Hunger exists even in wealthy countries

Action for Children, a non-profit community action organization in North Carolina,observes,

"Did you know? 1-in-7 children in North Carolina lives in a household that is forced to reduce food intake, alter normal eating patterns, or go hungry because they lack the money or resources to obtain adequate food."

I was probably already more aware of this than many simply because of the nature of my job. I am an eligibility specialist who works in the Food and Nutrition Services program in Charlotte. Basically, I determine whether or not families are eligible to receive Food Stamps. During a given month, I might process 200-250 new cases and approve benefits for another 500-1000 people.

The scope of the problem is not nearly as bad in a wealthy nation like the United States as it is in devastated regions of the world like Bangladesh or Sub-Sharan Africa, but it is particularly distressing that in a nation like the United States, where there is more than enough food for everyone, that the problem exists at all.

The easiest thing to do would be to blame the problem entirely on social inequity and rail against the system that allows children to starve in a nation that actually exports food. But I think that is probably too easy. Too simplistic. In a captalist society, there will always be stratums of wealth. That is simply the nature of capitalism. However, I think there should be a basic level of access to all of the necessities of life to everyone, regardless of their position in those stratums of wealth.

Our approach to the problem thus far have largely been constrained to either large social programs operated by state and federal government agencies such as DSS and/or acts of personal charity or participation in organizational charity. The basic problem with these approaches is that all of them essentially simply give the hungry food.

(And don't get me wrong... I am not saying it is wrong to give a hungry person food.)

What they ultimately fail to do is teach the hungry the method and manner in which they can feed themselves, which should always be the ultimate goal. Ironically, innovation in this problem might actually be easier to implement in a place like Bangladesh or Africa than in a place like North Carolina at this point in history.

If we were to teach innovative methods of agriculture to a society that is starving or teach it methods of refrigeration to store perishable food for longer periods, they would probably embrace those methods and employ themselves to implement them. Essentially, they would learn them and then they would do them.

In the U.S., those methods are largely already known, but our society functions in such a way that the vast majority are fed by the efforts of a very few. Valuation is placed on the results of their efforts and people in the lowest economic stratum go hungry because their economic reality is that they cannot meet the valuation. So the problem is different here than in places where food production is unstable and diminished.

The result of the problem is the same as diminished food production, but the approach to the issue must be different. It must encompass a way to achieve economic self-sufficiency rather than simply providing the capacity for the people to produce food. The society must change in such a way that it regards access to food as a basic right rather than solely as a commodity.

However, with people's livelihoods depending on society viewing food as a commodity, that will require a huge shift in societal perception.