Just yesterday I saw a short but eye-opening article on news.Yahoo.com entitled "More Americans than Chinese can't put food on the table" (read it here) which I must admit shocked me. I knew things were bad, but this was worse than I expected. According to the article:
The number of Americans who lack access to basic necessities like food and health care is now higher than it was at the peak of the Great Recession, a survey released Thursday found. And in a finding that could worsen fears of U.S. decline, the share of Americans struggling to put food on the table is now three times as large as the share of the Chinese population in the same position.
According to Feeding America, these are the most recent US hunger statistics:
In 2010, 48.8 million Americans lived in food insecure households,32.6 million adults and 16.2 million children.
You can see all the statistics for yourself on the Feeding America website here.
It is estimated that there are over 1.02 BILLION hungry people in the world.
I don't know why the US, or North America for that matter, isn't on this chart.
You can find more of these sad statistics for yourself. But today I want to also share just some of the promising things that people are doing to help ease this food crisis. In Wisconsin, we are fortunate to have Will Allen, a pioneer in urban farming and the founder of Growing Power. Growing Power aims for sustainable food production, as well as the growth of communities through the creation of local gardens. You can see more at their website, here: http://www.growingpower.org/index.htm
Here's Will Allen, describing his amazing work:
Will Allen and others who are reclaiming urban lots to produce food are working on just one of many potential answers to dealing with food shortages. While his ideas are new and innovative, others are looking to the past to find answers to today's problems. One such person is Britain's Martin Crawford, who in this next video takes you through his edible food forest garden, which is a model for resilient local food growing.
Food forests are not a new idea. Here's a short video about a 300-year old food forest in Vietnam:
And another short video about a 2000-year old food forest in Morocco:
So you see, I think there is hope. Great hope. But we need to work together, we need to help those who are less fortunate, and we have to stop using access to adequate food and water to keep some people down. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but there are enough ways to grow food and distribute it fairly, so that not one single person on the planet should die of starvation.
What kind of world of world do you want to live in?
In case you are interested, I wrote some other articles about food earlier this year on my other blog here:
http://amazingmotherearth.blogspot.com/2011/01/we-are-what-we-eat-bad-news-and-good.html
and here:
http://amazingmotherearth.blogspot.com/2011/06/farm-of-future.html
"Never doubt
that a small group of committed people
can change the world.
Indeed,
it is the only thing that ever has."
~ Margaret Mead
