Touro University International
Tonya L. Johnson
English Composition II (ENG 102)
Module 3 Case Study
August 2006
Mr. Anthony Waul
In 2005, 852 million people in the world are hungry and 16,000 children die every day from hunger-related causes. At the same time, the world’s food supply is abundant, with the production of grain and other foods sufficient to provide over 4 pounds of food per person a day. That means there is enough food in the world to feed every person, yet there is still world hunger. So if food is plentiful, what causes so many people to go to bed hungry every single day? The answer is poverty. Simply stated, poverty causes world hunger.
Obviously, there is enough food produced in the world today. However, even though that is true, the world continues to lose the battle against hunger and lose millions of people on an annual basis. This is true even in countries that have food surpluses, such as the United States and many European countries. There are many hungry people here in the U.S., yet every year farmers are paid for their surplus grain by the government to either ship it overseas or simply destroy it and prepare for the next year’s crops.
Many people blame other influences on world hunger, such as natural catastrophes, overpopulation, and government. No matter where a natural catastrophe hits, there are a multitude of other food producing regions not affected at the same time. Any single natural event does not disrupt the supply chain because of this redundancy in food production. Additionally, overpopulation is not a valid argument for world hunger, as there is still enough food produced to feed every person and keep up with the population increase. Furthermore, hunger exists in sparsely populated areas just as it is in overly dense areas, with no prevailing statistics to tie population directly to hunger. Finally, while government can bog down processes in “red tape,” there is nothing that shows a significant...