More handpicked essays just for you.
Solutions to food insecurity in the United States
The usefulness of food security in the current world
The usefulness of food security in the current world
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Rising Food Prices
Introduction:
Food prices have been on the rise and have become a global issue. Prices have soared over the past year and a half and threaten to go up further if issues are not addressed immediately. Below is a look at how prices have been over the past year.
Figure 1. FAO Food Price Index: February 2007 - January 2008
Source FAO, 2008
In this project, we attempt to find out the causes for this price rise, the trends of the rise and the effects that this rise has had on us.
Causes:
1. High demand for food in developing countries:
The growing world population is demanding more and different kinds of food. Rapid economic growth in many developing countries has pushed up consumers' purchasing power, generated rising demand for food, and shifted food demand away from traditional staples and toward higher-value foods like meat and milk.
Meat also consumes food resources in a shockingly inefficient way: it takes 8kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef, and 4kg for pork. But each kilo of grain may need a ton of water. And fuel oil is needed throughout the process, to fertilize the grain, pump water and to transport it.
Economic boom in India and China: India and China account for 1/3 of the world population and these countries have seen a great economic boom in the recent years and this partially is attributed to the rising costs. Around the world, people have eaten more as they grew richer. This phenomenon is called Nutritional transition. Hundreds of millions more people are now rich enough to eat meat compared with 10 years ago, with meat consumption in China more than doubling over the past 20 years.
2. Poor Weather in Various countries
There has been drought in various countries in the world whi...
... middle of paper ...
...earch and extension, rural infrastructure, and market access for small farmers. Rural investments have been sorely neglected in recent decades, and now is the time to reverse this trend. Farmers in many developing countries are operating in an environment of inadequate infrastructure like roads, electricity, and communications; poor soils; lack of storage and processing capacity; and little or no access to agricultural technologies that could increase their profits and improve their livelihoods. Recent unrest over food prices in a number of countries may tempt policymakers to put the interests of urban consumers over those of rural people, including farmers, but this approach would be shortsighted and counterproductive. Given the scale of investment needed, aid donors should also expand development assistance to agriculture, rural services, and science and technology.
...at small farms constitute 90 percent of the world’s farms and employment of 1.3 billion people. This dominates agriculture in developing countries because two-thirds of the 3 billion rural people in the world live off the income generated by farmers managing some 500 million small farms (Halberg & Müller, 2012, p.21). Additionally, there are benefits to land conservation for local communities that involves reduced environmental hazards, improvement of water quality from ground recharge, economic gains from agricultural production from exporting, and the natural settings that bring tourism generating the economy (McMahon & Urban, 2010 p.2). It is only through the awareness of this informational insight into the differences between community types and their transitions throughout time that the public can explore and discover economic incentives for rural communities.
Walsh, Bryan. “America’s Food Crisis.” NEXUS. Eds. Kim and Michael Flachmann. Boston: Pearson, 2012. 166 – 173. Print.
Fast food restaurants or fast food in general is becoming an issue. America does not seem to realize is that there are several reasons why fast food restaurants are not the best choice for people. What these restaurants are actually doing is breaking family bonding, increasing obesity, and wasting money. Being healthy is a choice a person has to make themselves. America should not want to continue to harm others with the selections they give out. Choices should always be made wisely.
In the United States, Food is one of the basic needs of life.We tend to spend tons of money every year to buy food. Consuming food reflects America’s culture in the United States. In America, Fast food is a way to enjoy delicious food made with sugar, fat and salt. It’s impossible to back away from eating good tasting food. Unfortunately, this is leading to major destruction. In the human life, food procurement, preparation, and consumption have devoted to an art form.Spite the terms of “America has a food problem,” it shows that our nation is unable to produce and supply safe, nutritious food in a way where it sustains our global population. Health Issues are a result of over consumption, which lead to portion sizes, and food production.
...struggling to earn any income at all and sometimes do not even get the opportunity to eat. Another issue that Raj Patel did not touch on is the lack of care consumers have for the farmers. It seems that consumers care about farmers about as much as the corporations do, which, in my opinion, is not a lot. When consumers only care about low prices and large corporations only care about making a profit, the farmers are left out to dry. Many consumers believe “food should be available at a bargain price, a belief that relies on labor exploitation and environmental exhaustion at multiple points along the commodity chain.” (Wright, 95) Corporations as well as consumers generally tend to be selfish and I think Raj Patel is afraid to mention this. If only these people cared a little bit more about each other I believe the hourglass of the food system will begin to even out.
This is necessary as the vast majority of individuals migrating from rural to urban centers has been steadily increasing with the level of economic growth seen within the past twenty years as mentioned earlier. Unfortunately, this situation has further shown the structural issues and inequalities of cities, as most migrants end up having a poor quality of life living in informal settlements as highlight substantially by Boo. As a means of tackling this, however, the Indian government has turned its focus on investing rural regions, developing the agricultural sector. Specifically, Boo mentions that “the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, had come down from Delhi to express his concern for the farmers’ hardships, and the central government’s determination to relieve it” (p. 138). While this is definitely important funds are not being divided justly. For starters, between rural and urban areas almost all investments are being targeting towards rural regions, which is only addressing issues of inequality in one section of the country. Furthermore, across rural areas inequalities of investment are quite often overlooked. Although, “one of the governments hopes was to stop villagers from abandoning their farms and further inundating cities like Mumbai, but Asha’s relatives knew nothing of these celebrated relief programs” (p. 138). Therefore, even though
There is much to be said about how exactly meat is being produced. In the present day, there are hardly any farms out there that still practice the traditional and environmental - friendly way. Animal agriculture is widely used all over the world and greatly contributes to climate change. Meat production leads to global warming because of the combination of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. The process of raising animal is the major source to these harmful gases. It is vital to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change by reducing meat consumption. However stopping this meat eating system is extremely difficult, given that we had been consuming meat ever since our ancestors domesticated animals for that purpose. Over the decade Animal agriculture has been getting worse and worse. In 1973 when the Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz announced ‘’ what we want out of agriculture is plenty of food’’, overproduction was encouraged and lowering the price of meat was carried out; this originally started when there was a massive increase in corn (Wolfson). In order to keep up this mass production of meat, multiple pounds of grains are fed to livestock. Livestock industries depended on corn and soy based food and used over half of the artificial fertilizer used in the United States (McWilliams).
