October 16th: World Food Day 2014

Theme: Family Farming: Feeding the World, Caring for the Earth

The world food day which is celebrated every 16th October, has been described as the pinnacle of time to highlight food sustainability whilst acknowledging the imminent climate change, and global warming predictions (www.worldfooddayusa.org).

The world food day was declared in 1979 by the United Nations in honour of the date of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. According to the UN, this day’s celebration highlights the urgent issues of chronic hunger and promotes positive action through events.

The day is also referred to as ‘End Hunger Day’, since it is seen as an opportunity for the global community to unite in an effort to help raise awareness about the global problem of hunger.

It is common to find that in celebrating a day like this there will be many discourses around the globe concerning the global food security and how we are going to feed today’s 1.02 billion malnourished people as well as the increasing world population in the near future.

Therefore, to contribute to this global discourse for today’s celebration and its theme especially, I tried to approach it from two perspectives: first, to emphasize the need for us to unite in fighting hunger and to suggest some ways out – using my platform as a social entrepreneur and conservationist respectively.

The Global Food Crisis: Everyone’s Concern Many countries – including Pakistan, Egypt, Morocco, Cameroon, Malaysia, Ivory and Madagascar, Indonesia Coast, Ethiopia etc, at some point of time in their history have witnessed the outbreak of hungry people every day with less opportunity to feed due to some of the basic factors like enhanced food prices and energy.

In an internal memo that was leaked to the media, the UN believes that international concern for this situation is one of the biggest concerns and that the whole infrastructure of emergency food aid is unable to cope with the crisis. A specific contingency plans to cater to the needs of urban population has to be launched (www.altiusdirectory.com).

According to the United Nations Population Division, the world’s population is predicted to increase from today’s 7 billion people to 9 billion by 2043 (www.un.org/en/globalissues/population).

Consequently, the gowth in demand food demand will accelerate from approximately 20 gigacalories to 40 gigacalories per day within the same period with much of this due to the economic growth of developing nations, promoting an increasing appetite for meat especially (Chung & Aguire-Bielschowsky, 2012).

It is said that ‘the most hungry people live in nations with food surpluses rather that in deficits.’ According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), we are already producing one and a half times the amount of food needed to provide everyone in the world with an adequate and nutritious diet, yet one in seven people is suffering from hunger (www.greenpeace.org ).

Despite the significance of agriculture as the major factor in the economies of many developing countries (with Ghana included), this prominent sector is often starved of investment. In particular, foreign aid to agriculture has displayed drastic declines over the past 20 years. Poverty and hunger are interlinked.

And recent report from the Food and Agriculture Organization manifests that there are more than 1 billion people around the world who suffer from hunger every day. This report is not only alarming but also disheartening to think that while some of us waste food on the table, a big number of people have not a single chunk of food on their plate. This startling facts and poor situation among impoverished nations is the main concern of the entire world (www.altiusdirectory.com).

The Case of Ghana I think, as you may too, that this is somewhat true – when we look close to the number of people who farm in Ghana, the status of our food production in exports and relate it to the many people who cry of hunger while they beg on our streets every day.

Therefore, my question is if we know we only have much control on our agriculture sector (because of availability of lands and labour force), why have we despised this sector to look at services and industry and yet people go to bed without food?

We can all go back to look at “Family Farming” – as the theme goes, or “Subsistence Farming” – which we are more familiar with – and see how it can help us end hunger in our part of the world. As for the poor and needy we may continue to have them around but their dire need of food and water could be eliminated when we stand together in attempts to fight poverty and hunger.

The next time you have surplus of food in reserve, check to see if your neighbour had had food to eat. Or when we think of destroying poor people’s farm lands to construct filling stations, hotels and schools and markets for the people’s use, we must think next of how to provide them with alternative source of livelihood.

While most of us worry about the food to be prepared or maybe the lack of kitchen appliances like a Bosch mixer, microwave or a bigger deep freezer, and the need for a manual blender against power outages, take time to think of those who are suffering from acute hunger – and see how you can help. If we succeed at this, we will succeed in fighting hunger and street begging.

BY:

Jackson Nyarko

[email protected]