Food scarcity and population growth are the two common assumptions that drive current global hunger anxieties. Today as many people in the developing world face starvation, a common explanation for their hunger is the widely held belief that overpopulation has placed stress on already tenuous food supplies. This simple route of thought is seemingly harmless or benign, yet it perpetuates the myth that hunger is a food scarcity issue, therefore failing to address malnutrition as the political and distributional issue that it truly is. Debunking the scarcity myth Today food production outstrips population growth, and in 2009 the world produced enough food to sustain 10 billion people. Globally we generate enough to feed every person nearly 2900 calories per day (Lappé and Collins, 2015). Yet 45% of grain produced does not go to direct human consumption with most of it instead diverted as feed for livestock cultivation (Plumer, 2014). Alarmingly a further 1.3 billion tonnes or 1/3 of food is wasted annually. (United Nations Environment Programme, 2021). Well maybe it’s just the third-world that don't produce enough food? Contrary to popular belief, a lot of third-world nations do actually produce enough food to feed their people. In fact, many countries with high hunger rates export more food than they import, whilst nations with higher import rates are not necessarily hungry. India, one of the world’s largest rice exporters produces enough food to outstrip its population by a third, yet 190 million of its people are starving. Similarly, Africa’s food production from 1990-2013 has outstripped its population growth by 22%, yet 12 sub-Saharan African countries with high levels of starvation still export more food than they import (Lappé and Collins, 2015). At the core of global food supply networks, an insidious paradox can be seen. Today we have more food than ever, yet millions are starving. Current discourse around malnutrition perpetuates the notion that hunger is a scarcity issue. Hunger is a nuanced distributional issue and our ability in the industrialized world to waste food is surely a testament to our hyper-consumer culture today. Distribution reform is more necessary than ever if we want to end hunger in the face of growing global food inequality. References: Lappé, Frances Moore; Collins, Joseph (2015) World hunger; 10 myths. Section: Myth 1: Too little food, too many people pg. 13—33. Grove Press Plumer, Brad (2014) How much of the world's cropland is actually used to grow food? https://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6053187/cropland-map-food-fuel-animal-feed United Nations Environment Programme (2021) Worldwide food waste https://www.unep.org/thinkeatsave/get-informed/worldwide-food-waste