Few concerns have surfaced in economy that plays a vital role in agriculture and therefore in economic development. Developing countries and more even, LDC’s, are dependent on agriculture for income for the population. But achieving good agriculture means that many things have to change within these countries self. Good transportation is need in these countries and more often than not the infrastructure doesn’t allow this to happen and transporting agricultural goods are more expensive for these countries, thus these countries need capital and investments to further their outputs and inputs to gain bet...
In fact, the amount of resources that go into production of animals for consumption is somewhat startling. When factoring in transportation, grains for feeding, etc. and directly comparing them to the output of protein for consumption, a vegetarian diet seems much more appealing. David Pimentel, a Cornell ecologist specializing in Agriculture and Life Science, stated beef production “requires a [fossil-fuel] energy output to protein output ratio of 54:1” and that 100,000 liters of water goes into just one kilogram of beef. Also, cows are notorious for producing large amounts of methane, totaling 500 liters per cow per day (Goffman 3). Methane traps heat in the environment, heating the surface of the earth causing problematic situations to occur all over the earth, including the ice caps melting and eliminating species. And when cattle, which are...
In order for us to maintain our lives, we need to consume food to supply nutrient-needs for our bodies. As the global population increased, the demand for food also increased. Increased population led to mass production of foods. However, even with this mass production, in under-developed countries, people are still undernourished. On other hand, in developed and developing countries, people are overfed and suffering from obesity. In addition, the current methods of industrial farming destroy the environment. These problems raised a question to our global food system. Will it be able to sustain our increasing global population and the earth? With this question in my mind, I decided to investigate the sustainability of our current global food system.
And, because food now comes at a low cost, it has become cheaper in quality and therefore potentially dangerous to the consumer’s health. These problems surrounding the ethics and the procedures of the instantaneous food system are left unchanged due to the obliviousness of the consumers and the dollar signs in the eyes of the government and big business. The problem begins with the mistreatment and exploitation of farmers. Farmers are essentially the backbone of the entire food system. Large-scale family farms account for 10% of all farms, but 75% of overall food production (CSS statistics).
This is a much bigger deal than people think. In fact, according to an article by Peta, How Does Eating Meat Harm the Environment, it has such an effect on the environment that the Union of Concerned Scientist list meat eaters as the second biggest environmental hazard facing the earth. The number one affect being fossil fuels produced by cars. It was also found in a report published by the Worldwatch Institute that nearly 51 percent of all greenhouse gasses are produced from animal agriculture. This is a very staggering number when a lot of research is being done to make vehicles more environmentally friendly when we could make a huge impact just by changing the way we eat. It is even more astounding that it takes the same number of fossil fuels to produce one hamburger as it takes to dive one car 20 miles (Peta How Does Eating Meat Harm the Environment). The production of this meat is also a big cost. It takes more than 80 percent of the corn we grow and more than 95 percent of oat are feed to livestock. The world’s cattle alone are feed the equal amount that would be needed to feed 8.7 billion people. That’s more than the entire world population. If we cut back on our consumption of meat we could take corn and oats that we produce and feed the world. When producing meat many of our natural resources are used. We use water, fossil fuels and top soil, and we are
When these agricultural resources are given to the animals involved in meat production, these resources are lost. Besides the loss of land, the process of animal production is contributing to pollution and other greenhouse gases that are doing irreplaceable damage to the environment and contribute to untold negative health
Agriculture holds a significant role in underdeveloped countries. It is often the backbone of their economic and social well-being. It acts as the main source of employment and income, 70% of a country's population rely on framing as a mean of living (CITE HERE). Because most underdeveloped countries have low rates of educational attainment, farming is a popular source of employment. It requires little to no education. As a result agriculture employs many people contributing to nations economic development. Residents can also sell what they grow, providing them with a source of income, thus not only raising the national income level but the standard of living as well. Agriculture is not only a ...
Most of the affected war countries around the globe lack adequate store rooms, dependable water for farming, vegetation 's, good roads and proper way of preserving food for the people. Excellent preservation of the agricultural lands, plant and farm animals can bring a positive change in the farming systems. Most of the developing countries support only a little attention to agriculture, but they rather focus mainly on foreign goods that will earn them quick money. Agricultural investment reduces hunger and poverty than any other sectors in many countries. Investing more in the agriculture sector in most of the rural communities will reduce the number of people moving from the countryside to the cities. "The percentage of donor aid going towards agriculture dropped from 17 percent to 3.8 percent between 1980 and 2006, with only slight improvement in numbers over the last three years" (Diouf). There are plenty of fertile lands that supports plants growth but because less attention has been given to the agricultural sector, more than one million people go to bed without food. FAO "estimates that an increase of nearly $36 billion yearly will be needed for poor countries to develop the necessary infrastructure for food production" (Camacho). The agricultural sector needs more attention from the NGO 's, and the government as Buffet is giving out $3 billion to change farming and food. By