Monday, October 10, 2011

Food: Can we live without it? -what food means to your culture-




Food is anything eaten to satisfy appetite and to meet physiological needs for growth, to maintain all body processes, and to supply energy to maintain body temperature and activity (Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009). It plays important roles in the livelihood of every living thing most especially human beings. But of the nearly 7 billion people on Earth, an estimated 850 million are undernourished or chronically hungry. With global food production hurting and prices rising, this number is swiftly climbing.

In recent years, countries plunged by natural disaster, wars and famine have continuously suffered severe hunger as a result of food scarcity.


In developing regions, there is currently a contention between switching to match up with modernization. As a way of creating development, government takes over massive hectares of land for housing  or other projects but  at the detriment of farmland and biodiversity reserves.

Climate change is another major cause of food scarcity. In many African regions, farmers now have low yields as farmlands become dryer due shortage of rain. In swampy areas, there is rise in sea level causing heavy overflow of to farmlands and crop destruction.

In south-south Nigeria, a key challenge faced by farmers has to do with the issue of oil spillage in the  Niger-Delta region of the country.

In July, 2011, a famine was officially declared in the Horn of Africa, the first in 30 years. A reported 12,400,000 people don’t have enough food. Between May and July in that region, 29,000 children younger than 5 died of starvation.

Recommendations 


The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) provides a long-term and sustainable measure to curbing incessant food scarcity across the globe.

Goal 1 (Eradication of Extreme poverty) focuses on two things: whether people have enough money to meet their basic needs, and whether they have enough food to meet their daily energy requirements. It aims to lift people out of poverty by providing them with the basic things they need to live a decent life: nutritious food to keep them healthy, clothes, clean water, a home, health care, and affordable schooling.

We can help reach this goal by: promoting human rights, increasing the agricultural productivity of small farmers, reforming land rights so that people own their own land, diversifying the economy, encouraging more small and medium size businesses, and increasing construction of roads, ports, power grids and communications to reduce the cost of doing business.

Besides, goal one, working to achieve other goals of the MDGs is pertinent as they are inter-linked. That is, in order to achieve one goal, another has to also be achieved. Therefore, there is urgent need for political will to be able to achieve this feat.

The question is: ‘what if farmlands are gone and preserves finishes, will anyone be saved?’