World Hunger and the Global Food Crisis

 

Nindoma Sherpa started going to school when she was five, but not to learn how to read and write. She lived in a small village in Nepal where everyone was hungry. When the United Nations started a food programme in her village children whoattended could get meals for free.

At the beginning she just went there to eat, but as time went on she started to learn with other children, even though they were much younger.

Hunger is the world’s biggest health threat. About 900 million people suffer from not having enough to eat every day. Hunger kills more people than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined.

Global Food Crisis

In the past year food prices around the world have gone up sharply. There are many reasons for this:

• Rising oil prices have increased transport costs.

• China and India – the two most populous countries in the world – need more and more food.

• The United States and many other western countries have begun to use crops to make bio fuels.

• More and more people around the world have stopped farming and began to move to cities in search of a better job.

Map of World Hunger

Western countries can pay for the rising costs of food but in developing countries this has been causing unrest. In Haiti, where people spend anaverage of 60% of their income on food, riots have forced the prime Minister toresign.

Most of the world’s population suffers from chronic hunger. They eat enough tosurvive but always remain hungry.

Food relief organizations say there are many ways to combat hunger. Here are a few of them:

• Increase food production.

  Governments should help smaller farms in areas with little food.

• Affected countries should prepare better for disasters like floods, hurricanes or earthquakes.

• Provide safe drinking water.

  The best food doesn’t help if you wash it down with a glass of unsafe, dirty water.

  Diarrhoea causes 8 % of all deaths in Asia and Africa every year.

Words

• affected = the countries that have these problems
• attend = go to, visit
• average = middle
• biofuels = energy that comes from plants
• cause = lead to
• combat = fight
• combined = together
• crops = a plant, like wheat or rice that is grown by farmers and used as food
• developing country = a poor country that is trying to increase its industry and improve life for its people
• diarrhoea = an illness in which watery waste that comes out of your body very often
• disaster = catastrophe
• flood = a lot of water that covers a large area of land
• force = to make someone do something
• global = worldwide
• income = the money you get from your job
• increase = to go up
• populous = with the most people
• provide = give, offer
• relief organization = an organization that helps people with food, clothes etc..
• remain = stay
• resign = to step down; leave office
• riot = situation in which many people behave in a brutal and uncontrolled way
• sharply = very much
• survive =to continue to live in a dangerous situation
• threat = danger
• unrest =people behave in a violent way