Ending hunger by 2030 would cost just $93 billion a year — less than one per cent of the $21.9 trillion spent on military budgets over the past decade, according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP).
Ending hunger by 2030 would cost just $93 billion a year — less than one per cent of the $21.9 trillion spent on military budgets over the past decade, according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP).
Slightly philosophical question, but what does “ending world hunger” mean? Spending 1% of military budget to feed everyone once? Hiring lifelong farmers to build out fields and grow food? Would not food security lead to higher birth rates, which would eventually lead to higher food requirements, when sometimes it already feels somewhat unsustainable? I’m just confused at the meaning behind “ending world hunger”
That’s a good question, followed by a lot of bad assumptions.
Excuse me for being skeptical, but I’ve been hearing about ending world hunger for 3 decades now, and if it’s as easy as moving only 1% of the military budget, then… I just feel like there’s more to this than media tells us on the surface level
Distributing agricultural surplus at market rate relative to population demand rather than market demand.
Firstly, no.
Pulling people out of starvation tends to reduce family sizes, as people don’t plan their families with the expectation of high levels of child mortality.
Secondly, “you need to starve to death because we’re afraid you might live long enough to have kids” is a fucked public policy on the scale of Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Finally,
Sustainability is a consequence of land use policy, not population rate. India and China are the classic case studies of this in practice. But you can see the pattern repeated across the planet.
Vegetarian agriculture is significantly less taxing on the ecology than animal agriculture. When you compare arable land requirements per Ethiopia, Bangledish, or Thailand residents to the dietary demands of Americans, Israelis, or Argentinians, what you discover is the enormous toll animal farming takes.
The unsustainable clear cutting of jungle and near-malicious misuse of limited irrigation drives up costs and cripples availability in even the wealthiest (and most thinly populated) nations on Earth.
Meanwhile, significantly more populace regions can thrive on a primarily vegetarian diet.