The one thing I'd fix? That’s simple, for me. I’d help people gain a better understanding of global hunger.
Notice I didn’t say solve global hunger. Obviously, that’s the ultimate goal. But I think the precondition is understanding. If we could create that, we’d get a lot further toward solving the hunger itself.
You might object: Don’t people already know about global hunger? Don’t they know there are millions of people whose lives are diminished or even devastated by hunger in places like Africa and Asia?
My answer is yes and no.
Yes, in the sense that most of us are at least vaguely aware of the statistics. But how many have any real understanding of the problem?
I know that until I’d traveled in the developing world, I had never seen a seriously malnourished person, unless it was someone suffering from a severe illness. I know I’d never seen a person die from a virus or an infection that any well-nourished person would fight off without even noticing. I know I’d never heard a hungry child cry herself to sleep or seen – except in a photo — a boy with the distended belly of malnourishment.
So hunger isn’t real and immediate to us. It’s a hazy abstraction. Yet hunger afflicts somewhere between 800 million and 1 billion people on the planet — almost one out of seven. And over the next 35 years, the global population will swell by about 2 billion more — with almost all of that growth taking place in the places where hunger already exists today.
We even have hunger here in the United States. The scale of the problem is mind-boggling. Yet how many of us really grasp that either?
Hunger, unfortunately, is not cinematic. It doesn’t hurtle out of the air in a terrifying plunge or explode in a fireball (airplane crashes now usually account for less than 1,000 deaths per year). It doesn’t involve an attack by a frightening beast like a shark (less than a dozen deaths worldwide per year) or direct violence of any kind. It’s mostly silent and invisible: a series of pangs, an ache, spread across about a billion stomachs.
It’s easily misunderstood too. Some people think it’s inevitable: “The poor have always been with us.” In the developed world, we’ve come to be fatalistic about hunger in the developing world.
That fatalism is misplaced. In the late 1960s, a respected population biologist, Paul Ehrlich, famously predicted the imminent starvation of hundreds of millions of people on the Indian subcontinent. But thanks in great measure to Dr. Norman Borlaug, the Green Revolution averted that catastrophe.
In fact, today, hundreds of millions of people in China and India and other Asian and Latin American countries have emerged into the middle class in the last decades, and even more will do so over the next 35 years. They now have money to buy good food. And according to a recent McKinsey report, Africa already has more middle-class consumers than India, which has a larger population.
Very few things in this world are inevitable; we only think they are. We can conquer the hunger problem and achieve global food security. We already have many of the tools and an understanding of what’s needed:
- Increased farmer yields through the use of advanced breeding, biotechnology and methods of precision farming that can boost crops’ productivity, in part by increasing their resilience to diseases and a changing climate.
- Dramatic reductions in crop loss and food waste through improved methods for harvest, transportation and storage.
- Adoption of better balanced diets that include more fresh fruits and vegetables
But for all this to happen, our leaders and above all the public itself must care – deeply and viscerally. And the precondition for that is understanding.
That’s what I’d fix.
My favorite quote from this article is: "Very few things in this world are inevitable; we only think they are". The truth is, people believe that if they help a cause, they have done the greatest good of humanity, whether or not they understand what they are actually doing. Research is key to understanding anything that has to do with understanding certain causes. It isn't only in the organization that you have to understand, but it is also everything that surrounds the organization. Take for example trafficking. There are two major types of trafficking: drug trafficking and human trafficking. Both are extremely serious, but it is important to know the difference between them before you say "I am against trafficking" (of course it's good if you're against both, but you have to make sure you know what you're going against).
It's also true in the sense that until some of of us witness things like hunger or poverty, we won't realize how bad things are. The media, unfortunately, does not hype up enough about some of these problems, so we never take notice to them. However, taking an interest in some of these issues can lead to significant changes. My friend Gabriel and I are creating an organization which will allow us to donate clothing to children and adults in South Africa. We chose South Africa because Gabriel has volunteered there for the past 2 summers and knows organizations who would love to help us. In the future, once our organization takes off (hopefully), we want to spread out further to places like India, Indonesia, the Middle East, and many more places. Although this process will take some time, I am committed to making an impact.
So take an interest in a cause, don't just donate money. Volunteer at an organization or start something up at your university. It doesn't matter if it is big or small, you are making an impact, you are spreading the word. When you make something important, everyone else will follow.
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