Hunger is an issue of dignity as much as it is about food. You cannot give people free food and abolish hunger, you need to work out schemes for involving the community and creating opportunities for them to earn their food with dignity... — Prof. Anil Gupta, speaking in a public forum on "Is Freedom from Hunger an Achievable Goal"

There is no shame in hunger. But there is shame in knowing about hunger and doing nothing about it. It's a disgrace for the richest nation in the world (USA) to have 35 million citizens going without adequate nutrition. —Alan Shawn Feinstein

Jump to links

 The greatest myth about world hunger is that it results from too many people competing for too little food. But overpopulation is not the problem. Hunger is the problem. The truth of the matter is that hunger promotes overpopulation. The better fed people are, the fewer children they tend to produce.

Secondly, every nation in the world has the agricultural resources to feed their own people. But poor people rarely have access to land. All across the third-world the best land is used to grow expensive cash crops — fruit and flowers — for export to wealthy nations and drugs such as coffee, tobacco, opium poppies (heroin), cocaine, and marijuana.

Third, even the self-proclaimed "richest nation in the world" — the United States — tolerates huge numbers of hungry citizens, while developing nations like Vietnam include the abolition of hunger in their domestic policies. And fourth, the argument that starvation and hunger is an unfortunate but necessary result of evolution's natural selection process fails to recognize that expanding consciousness — wisdom and compassion — are evolving too.

Deciding whether you care about other people and want to help them is a decision each individual must make for themselves. If you conclude that you don't care about others — competition and self-preservation at the expense of the group — you promote conflict, adversity, and intolerance. Realizing that you do care — cooperation and preservation for the good of the group — helps everyone.

The only real challenges to abolishing world hunger forever are fear of change and the will to do it anyway.

Data:

• One billion people on earth (16%) experience hunger during a given year.
• Currently 840,000 people on this earth are literally starving to death. Two-thirds of them are children.
• 40,000 people die each day from hunger-related causes.
• 24,000 to 30,000 people die each day from starvation.
• 1.2 billion people live on less than one-dollar per day.
• 1 billion people do not have access to clean water.
• More than 2 billion people have no access to adequate sanitation.
• 1.3 billion people, mostly in cities in the developing world, are breathing air below the standards considered acceptable by the World Health Organization.
• 700 million people, mostly women and children, suffer from indoor air pollution due to biomass-burning stoves, equivalent to smoking three packs of cigarettes per day.
• Hundreds of millions of poor farmers have difficulty maintaining the fertility of soils from which they eke out a meager living.

Data for Los Angeles:

Family size	2002 - US Poverty Threshold
1	$9,182
2	$11,752
3	$14,351
4	$18,390
5	$21,743
6	$24,578

• In 2003, 82,096 people (0.9%) in L.A. County were homeless, up from 78,600 (0.8%) in 2002.
• According to the 2000 US Census, 58% of L.A. County's homeless population are high school graduates, and 10% have a Bachelor's degree or higher.
• In 2003, 18% of L.A. County's homeless are veterans, nearly double the number of veterans in the overall population (9%). .
• 1,674,599 people (17.9%) are living in poverty in Los Angeles County.
• 640,145 children (24.6%) in LA County are poor.
• Statewide in California, the poverty rate is 14.2%; nationally it is 12.1%.
• 584,000 LA County residents (nearly 6%) experience hunger every year.

• 1.5-million LA County residents (nearly 15%) experience food insecurity at some time during the year.

• Fully one-third (33%) of all single-parent families in LA live below the poverty line.

• 84,300 people in LA County are homeless on any given night. Up to 236,400 people are homeless in the course of a year.

Explore the following resources to learn what you can do to Abolish Hunger Forever!

Return to top

E-mail - MB@theagelesswisdom.com

All content including HTML, JavaScript, Photos, Graphics and Writing are Copyright © 2006 of TheAgelessWisdom.com All Rights Reserved. No portion of this web site may be reproduced without written permission. Version 2.0 Site related questions contact: | Home | Michael Benner | Counseling & Training | | Ageless Radio | Focused Passion | | Abolish War | Abolish Hunger | Wisdom Nuggets | Gift Shop | | Corporate Wisdom | Fun |

Website Design Animation and Hosting by Illuminary Arts