A crash course in changing the world.
Austria and food insecurity - Do we even now what that means?
Inspired by Mission 2 I did some research on food (in)security in Austria.
As Austria is one of the richest countries in the EU I was quite shure that the number of people suffering from undernourishment might not be very high. The statistics I found proofed this to be quite right.
Regarding to FAO Statistical Yearbook 2007/08 the number of undernourished people in Austria is lower than 5%.
Another interesting fact I found out is that while about 13% of Austria's population run a high risk of poverty (less than 785 € per month=26 € a day=38.636$ a day) there are more than 75% Indians, Nigerian, and so on living on less than 2$ a day (= a little more than 1€ a day).
So there's a question: What's poverty? In Austria it seems that poverty starts where the participation in a "normal" social way of life is limited but hunger does not necessarily have to be a part of poverty. In many other parts of the world, I think, a poor Austrian would be regarded as rich.
So here's the challenge I think: In many parts of Europe this situation might be the same as it is in Austria and people (including myself) just can't magine how it is to not have any food or save water at all!
At the moment for me it's important to raise awareness in my familiy and my circle of friends that each and everyone of us is able to and responsible for making our world a better place and contributing our share to social justice.
Link:
http://www.welthaus.at/layout/pics/verkehrte_weltkarteA0.pdf?SID=d1...
As Austria is one of the richest countries in the EU I was quite shure that the number of people suffering from undernourishment might not be very high. The statistics I found proofed this to be quite right.
Regarding to FAO Statistical Yearbook 2007/08 the number of undernourished people in Austria is lower than 5%.
Another interesting fact I found out is that while about 13% of Austria's population run a high risk of poverty (less than 785 € per month=26 € a day=38.636$ a day) there are more than 75% Indians, Nigerian, and so on living on less than 2$ a day (= a little more than 1€ a day).
So there's a question: What's poverty? In Austria it seems that poverty starts where the participation in a "normal" social way of life is limited but hunger does not necessarily have to be a part of poverty. In many other parts of the world, I think, a poor Austrian would be regarded as rich.
So here's the challenge I think: In many parts of Europe this situation might be the same as it is in Austria and people (including myself) just can't magine how it is to not have any food or save water at all!
At the moment for me it's important to raise awareness in my familiy and my circle of friends that each and everyone of us is able to and responsible for making our world a better place and contributing our share to social justice.
Link:
http://www.welthaus.at/layout/pics/verkehrte_weltkarteA0.pdf?SID=d1...
Views: 35
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Comment by Elastika on March 18, 2010 at 11:12am -
I think Austria is a good model how local food production is supported. I think Austria have a really good farmers policy and most of all you understand the importance of organic farming. In Slovenia almost all organic brands we have are Austrian.
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Comment by Eevi Korhonen on March 18, 2010 at 11:15am -
At the moment Europe is doing pretty well foodwise, but if you drop imported food out of the equation, things change drastically. Many countries can no longer feed their own country, if the imported food was to end. There are grain reserves and such, but they are only emergency measures.
I understand Austria is a very mountaneous region, but would there be enough arable land to feed all? Imagine if there was no food coming from other countries. Imagine how Austria could increase its food independence.
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Comment by Kevin Blank on March 19, 2010 at 8:00pm -
It seems we got the same idea, while searching for informations on possible food (in)security in austria I stumbled onto this piece.
You say here that the threshold for poverty in austria is pretty high, which may be true, but you also have to think about the different living costs. In Niger it may be possible to get something at 1€/day, but in our capitalistic society think what you can even get at 1€ ? Barely enough to live i would say.
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Comment by RD on March 21, 2010 at 8:23am -
I'm just so glad that your observations have in way been helpful to communicate to everyone the subjective reality of poverty based on who we are and where we are born....it is extremely difficult for most people to go beyond this subjective reality and therefore we are increasingly noticing a pattern where all the resources and the goodwill to solve crisis like hunger failing because we simply do not understand the context within the ambit of our own surroundings. Definitely +1 for Local Insight
If you can spare some moment to take a look at what my hero Sanjit 'Bunker' Roy of Barefoot College has been telling everyone all this while, it might be another occasion to reaffirm what you've observed and narrated here.
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Comment by Ken Eklund on April 22, 2010 at 7:09am
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In many ways it strikes me as odd to equate money with food, because seeds are essentially free, and seeds are essentially food. Why does that simple equation get so complicated?
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Comment by RD on April 22, 2010 at 10:04pm
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Over-simplification is a virtue that politicians always use in developing countries to win "hearts" of their vote banks. It is a human trait to connect with communication that oversimplifies things for us. I call it 'interpretation bias'. This tendency to oversimplify things can be dangerous since it deviates everyone to make an effort to indulge in deep thinking. Whether any such over-simplification is deliberate or simply out of ignorance is unknown. I must reiterate that Tanja has raised a very important question about "subjective reality" and how definition of poverty is influenced by that. Any attempt to oversimplify such a profound observation without any attempt to nurture basic economic fundamentals by anybody is really unfortunate. The original post by my friend and fellow agent Tanja is narrated with remarkable simplicity (but not oversimplified).
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