Feeding the world

The world’s population hit seven billion this week, pushing our planet’s resources to the limit.

As the West’s obesity epidemic grows, around one billion people are starving, with the famine in Somalia expected to kill up to one million.

Something somewhere has gone horribly wrong.

The balance has been badly tipped in favour of rich Western nations scoffing their faces with what is often factory-farmed, low quality meat.

Meanwhile those in Africa and the developing world are struggling to feed their families at all.

The New Internationalist magazine pointed to food market speculators in its feature The Food Rush as those gambling with hunger.

In the piece by Hazel Healy it explains how the rise of commodity trading is seeing banks and hedge funds bet on the price of crops like wheat and corn – the staples of the world’s poorest.

This is pushing food prices up to the point where one in seven people can’t afford to eat.

She writes: “There is something particularly sick about wealthy and unaccountable elites increasing their fortunes in a way that stunts – and starves – children. This is raw-edged capitalism at its worst.”

And as land to grow food for multiplying mouths shrinks, feeding the world gets even more complicated.

Sadly intensive farming – where animals rarely see the light of day and are bred to the point where they can no longer stand, let alone reproduce – is playing its part.

Precious space that could be used to grow crops for the starving is instead being used to produce enough animal feed to fuel the West’s obsession with cheap meat.

According to Compassion in Word Farming chief exec Philip Lymbery’s blog, it takes six tonnes of plant protein to produce just one tonne of animal protein.

If that space was used to grow plant crops there would be more to go around.

And while big farms would argue there’s a demand for this meat, the fact is, we don’t need it.

If everyone cut out meat from just one meal a week it would make a huge difference to the world’s health, as well as the environment.

In the end this global problem is being caused by greed.

From the banks gambling on hunger, to farmers sacrificing welfare for profit, the West’s greed only serves to exacerbate the plight of the poor.

And with the population set to rise by a further two billion by 2050, unless something changes, this will only get worse.