9 reasons why hunger is not the result of underproduced food

Hunger has not yet been defeated. After both the absolute number of hungry people worldwide and their share of the total population have steadily decreased since 2004, both curves have been pointing upwards since 2015. As many as 828 million people were starving in 2021; every tenth person suffers from chronic hunger, ie permanent malnutrition. The topic, on the other hand, rarely gets media attention, usually only during acute, locally limited hunger crises.

Most experts agree: hunger is not primarily a problem of food production, but of distribution. An indication of this is the fact that according to UN figures from 2013, 1.3 billion tonnes of food go unconsumed every year – that would feed four times more people than there are hungry people in the world.

The causes of hunger are largely man-made. Here’s a summary of the most important factors – without claiming to be exhaustive:

For decades, developing countries only received loans from the International Monetary Fund if they earned foreign exchange and cut government spending. Many of these countries depended on the export of agricultural products that yielded good prices on the world market, the so-called cash crops. These include coffee, cocoa, sugar, peanuts and cotton.

This competed with the local food production of smallholders, whose subsistence crops, i.e., those subsistence crops – fodder and staple food – were in decline. They were replaced by cheap food imports. This left developing countries at the mercy of the market: if prices for imported goods rose and at the same time the world market price for the cash crops, which were often grown in monocultures, collapsed, the consequences would be disastrous.

Since 2000, when regulators relaxed previous restrictions on futures markets (i.e. price betting), food speculation has escalated. Banks and fund companies can now also participate in this lucrative business. This is not to the benefit of the population in developing countries, as witnessed in 2007/2008 and 2011, when world market prices for important staple foods such as maize, rice and wheat literally exploded and caused global food crises.

Events that drive up the price of food are of interest to speculators, such as when a drought is announced. Speculation then exacerbates the already far-reaching consequences of the bad harvest. Prices of basic foodstuffs are skyrocketing, making imported goods unaffordable in local markets for the poor, who are naturally unable to build up reserves. Petroleum speculation also drives up food prices, as industrial agriculture cannot do without fertilizers and synthetic sprays.

The real power imbalance between states ensures that the rich countries determine the rules of international politics. The world trade system puts the small ones at a disadvantage, as small farmers from developing countries must compete with large international companies – a battle on unequal tables.

The result is unfair trade deals that open markets in developing countries to companies from industrialized countries. Subsidies give them a price advantage. Many developing countries mainly export raw materials, but the rich countries skim off the profits.

The hunger for meat in industrialized countries – and now increasingly in emerging countries – is fueling hunger in poor countries. This is because meat production is expensive and uses many resources that are lacking elsewhere. Huge amounts of water are required to produce one steak – water that is scarce in some areas. The mechanism is therefore indirect: hunger is fueled by higher prices and consumption of scarce land and water.

The conversion of agricultural land to the cultivation of animal feed plays an important role. Today, a third of the world’s grain production goes into the stomachs of animals to make meat and dairy products. In 2011, 77 percent of all coarse grains and more than 90 percent of all soybeans ended up in the manger. Switzerland alone imports one million tons of animal feed every year.

War and hunger have always gone hand in hand. Today, in a world of intertwined economic relations, a war such as the war in Ukraine in Europe can raise global food prices. But wars also lead directly to hunger: for example, when hunger is used as a weapon and soldiers burn fields and kill cattle. When people have to flee the land on which they have lived and can no longer work their fields. Or when agricultural infrastructure, such as irrigation systems, is destroyed by hostilities.

It also has fatal consequences when roads are destroyed or closed and food can no longer be transported to where it is needed or sold. The precarious security situation in a war zone also reduces trade, making food scarce and expensive.

Biofuel is fuel made from biomass. For example, bioethanol and biodiesel are used for transport, palm oil as biofuel for power stations to generate electricity and heat. The advantage of these biofuels is that they produce CO₂-poor – but they have fatal side effects.

On the one hand, this is because the cultivation of arable crops for biofuel leads to the loss of agricultural land for food production. On the other hand, plants that can serve as food are used to generate energy. The huge corn production in the US is now being used to produce ethanol. In Brazil and Indonesia, huge areas of land are not only being used for the production of soybeans and palm oil and natural ecosystems are being destroyed, but additional areas are also being gained through deforestation of the rainforest.

Global warming greatly increases the risks for people who are already starving. It has already reduced rainfall in much of the Mediterranean, the Middle East, the Sahel, southern Africa and parts of South Asia and South America. The share of dry areas in the world is likely to increase significantly in the future. Africa in particular suffers; global warming threatens to make parts of the continent uninhabitable.

In contrast, extreme weather events such as tropical storms, heavy rainfall, floods, droughts and heat waves are on the rise. They have always led to hunger crises; Both too much and too little water lead to crop failures and thus to hunger. Failing harvests for several years in a row also mean that farmers have to use up their stock of seeds or have to slaughter their cattle.

One of the biggest obstacles to development is corruption in many developing countries. Their governments often fail to implement policies that measure their success against the needs of the poorest. It is not uncommon for the political elite to enrich themselves instead of investing profits – for example from the export of raw materials – in the economy or infrastructure. Such corrupt elites can also be much more easily exploited by large global corporations for their own purposes.

Poor governance also often prevents education and research from being promoted and innovations, such as new plant varieties, from reaching farmers. Governments that only have the well-being of a small elite or their own clan in mind are also hardly interested in preventing deforestation, land grabbing and the displacement of small farmers.

The gap between rich and poor is widening, both globally and in individual countries. In developing countries, inequality is often particularly extreme: incredible wealth collides with blatant poverty. While only one percent of the world’s population owns nearly half of the world’s wealth, a billion poor and starving people have almost no chance of ever getting out of poverty.

And those who are poor often pass on poverty. Not only do poor people have little money to eat, they also don’t have enough money to provide for the health and education of children – especially girls. Few manage to break out of this vicious circle of poverty and lack of education.