biodiese...
But after the adebtion of a new kind of fuel the protest starts to grow.
First the people think its destroys there cars. But in second place a large number of people can`t understand why they have to drive with some kind of food in there cars.
So its sound hard for cardrivers but I think the cost for fuel will rise but we can`t use food for fuel and I hope a lot of other peoples will think so too.

Comment by Pepin Lachance on May 13, 2010 at 6:22pm

It is kinda odd to me to read about this. A few years ago I ran into a situation where we had a rather sizable house. Myself and a few friends were working at burger king at the time. We were each putting in around 80 hrs a week on average. So for a while we were relativly well off. Then of cource we started acc**ilating room mates. At the time I was young idealistic and gulable. Each person would swear up and down that they would provide something to the house. Of cource people will say anything to get out of the cold and the rain.

For a while we were doing pretty good as a house hold. Then things started to fall apart. One person would loose a job. Another person would decide they no longer felt like cleaning. It got to the point where we were out of food. For the first few days it didn't realy hit us that hard.

Then after a while people started to come apart at the seems. Tempers flaired. I can remember very distinctly one particular instance where a particularly sociopathic individual ended up beating someone senceless for burning the last of our roman noodles. My fiance at the time and I huddled in our pitch black room as this happened this memory has etched itself into my mind so that I doubt I will ever forget the soft thumps of bone on flesh.

What this memory has left me with is almost a sence of awe that their isn't even more violence where starvation is on such a scale that few here can imagine. What I experianced that week has left no doubt in my mind that if you take away the bare necesitys from most people the mask of civilization slowly crumbles. I will never forget the person who helped us at the end of the week. We were just about a dollar shy of buying a sack of potatos. This arabic corner store owner who will always have my gratitude for his generosity simply gave us the potatos. At the time none of us had any idea where any sort of a food pantry was so this was truely our salvation from that dark time.

Comment by Kristen James on May 13, 2010 at 7:42am

Third World Countries are not the only places from the inability to feed themselves and their families. In the much less fortunate cities in America, the rise in the use of government assistance such as food stamps and WIC has risen dramatically. Food banks today cannot even begin to supply all of the hungry people in America because we simply do not have all the resources available. I think that giving to food banks and charities etc during the holidays is a great way to support and help out the community, but the problem is that we need to be doing this year round. We as a community need to come together and help out fellow Americans in the fight against hunger.

Comment by Devin Grigg on May 12, 2010 at 4:52pm

I think when people think of food shortages they go straight to Africa or other third world countries. There are plenty of food shortages right here in the inner cities of the United States. Living close to Oakland, I know that there are lines out the door at food banks and the best way to help these people is to give the food banks as much as they need, or even more than they need.

Comment by Thabiso on May 11, 2010 at 7:18am

its more of an infrastructure and skills problem... more especially in South African farm lands, where you have people starving whilst they are sitting on fertile land, they starve because they cannot farm crops because they do not have access to water (infrastructure) and lack the necessary skills to grow sustainable vegetable and food farms to feed their famalies and community... those are the issues that need to be addressed.

Comment by Robert Crocker on May 10, 2010 at 6:04am

the problem is long term in certain places. Sure donating food to the African poor people will help, but the problems will only come back to haunt them. Gotta find a solution.

Comment by John Park on May 7, 2010 at 8:26pm

I see a lot of homeless people not being able to afford food to live off of everyday, there are restaurants and some bakeries that donate food that gets unsold everyday.

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