World Hunger and Poverty

According to the AP, agriculture scientist Norman Borlaug received the Congressional Gold Medal on Tuesday. Professor Norman Borlaug’s work on high-yield, disease-resistant varieties of wheat spawned the Green Revolution and alleviated starvation in India and Pakistan in the 1960s.

Previously, Professor Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 after he founded the World Food Prize, an annual $250,000 award to people whose work increases the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world.

I commend Professor Borlaug for successfully promoting increases in food production, but I want us to remember that the world currently has more than enough food to feed everyone. The hunger problem results not from a lack of food, but rather a lack of sufficient distribution.

Granted, food production will become more important as global population continues to increase.

In Louisville, Kentucky, many single mothers live in poverty. Marcus Green recently wrote about it and the need to spread affordable housing. I include an excerpt:

Experts say the importance of blending low-income residents into middle-income neighborhoods is that it offers better work and education opportunities for impoverished parents and children.

“In these high-poverty areas, there aren’t a lot of jobs, a lot of viable institutions” such as parks, said Karen Christopher, a University of Louisville sociologist. “When you’re raising a family, that’s what you need.”

Expanding affordable housing into middle-income and affluent neighborhoods won’t directly pull single-mother families out of poverty, but it could influence their aspirations and behavior, Christopher said.

The housing coalition’s analysis of U.S. Census data paints a stark portrait of households headed by women, showing that 37 percent of those led by single mothers are impoverished.

Read entire article by Marcus Green.

Unfortunately, in a world where most two-parent households struggle, a single-parent home faces overwhelming obstacles.

I agree that spreading affordable housing can help allow single-mother families to escape poverty, but we must accompany it with other forms of social change.

We can best reduce single-mother poverty through prevention. We have to teach even young children about the difficulty in raising children alone. Then, teach them how to avoid it. Too many women have children without the resources to take care of them, namely a non-deadbeat father. Too many males run away from their responsibilities, thus leaving a woman to take care of children by herself. Beyond all of that, society needs to stop breaking up families. For example, needless drug laws and needless wars lead to fathers getting thrown in jail or sent to war–often never to come back.

Of course, we cannot change the past. So, we have to take care of the poor single mothers already raising families alone. In addition to affordable housing, we need to ensure that they and their children get food, clothes, shelter, healthcare, education, and employment.

Kate Bolduan recently wrote an article about kindergartners helping fight world hunger. I include an excerpt:

Students at Raleigh’s Brier Creek Elementary scooped, weighed and bagged thousands of meals.

It was part of Operation Share House, an international effort to stop world hunger.

Once the meals are assembled and the boxes are packed, the meals will be shipped overseas. In about a month, the meals will feed 4,000 children in Nigeria.

Read entire article by Kate Bolduan.

While it remains a shame that world hunger persists, I think we can all agree on the beauty of these children helping to put an end to it.

I believe those types of programs help children learn more than their regular school activities, because the children actually get to see what it feels like to help make their own world a better place. These children actually make a difference. They will feed 4,000 other children!

I hope these young children feel very proud, because they deserve to feel proud.

Newsblaze.com recently published an article that says child hunger costs Central America billions of dollars annually. I include an excerpt:

Child undernutrition cost the economies of Central America and the Dominican Republic almost $7 billion – or 6.4 per cent of the region’s gross domestic product (GDP) – in 2004, according to a new joint study by two United Nations agencies today.

“This study is a wake up call to the international community that widespread child hunger is not only a moral and humanitarian issue, but it has economic consequences as well,” WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran said. “Clearly, we will not be able to eradicate poverty in the region or in the world for that matter, until we take effective steps to tackle hunger and malnutrition.”

Read entire article on newsblaze.com.

Of course, hunger hurts the economy everywhere. With child hunger costing us all (the people of the world) so much, why do we fail to invest more into fighting it. It would cost less to just end hunger than accept the billions of dollars it costs. Just in Central America, child hunger has caused losses of $7 billion a year. We could end hunger worldwide for less than $6 billion more a year.

It seems that the people in power want world hunger to remain. Perhaps, they need hunger to scare the working-class into obedience. Perhaps the people in power realize that the working-class might stop letting the upper-class rob them, if only the working-class people didn’t fear going hungry. Due to their fear over hunger and poverty, the working-class obediently go to their jobs, even though they get underpaid and overworked.

