Lets talk about famine in a world full of food

I'd like to discuss the causes of famine and in each case if it is parched earth, or political or man made in nature,.

About 30 million people are experiencing alarming hunger, severe levels of food insecurity and malnutrition in north-eastern Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen.

10 million of them are facing emergency and famine conditions. Famine is already likely happening in parts of northern Nigeria, while Yemen and Somalia are on the brink. Thanks to aid efforts, it has been pushed back in South Sudan but the food crisis continues to spread across the country.

These are just four of the many countries that are facing high levels of food insecurity this year. In Malawi, Sudan, Afghanistan, DRC or Syria millions of people do not have enough food to feed their families. The situation in some of these countries could worsen if the international community do not address urgent needs and resolve the root causes.

What is famine?
Famine represents the most serious food insecurity situation in terms of both scale and severity.

It occurs when a substantial number of people are dying due to a lack of food or because of a combination of lack of food and disease. When more than 20% of households cannot eat, acute malnutrition exceeds 30% and death and starvation are evident we cannot talk about a humanitarian “emergency” situation anymore but a “famine”.

https://www.oxfam.org/en/famine-and...frica-crisis-crisis-yemen/hungry-world-plenty

 

Yemen: Finding near-famine - and lots of food
By Clive MyrieBBC News, Taiz, Yemen

• 19 November 2017
  
• From the sectionMiddle East

How do you explain a famine in a country where there's food?

A couple of years ago I was in Ethiopia, reporting on the threat of famine, in the same place where BBC correspondent Michael Buerk covered the "biblical" famine in 1985.

Those famines, or so-called "parched-earth" famines, sort of make sense. If food doesn't grow because, say the rains have failed, then people starve.

I was in Kenya in 2011, covering a parched-earth famine there too. Catastrophe was compounded by war in both cases - conflict with separatist guerrillas in 1980s Ethiopia and with al-Shabab Islamists more recently in Kenya - but the bottom line was food wasn't growing.

This is different. Welcome to Yemen in 2017. The UN estimates seven million people are facing famine in the Arab world's poorest nation - yet there's no parched earth.

• Yemen's civilians pay price of blockade
• Witnessing Yemen's desperate suffering
• Yemen conflict: Who is fighting whom?

In the frontline city of Taiz, under siege from Houthi rebels for two-and-a-half years, a stroll around one of the local markets reveals abundance. Huge pomegranates and oranges, fresh garlic, bananas, courgettes and tangerines.

There are supermarkets full of produce too - fresh meat, eggs, steaks and ribs. So how on earth can this country be starving? It makes no sense.

Soaring prices
I was shown around one of the markets in Taiz by a man I'd met the day before. Sami Abdul Hadi, 55, saw our team filming outside one hospital.

He introduced himself to us and said we had to make sure our report included the real crime about the conflict in Yemen: people are starving, he said, yet there's plenty of food to go round. So we agreed to meet the next day.

continued

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42023625

 

Blame it on the United Nations that liberals love so much.

 

Radical Islam, and the effort to conquer other Nations in order to spread it's anti-humanitarian beliefs is the root cause of strife and famine.

Until this mutation can be eliminated, innocent people will pay the price.

 

Why is the world full of food? How is it produced so effectively by some? Why can't it be produced effectively by others?

Is food universally good? There's mounting evidence to show that the food we are producing in America is killing us. What if the food surplus is a product of poor behavior too? What happens if we get others hooked on our chronic disease producing food and then suddenly all realize that factory food is no longer sustainable? There's not many naturally produced foods that are going to make the trip to places of famine from places of abundance. That's one of the reasons why they are places of famine.

What benefit is there to anyone to sustain a failed environment, society, government, whatever you blame the famine on (by subsidizing it) Doesn't the subsidy continue the suffering of the people effected by the failure of the system they live within?

 

Drought in North Africa? It can't be!

Famine is the result of:

1) too many people,
2) living in a permanently arid environment,
3) in a corrupt (inevitably Islamic) society.

 

Those are some very good points to bring up.

It's horrible watching people suffer. I've been to many of the places mentioned in the OP. But we should ask ourselves. How is humanity bettered by taking from a producer and giving to a consumer? If people choose to donate to these consumers that's one thing. But all too often I see others talk about how everyone should be forced to help them. That's wrong.

 

There's a lot of truth in that. Some famines are caused by lack of rain.. others are political and man made.

And some rebellions like in Syria are exacerbated by long droughts.

 

In cases where famine is a result of political upheavals and war what can we really do?

Even in Afghanistan humanitarian efforts to truck in food were hijacked by the rebels.

 

As long as Nations efforts to address normal cyclical environmental conditions are diverted by wars, innocent people will suffer.

Famine has been a constant throughout history. Mans migration was no doubt fueled by famine. It is apparent that man will not be able to arrest famine any time soon, and can only, at best, lower it's impact.

 

Syria does have water and arable land, but 5 years of drought did take their toll on food production.

 

I agree with you, but good leadership and planning could lessen the impact of drought.. Chaos and siege changes the game and hinder distribution even when food is available.

I remember thinking that communism made distribution of goods problematic.

Radical Islam seems to be doing the same thing.

 

I've been to Nigeria. It's a really bad place. Yes there are innocent people suffering. But should we subsidize a people who's leaders have openly said that one race of people are sub human?

 

Agreed. It's heart breaking to see these conflicts, many that seem to be simply cultural, going back for generations, continue to keep innocent people living in the dark ages.

There does not appear to be a near term solution.

 

I like to think we could shift the conversation, but that takes leadership.

Saleh of Yemen only had an elementary school education.

But, Assad in Syria is a westernized, educated man and he couldn't rationally address the longstanding issues that Syria face in the 5 years before 2011 ...

 

I don't know much about Nigeria.. Which race is considered sub human?

 

Any other than black.

 

Wow. I didn't know there were other races in Nigeria.. So would that include Arabs and Europeans?

 

Admittadly this was half decade (actually longer than that. It was after the moritorium on drilling in the gulf) ago or so that I was there. I haven't kept up on how things went politically since we moved the rig there. But anyway. Their president was saying it. And it was a view that was reflected by every Nigerian that replaced our crew that I spoke to (I know a small number of the population ) don't know if the religion of an individual would have any effect on it.

Still. The point stands. If a place is pushing opinions like that, is humanity bettered by forcing others to subsidize them?

 

You work on offshore drilling platforms?

I don't think you can subsidize them indefinitely... especially if the country is mired down in conflict.

 

Most if not all famine is from war so if you stop war you stop famine. Good luck with that

 

America eating less doesn't mean the world eats more, it's not a zero sum game

 

Who is "we"?

There are things you can do. Some of those things involve trying to force others to do things.

Be careful the choices you make. Grand schemes are often as likely to cause disaster as they are prosperity. This is especially true when it involves forcing large groups of people to do things they don't want to do.