In a world such as ours where there is enough food to feed everybody, I find it extremely inappropriate and shameful for anyone to go hungry. Yet, this happens! Even worse, you know something’s terribly wrong with the social structure when the people who produce the food suffer from that preventable hunger.
It gets even worse! Unfortunately, this problem mixes with child labor in the most disgusting of marriages. In her article, Children Hungry In A Land Of Plenty, Susan Levine points out that nearly 80% of children living on farms in the Worcester municipality participated in commercial agriculture during school holidays, on weekends or after school, but yet many children from these productive areas suffer from hunger and poverty, many have to beg, steal food or sniff glue as means to suppress their hunger.
Susan Levine continues by saying:
During the week, children who attend school and who are eligible for the feeding scheme (60% of children are reported to be hungry in the Rawsonville/Slanghoek region) look forward to their ration of two slices of bread and a glass of milk.
At one school, though, the teachers expressed their concern that not all the children receive food, and so children on the feeding scheme are asked to share their ration, which means that some might only have one slice of bread per day.
The increased rate of hunger among children in this rich agricultural belt is symptomatic of deep structural inequalities, and yet hunger is locally understood as the consequence of parental neglect.