The powers that be do a good job scaring the working-class. For example, in any given 10-year-period, 40% of United States citizens fall into poverty.

Randolph T. Holhut recently wrote an article about the shame of the federal food stamp program in the United States:

The federal food stamp program has never been known as being particularly generous, but the combination of budget cuts and inflation has made it even less so.

For all the talk you hear from economists saying the “core rate” of inflation is stable, you have to remember that the figure excludes two things all of us have to buy — food and energy. A trip to the grocery store or the gas station will tell you that prices are rising higher and faster than the 3 percent inflation rate we hear about.

It’s been 11 years since the food stamp program increased its benefits. It’s been a decade since the federal minimum wage has been increased. Meanwhile, the price of everything has gone up and the poorest among us are the ones who get squeezed the worst.

If you are poor enough to qualify for food stamps, the average benefit per person is about $3 per day per person. That’s $21 a week for food.

[...]

A truly just nation would ensure that no one goes hungry. Unfortunately, there always seems to be money available for war, but Congress too often cries poverty when more money for social welfare programs is sought. This is simply not right.

Read entire article by Randolph T. Holhut.

What is $3 a day supposed to do for a person? It won’t do much to end hunger. How will children born into poverty escape poverty when they only have $3 a day for food? They likely won’t. With stomach pains from hunger and associated troubles, a child won’t get the education needed to get a job that pays sufficiently.

Frankly, society cannot afford to continuously subsidize the food of the poor. We have to help poor people escape poverty and achieve self-sufficiency. To do that, we have to provide more than just food stamps. We need to provide them with education, job training, and job placement. We can ensure that they gain self-sufficiency and no longer need food stamps, by ensuring they end up having a job that pays more than enough for sufficient food, clothes, shelter, and healthcare.

To do that, I propose only giving out food stamps to people who go to school or have a job. Instead of handing out food stamps at social service centers, I suggest handing them out at schools.

Presstv.ir recently reported that Muhammad Yunus wants to use his micro-credit system to help more countries:

Bangladeshi Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus has said he is hoping to export his micro-credit system to more African countries.

“There is a lot of interest from African leaders to whom I have been talking. The question is how this can be translated into practice,” he told a press conference at the close of a World Bank meeting on Africa in Berlin.

Yunus said the entire developed world needed to strive to help Africa in order to live up to the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals which include halving extreme poverty by 2015.

“This is very important. It is the first time the UN has set such goals. The time has come to stick to them.”

Yunus, nicknamed the “Banker to the Poor”, won the 2006 Nobel peace prize for helping millions escape poverty through micro-credit financing projects, which enable people without collateral or steady income to get small loans.

Read entire article on Presstv.ir.

Muhammad Yunus’s micro-credit system has proven effective. He has literally enabled millions of people to escape poverty with his micro-credit loans. Where archaic charities and government welfare has failed, Yunas has succeeded. Through small loans (usually less than $50), Yunus lets poor people escape poverty, get on their own two feet, and start or repair their home businesses. After which, they repay the loans and can remain out of poverty on their own. Unlike expensive charity and welfare systems which increase dependency, Yunus’s cost-effective approach leads to self-sufficency among the otherwise poor.

I cannot applaud Muhammad Yunus enough. I also applaud those who involved with issuing Nobel prizes for rightfully recognizing the great man.

Kansascity.com recently wrote about a business named FINCA that helps desperately poor people in 21 countries by providing business loans. I include an excerpt:

Many people and organizations offer assistance to make life more bearable for the poor. The New York-based Foundation for International Community Assistance has a particularly powerful approach: It assists poor people around the world with credit to help them start or strengthen small businesses.

It is a model worth supporting and emulating.

“When we started 23 years ago, it was a dream. It looked impossible loaning money to desperately poor people,” said FINCA International board chairman Robert Hatch, a resident of Kansas City.

It’s an arduous task to help people who live on less than $2 a day and whose low incomes affect their nutrition, health, and ability to send children to school.

With as little as a $50 loan, one client can open a small business. The money is repaid in weekly cycles over three years while the person builds up a vibrant micro-enterprise as well as a healthy savings account.

