Failure to act by governments and international institutions has left more than 1 billion around the world undernourished, according to a coalition of religious, human rights and development groups.
“Despite record grain crops worldwide, the number of undernourished people in the world reached in 2009 the historically high figure of 1.02 billion people, about 100 million more than in 2008,” says a report released Monday (Oct. 12) by a coalition of groups including Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance, the Swiss Protestant agency Bread for All and the FoodFirst Information and Action Network.
The worldwide recession that started last year “pushed aside” the global food crisis, according to the report, “Who Controls the Governance of the World Food System.”
This article seems to reinforce the illusion that a lack of money (presumably provided by wealthier countries) the only thing preventing people from receiving the food they need to survive. But individual gifts from the US alone gives more than 10 times that much annually (from here):
The largest impediments to improving the material standard of living in poorer countries tend to be political (autocratic or Marxist governments) and religious or cultural (e.g., India’s caste system). It doesn’t mean that nothing can be done, but it isn’t as easy as just giving more money, you also have to change what people believe about the world.