Global food crisis solutions not as clear as cause

By Steve Coulter

It’s easy to pinpoint the reasons causing our planet’s food shortage epidemic; however, when tracing the global food crisis solutions, there isn’t as much clarity.

We know a rise in food prices, coupled with the unbounded increase in oil prices, is a root cause of the issue, but what does this really mean for those trying to enact a plan?

There are currently 6 billion people living in the world today and, shockingly, it has been estimated a sixth of that population suffers from chronic hunger. With a number that big – 1 billion – it seems hopeless that any global food crisis solutions out there could come close to working, or being affective.

What’s almost more alarming about the number is it fails to factor in those who persistently receive an inadequate amount of vitamins and nutrient deficiencies.

If these factors were included, then the number of those suffering from chronic hunger would be closer to 3 billion. With the number that high, global food crisis solutions have to take into account half of the world’s population when they are presented and actualized.

Hunger and malnutrition are deeply interconnected with international poverty, which further hinders any progress presented by global food crisis solutions; however, there have been countries that have seen success combating the crisis.

Such an example is the country of Malawi, an impoverished and famine-depleted country in southern Africa. In the middle part of the last decade, the nation implemented a fund to help make fertilizers and high-yield seeds more accessible to farmers.

After just one year, the country’s harvest doubled, which is a good sign of things to come; however, the world has turned a blind eye on their success – a fund that would cost around $10 per person annually. While this tax, or donation, may seem unreasonable, such a worldwide cause is actually a practical solution in fighting the global food crisis.

Another key step that must be taken is that the United States and their European allies must rewrite, or abandon altogether, their policies of converting foods into bio-fuels. While some of this subsidizing has produced fuels that don’t interact with food production and growth, there’s still a lingering concern that these nations are turning the cheek and putting the world’s food supply into a gas tank.

Ignorance has become an alarming factor when discussing global food crisis solutions. While the outcome of many proposed combatants seem bleak, this doesn’t mean we should altogether give up on our continued, international effort to help prevent the planet’s food shortage from getting worse.

Another plan needing to be put into the works is some sort of weather protection device that can act as a safeguard towards the world’s crops. The sooner this can be established, the better; however, expediting a proposal such as this one has only resulted in further stagnation by nation’s claiming to be ‘world powers.’

On the local level, one global food crisis solution is to build farm ponds, which can make the difference between a bountiful crop and a famine. What the pond does is it collects rainwater which is only allowed to be used in case of an emergency need for irrigation, brought on most likely by a dry spell.

In the later part of the past decade, the world enacted a Climate Adaptation Fund that was supposed to help poor regions suffering from climate change, or climate instability; however, this vital protection to food production ceased to really make an everlasting impact on the problem as a whole, rendering it as another failed global food crisis solution.

What’s most important when talking about solutions is to remain positive and don’t fall into the category of fatalists who believe there is no solution. Like any scarce resource endangering the well-being of our planet, we have to act together and we must act quickly. Unity and speed must be the two underlying factors of any presented solution. Although thinking long-term doesn’t hurt, ideas that deliver immediate results are more welcoming as the crisis continues to grow.

One final solution worth mentioning is new energy sources.  Again, the food shortage, and its increased prices, is a direct result of the oil crisis throttling the entire planet. More investments into sustainable development strategies will yield a more true global security, achieving something most people wouldn’t think is possible– an opportunity to solve two crisis at the same time.

It’s a scary time for our world, but the opportunity to make a positive difference is upon us right now. Remember, it’s about togetherness and promptness.

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myGroFarm Deluxe may not be a global food crisis solution on the scale of the whole population but personal and small solutions make a huge difference because it all adds up.  Helping to feed healthy home grown food to your family and neighbors creates a great connectedness.  It also decreases our dependence on large corporations, farmers, and catastrophic weather events on the other side of the world.