Read entire article on kansascity.com.

This exemplifies exactly the kind of approach I want to see. While remaining cost efficient, it helps poor people permanently escape poverty by becoming self-sufficient. I applaud FINCA International!

With loans, we can essentially end poverty for free. In fact, instead of costing money the loaners can profit from it by charging interest. Through mutually beneficial arrangements, both the poor person who escapes poverty and the loaner reap benefits from the transaction. We can set these mutually beneficial arrangements up in a non-governmental way, such that the loans come from private organizations rather than governments. To permanently escape poverty, people need to have access to loans that pay for food, clothes, shelter, and healthcare while it pays for education (including job training) and then job placement (including starting a business if applicable). These services must be of the highest quality; so that the person earns enough from their employment (including self-employment) that the person can repay the loan with interest while also paying for food, clothes, shelter, and healthcare. Then, not only has the loaner profited (which enables them to then loan to another person), but also the recipient of the loan has profited so much they can both escape poverty and live debt-free.

Douglas Crow recently reported on a slightly overweight 63-year-old man with a bum knee. The man, named Gregory Cox, plans to walk 2,600 miles to promote his plan to end poverty in the United States. I include an excerpt:

[H]e believes each step he takes on his 2,600-mile trek from northern California to Chicago leads to ending poverty in the United States.

Cox wrote and self-published a fictional book called “Schizophrenic Rescue,” which outlines his economic plan.

The sporadically employed, one-time salesman who holds a master’s degree in economics wants 10,000 people on the verge of poverty to save $20 a month for a year. Then they could use that $2.4 million to start an insurance company to insure their cars and houses.

The company also would produce annual checks that would go into a retirement account for the company owners.

As time goes on, other companies would be formed in a similar model in several industries.

To promote the idea and build financial backing, Cox wants Oprah Winfrey to feature him and his book on her television show.

She hasn’t invited him. So Cox will mostly walk from his Northern California home to her Chicago studio, stopping at media outlets along the way to seek publicity.

Read entire article by Douglas Crow.

I haven’t read Cox’s book, but from the above outline of his plan I think it has potential. He has come up with a practical plan that helps poor people help themselves to escape poverty and gain self-sufficiency. Additionally, he has a great idea to promote the plan. I hope he gets on the Oprah Winfrey show.

Regardless of the success of his particular plan and implementation, his perfectly exemplifies what we need. We need original plans. The old ways have not worked! We need to think of innovative methods to use voluntary organization to end hunger and poverty, both in the United States and throughout the world.

Lindsay Beck recently reported called poverty goals “still distant despite Africa boom,” in a recent article. I include an excerpt:

Africa is experiencing unprecedented growth, but the continent will have to sustain that expansion for years to come if it is to lift people out of poverty, the African Development Bank chief said on Thursday.

Africa is set to grow about 6.5 percent this year, marking the fifth straight year of above-trend expansion, due partly to trade with Asia, especially China, AfDB President Donald Kaberuka said.

“Africa will have to sustain this growth for several years — probably a decade and a half of similar numbers — to begin to see an impact on poverty levels,” Kaberuka said at the close of the bank’s two-day annual meeting in Shanghai, China’s glittering financial capital.

“What this means is that, with the exception of a few countries, come 2015, many African countries will not be able to attain the Millennium Development Goals, and that includes access to clean water and sanitation,” he told reporters.

Read entire article by Lindsay Beck.

I can all but guarantee that the world will not achieve the MDGs. We can, but we won’t. The UN and other government agencies have no interest in actually solving the problems that they get made to fix. Bureaucracies inherently get caught up and misdirected with corruption and inefficiency.

Mg.co.za recently reported on G8 breaking its pledges on poverty:

Industrialised nations have broken promises to alleviate poverty and provide better health and education, leading to the deaths of millions of people in poorer nations, Oxfam International said on Thursday.

Group of Eight (G8) nations had fallen far short of meeting a $50-billion funding pledge made at a summit in Gleneagles, Scotland two years ago, said Oxfam, an independent group that works to fight poverty.

Read entire article on mg.co.za.

I don’t find this surprising, but I do find it sad. We cannot rely on these empty promises from governments. To end poverty, the people of the world need to learn to work together without the help of governments and politicians.