Food Shortage Over The Past Decades: an Opinion Piece

One of the most complex issues in the world today concerns human population. The number of people living off the earth s resources and stressing its ecosystem has doubled in just forty years. In 1960 there were 3 billion of us; today there are 6 billion. We have no idea what maximum number of people the earth will support. Therefore, the very first question that comes into people s mind is that are there enough food for all of us in the future? There is no answer for that. Food shortage has become a serious problem among many countries around the world. There are many different reasons why people are starving all over the world. The lack of economic justice and water shortages are just merely two examples out of them all.

Danielle Knight stated that The true source of world hunger is not scarcity but policy; not inevitability but politics, the real culprits are economies that fail to offer everyone opportunities, and societies that place economic efficiency over compassion. The author is trying to say that, basically, world hunger is mainly caused by us humans. The world is providing more than enough food for each and every one of us on earth according to the report - 'World Hunger: Twelve Myths'. The problem is that there are so many people living in the third world countries who do not have the money to pay for readily available food. Even if their country has excess food, they still go hungry because of poverty.

Since people are mistaken by scarcity is the real cause of this problem , governments and institutions are starting to solve food shortage problems by increasing food production, while there really is an excess of food in some countries. Although the green revolution was a big success globally, hunger still exists in some countries. The author stated, Large farms, free-markets, free trade, and more aid from industrialized countries, have all been falsely touted as the cure to end hunger . All of those are used to promote exports and food production, it doesn t increase the poor s ability to buy food he says. What the government really should do is to balance out the economy, and let more people earn more money to buy more foods.

Sandra Postel, on the other hand, has a different opinion than Danielle s. She proposed that without increasing water productivity in irrigation, major food-producing regions will not have enough water to sustain crop production . A large portion of the world s food comes from irrigated cropland. The productivity of irrigation is in jeopardy from the over pumping of groundwater , Sandra says. There s an annual water deficit of some 160 billion cubic meters, the amount used to produce nearly 10 percent of the world s grain. If we over pump groundwater, the wells will eventually dry up, and it will become too expensive to pump from greater depths.

The problem for water shortage will only get worse as the population grows. Already many countries are now suffering from not having enough water to meet domestic demands for food, creating a source of potential political instability , Sandra says. Sandra also stated that governments aren t really helping to solve this food shortage problem. There is no treaty among all the parties that sets out how that river water should be shared. In the absence of water-sharing agreements, tensions are bound to rise (Postel). Sandra s way to solve this problem is the Blue Revolution . Most of the farmers today irrigate the way their predecessors did hundreds of years ago (Postel). We need to boost our water productivity by newer technologies and better management for water. The inefficient use of water by people will eventually lead to more severe problems in the upcoming future.

Danielle proposed that economic policies should be changed so that there will be less poor people and therefore, ultimately improve the condition of world hunger. Sandra on the contrary, proposed a method called the Blue Revolution which boosts the water production in some major river flowing countries. Even though, both of them agreed that the government s policy is a huge factor of this problem. Their methods are practical, if people all over the world work together as a whole. Nothing can be done if selfishness exists. People should all stand out and face this problem together instead of ignoring it as if it s none of their businesses. If we can do this, the problem of food shortage should get better as future arrives.