14. Hunger Flashcards
You can think of global food consumers as being on three levels or tiers. At the bottom are about 1.1 billion people (about 20% of the world’s people) who are unable to provide themselves with a healthy diet. These people are classified as ____ ____, and at least 60% of them are children.
food-energy deficient
On the middle level are about 4 billion ____ ____, who get enough calories and plenty of plant-based protein, giving them the healthiest basic diet among the world’s people. They typically receive less than 20% of their calories from fat, a level low enough to protect them from the consequences of excessive dietary fat.
grain eaters
At the top are the world’s billion ____ ____, mainly in Europe and North America who obtain close to 40% of their calories from fat (three times that of the rest of the world’s people).
meat eaters
As people in the middle level (in China. for instance) become more ____, they tend to “move up the food chain” to emulate people at the top.
affluent
The high meat diet of those at the top is not only unhealthy, but creates a demand for meat production that causes a substantial share of the global inequity of food resources and ____ abuse.
environmental
While declining hunger rates may be cause for optimism, it is also true that in terms of absolute numbers there are more hungry people in the world and in America than ever before. because of the continued momentum of ____ ____.
population growth
First, for the present at least. chronic hunger is not caused by too many people or too little food. The world’s farmers produce enough cereals, meat, and other food products to ____ feed the world’s population.
adequately
Second, problems of hunger are caused by the way food is ____ - put another way, because people lack access to the food that exists.
distributed
Explanations of ____ allude to things like inequality and income distribution, population density and growth, agricultural research agendas, social disruptions like wars, social welfare and insurance policies, and agricultural trade and commodity prices.
hunger
Within academic and food policy circles, there are several styles of thinking to ____ why hunger exists, each with different emphases, some supportive evidence, and very different policy implications.
explain
____ ____ argues that the world hunger problem is caused by not enough food and the poor productivity of traditional agriculture, particularly as it is practiced in the LDCs.
Agricultural modernisation
AM. However appealing, it is misleading since everyone admits that the problem is not that there isnt enough food, but how it is ____.
distributed
AM. Furthermore, there is reason to think that if such “modernisation” of traditional agriculture were to take place under the aegis of large multinational agribusiness firms, the world would have more total food, but still there would exist the hunger of those who are malnourished because they are ____.
poor
Ecological neo-Mathusianism is the second way of theorising about the causes of hunger. Its logic seems straightforward: The more people there are, or the faster the rate of ____ ____, the less food and other materials will be available to other people.
population growth
EnM. But as all food analysts agree, even as rapidly as population has grown, it has been ____ by total food production increases.
outstripped
EnM. Population size or growth may not directly cause people to be ____ or die, but it may be a distant and pervasive factor related to more direct causes.
hungry
EnM. Ecological neo-Malthusianism sees population growth in conjunction with the progressive degradation of food-producing environmental resource bases like ____ and ____.
soil and water
EnM. In its most sophisticated forms, ecological neo-Malthusianism sees environmental ____ as being more important than population size or growth alone in explaining hunger.
sustainability
EnM. Ecological neo-Malthusianism is a well-established academic viewpoint that has only modest influence in food and agricultural policy circles. Cross-national research, for instance, finds population size and growth rates to be less strongly related to hunger than other factors, and the significance of population as a driver of hunger is very ____ ____.
regionally specific
EnM. Ecological neo Malthusianism views the limits of the global resource base as ____ ____ and requiring more sustainable forms of agriculture.
constraining consumption
It would require shifts in agricultural technology and practices away from those that have been successful and profitable but ____ damaging.
environmentally
Ideas about ____ and ____-____ (I & PE) represent a third style of explaining hunger, which particularly illustrates sociological conflict theory.
inequality and political-economy
IPE. It assumes that social ____ and ____ produced in the United States and developing nations - both locally and globally - cause hunger.
inequality and poverty
IPE. In a ____ era, inequality and poverty are perpetuated, and perhaps amplified, by growing world markets for food and other traded goods.
globalising
IPE. Such world markets are organized by ____ ____ with the support of government subsidies and international regimes like the world Trade Organization.
large corporations
IPE. World markets concentrate economic assets and increase the total volume of goods to be sold, but displace and disadvantage ____ ____ and workers in many nations.
small producers
Such huge markets work very well for the people with ____, but not well at all for those who have little money, or who are pushed out of jobs or off their land in the process.
money
IPE. Chronic hunger is more directly related to the distribution of food rather than to the total supply, and hunger is a problem of ____ to food in nations where others eat and are over-nourished.
access
When self-provisioning peasants and farmers are driven off the land by ____ and ____ of land.
modernisation and consolidation
When modernisation produces more food for markets but not for ____ and poor people.
displaced
When investing in more productive technology ____ hunger by putting people out of work.
amplifies
When affluence encourages ____ diets, requiring much grain to feed animals that could support the diets of many hungry people.
meat-rich
The agricultural modernisation approach rightly points to lack of capital investment in agriculture and agricultural research and development as related to both poverty and hunger. But while investing in agricultural modernisation, attempts to produce food security must take into account ____ ____.
environmental sustainability
Ecological neo-Malthusianism reminds us that solutions must be developed within the limits of the ____ and must be understood from a long-term perspective, but it overemphasizes population and environmental resources as independent causes of hunger rather than in context with the social and political factors that shape hunger.
biosphere
The I & PE approach is best able to incorporate insights of the other three perspectives, while pointing to dynamics that the other three downplay that the taproots of hunger lie most fundamentally in ____ ____.
social relations
While going a long way toward explaining hunger, these three perspectives gloss over several explanatory factors found related to the persistence of ____.
malnutrition
For instance, research demonstrates that ____ ____ like wars and civil unrest are the main antecedents of famine, particularly in areas where “entitlements to food” are low. Even people in very poor countries can usually manage to avoid famine where there are no social disruptions.
social disruptions
Second, _____ ____ such as severe storms, hurricanes, floods, and droughts are related to famine. Although natural disasters and famine are of some importance, researchers and policy circles have overemphasized them. Famines and natural disasters are estimated to cause only about 10% of all hunger deaths, and they are in many respects made by people.
natural disasters
Third, local ____ ____ like rural landholding structures, ethnic stratification, class and caste relations, regional inequalities, and community power structures shape hunger.
social relations
Fourth, _____ ____, gender inequality, and household power dynamics are not dealt with directly by the four perspectives. But all perspectives and scholars recognize that access to food is strongly gendered.
gender relations
Finally, hunger is related to food ____, or the ability of individuals and groups to “command food”. Entitlements defined by custom, social status, and law shape who eats and who doesn’t because they reflect access to social power. They reflect power relations at international, national, local, and household levels.
entitlements
