Why do people die of hunger ?

Hello Steemers,

Following this post, I would like to explain in details my position on why does world hunger is not a fatality but a consequence of capitalism and share with you my thoughts about this absurd blight that shouldn’t exist.

First of all, let’s talk about numbers :

• One billion people are permanently malnourished or undernourished. Africa is relatively the most impacted (in percentage of the population) but India is the most struck by it (in absolute numbers).
• One hundred thousand people die of hunger everyday. But nobody literally dies of hunger, they’re dying of sicknesses directly imputable to hunger.
• Forty thousands of these daily deaths are children under ten.
• Hunger does not only manifest itself in death but in development anomalies. Fetal undernourishment causes permanent disabilities, brain damage and motor deficiencies.

Let me enumerate the main reasons I think can explain why world hunger still exists nowadays when we – the world as a whole – are producing enough food to feed everybody.

1) Structural Reason

What I mean by structural reason is the underdevelopment of the agricultural industry in the countries struck by hunger.

As we all know, most of Africa’s nations, as well as India, were colonized countries. This past still haunts them as they were only considered as an extension of domestic demand for the colonizing countries, and not as autonomous profit centers. This caused a delay in the course of their development that could have been caught-up since then if colonization had not continue in more insidious ways.

After colonization, Europe had to subsidize their agricultural products, because they didn’t have a captive clientele anymore, so their food industry wasn’t sustainable anymore. This subsidies caused the same damages as colonization as they dropped prices of the agricultural products of the European countries, and newly independent countries were better off buying those products by importing them than developing their own agricultural industries which requires a lot of thought and investment.

This subsidies problem continues and while it will exist, world hunger can not be stopped.

2) Economical Reason

As always, profit is the culprit.
For the agrobusiness, it’s a lot more profitable to transform their products and sell the processed foods with a huge profit margin in rich countries than to sell the raw products to people that really need them. Moreover, most of the time these people don’t even have the money to buy the raw products.

This problem would require a change in our paradigm. International entities such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations are trying to give relief to populations struck by hunger but their means are really limited and decrease each year.
On the other hand, for the latest financial crisis, more than one thousand billions dollars were given to banks (I won’t enter into the details of where that money was supposed to go and where it really went), which would have been enough to solve the problem of world hunger once and for all.

As long as profit making stays the pillar of our civilization, solidarity can’t be more than an empty world on a global scale.

3) Political Reason

I would be brief on this point as I am not as informed on this point as I am for the others.
Hunger is the best way to keep populations under control. Hunger strips you of all determination. The only preocuppation is to find food.

On the verge of dying of hunger :

• Nobody will demonstrate (protest),
• Nobody will think about the real reasons of they dying of hunger,
• Nobody will question the current paradigm.
  
  

As an inhabitant of a "rich" country, it’s clear to me that when our apparent freedom will cause the aristocracy problems, they will come to organizing shortages of food to harness the population’s anger.

4) Ideological Reason

This point is related to the economical one.
Neo-liberalism is, according to the global elite, the system that allows the world to thrive. Any contradiction on this point and you’ll be accused of communism, extremism, or else.

To enforce this "immutable truth", the International Monetary Funds is the perfect soldier.
First, it lends you money with conditions that ensure tou won’t be able to repay it.
Then, it forces you to do some "reforms" meaning selling what’s left of the infrastructure of your country to private foreign companies.
Finally, it forbids you to take any measure that would be contrary to the freedom of commerce (mainly subsidies) for those price manipulations are reserved to the companies profiting of the IMF intervention.

5) Psychological Reason

This one is unique to the "rich" countries that don’t see the damage on a daily basis.
These privileged people are the ones with the power to make things change (by changing their ways in terms of consumption and with political pressure) but the problem and amplitude of world hunger is deliberately hidden from them.
Why ? Because they’re now protected for all the things that are the daily routine in most of the countries in the world (diseases, hunger, death), and because the sole idea of a child dying because of the greed of their national companies would immediately cause an outburst of rage and the boycott of said companies. So these informations are hidden from them.

I personally live in France, and whenever I talk about world hunger to someone, they are immediately scandalized and asking about what they could be doing. That’s why they’ll never see a documentary on TV about these questions. Governments prefer to occupy their minds with gender equality, immigration problems, unemployment, all local and minor problems compared to the genocide that is currently underway.

To show your support : please upvote, follow, resteem or comment !

Or all of the above