Elyse Sandberg HNGR 112 Final Exam Essay

Dr. Huff 16 October 2014

Alleviating Hunger
An aspect of poverty that has grabbed my attention and my heart during this class is the

issue of hunger around the world. In a video we watched called The End of Poverty, we learned

that 24,000 people in the world die everyday from hunger (The). This number is devastating, and

behind this number are individual people, each with their own story. In another video we

watched in class, we met a woman living in the Kibera slum who struggles daily to find work in

order to make money to feed her children. This woman is not alone in her daily struggle for food,

but is joined by millions, even billions of others around the world who are also facing hunger as

an everyday threat to their lives.

The reason for this daily hunger, or in other words, food insecurity, in third-world

countries is complicated and multi-faceted, but can be summed up as a lack of four main

components: food availability, food access, food utilization, and food system stability. A lack is

seen in these areas due to many different reasons; a main reason we have observed in our class

being agricultural methods. Over 2 billion people today depend on smallholder farms for their

livelihoods, yet with unpredictable climate and weather, this has left people struggling with

hunger time and time again. We see an example of this in Nectar in a Sieve, when a monsoon

comes through and destroys all of Ruku and Nathans crops, leaving them with close to nothing.

While this is a fictional book, this is, unfortunately, an accurate reflection of what happens in our

world today. For example, current flooding is affecting 2 million people in northern Bangladesh,

destroying a plethora of crops. Flooding hit eastern Bangladesh in 2012 having a similar

consequence, leaving thousands of people food insecure (Bangladesh). Other prominent reasons

for hunger in the world include population size, the type of food being produced, and trade

policy (Meat). As the population continues to increase, and we continue to see problems with the

unpredictable climate, we face the challenge of matching food supply to the increasing demand,
Elyse Sandberg HNGR 112 Final Exam Essay
Dr. Huff 16 October 2014
while simultaneously making this supply environmentally and socially friendly. While this task is

large, it is something that must be done as millions of lives are at risk.

As we seek to alleviate the worlds poverty in this way, we must be careful to help in

ways that will truly help the situation, and not harm it. We see an example of a harmful situation

due to globalization in Nectar In a Sieve, when the arrival of the tannery to Ruku and Nathans

village completely changes their community for the worse. Due to globalization and the world

food market today, there has been a shift from producing food crops for ones own people to the

production of cash crops for the world market (Meat). While this was once seen as a possible

solution to poverty, it has proved to leave third world countries producing lots of food for the

first-world and still coming up short for food themselves. A better alternative is to teach third-

world countries better techniques of farming, so they are able to sustain themselves despite

unpredictable weather conditions, as well as sustain themselves independent of the first-world.

Farmers in a village in Northern India are doing just this, as they are changing their practices in

attempt to overcome the unpredictable weather with a climate smart village (Indias).

Josephina Kizza is a woman who is striving to do this as well by training farmers in Uganda to

integrate organic farming in order to have sustainable livelihoods. These are wonderful example

of the kinds of solutions we should pursue when addressing the problems with the agricultural

methods in the world that are, ultimately, leading to hunger and starvation.

As we think about poverty and hunger in the third-world, we must remember that we, in

the first-world, are directly and intricately connected to the suffering of these people. Barbara

Thomas-Slayter points this out in saying that we, in the industrialized North are linked

inextricably with laborers on the sugar plantations in the Philippines (Thomas 312-13). An

extremely relevant example of this today is the mass consumption of IPhones in the first-world
Elyse Sandberg HNGR 112 Final Exam Essay
Dr. Huff 16 October 2014
that is directly connected to the young men losing their lives mining in the DRC for the key

material needed to make those very phones. The reason men in the DRC are willing to mine in

such dangerous conditions is because this is where money can be made; this is a chance for them

to escape a life of poverty and a life of wondering where the next meal may come from. As we

see, we, in the United States, play a more direct role than we realize in the suffering and hunger

of people in third-world countries, and cannot simply sit back and ignore this fact.

In the video, The End of Poverty, we learned that the United States makes up less than

5% of the total population, yet is using up 25% of the worlds resources (The). There is

something very wrong and almost criminal about this statement. In his sermon, Bishop Niringiye

said, Lets not talk to the poor about their poverty, but to the rich about their greed. When it

comes to the issue of poverty and hunger, I think this is extremely profound. The problem of

poverty does not lie within the mistakes of the poor, but the greed of the rich. This earth has

enough resources, enough food, to sustain every living person. Yet we, in the United States, are

using a fourth of all of these resources. This strongly convicts me about the way I live my life as

a Christ-follower. After taking this class and being confronted with the poverty around the world,

I have come face to face with the greed in my own life. Corbett and Fikkert say it well in chapter

three of When Helping Hurts when they say, Our relationship to the materially poor should be

one in which we recognize that both of us are broken and that both of us need the blessing of

reconciliation (Corbett 75). As a faithful follower of Christ, I must now reevaluate my life, and

seek to live as a person whose heart not only breaks for the poor of the world, but breaks for the

rich as well; for we are all broken and in desperate need of the redemption and hope of a loving

Savior. Going forward, I want to be a person who, acknowledging my own brokenness, seeks to

serve Jesus by serving the suffering people around the world, for they are his beloved children.
Elyse Sandberg HNGR 112 Final Exam Essay
Dr. Huff 16 October 2014
Works Cited

"Bangladesh Floods Test Disaster Response Improvements." IRINnews. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Oct.

2014. <http://www.irinnews.org/report/100564/bangladesh-floods-test-disaster-response-

improvements>.

Corbett, Steve, and Brian Fikkert. When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without

Hurting the Poor-- and Yourself. Chicago, IL: Moody, 2009. Print.

"India's 'Climate Smart' Villages Target Sustainable Agriculture." VOA. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Oct.

2014. <http://www.voanews.com/content/india-climate-smart-villages-agriculture-

technology-farming/2439713.html>.

Markandaya, Kamala. Nectar in a Sieve. New York: J. Day, 1955. Print.

"Meat, Globalization and World Hunger." Welcome to HumaneResearch.org! N.p., n.d. Web. 16

Oct. 2014. <http://www.humaneresearch.org/content/meat-globalization-and-world-

hunger>.

The End of Poverty? Dir. Philippe Diaz. Perf. Martin Sheen, Amartya Sen, John Perkins. 2008.

DVD.

Thomas-Slayter, Barbara P. Southern Exposure: International Development and the Global

South in the Twenty-first Century. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian, 2003. Print.