Ch 15 - Hunger and the Future of Food

pgs. 568-572, 580-583 Table 15-5 pg. 580

World Poverty and Hunger

• Famine

  • The most visible form of hunger is famine, an extreme food crisis in which

    multitudes of people in an area starve and die. The natural causes of famine—droughts,

    floods, and pests—occur, of course, but they take second place behind political and

    social causes. For people of marginal existence, a sudden increase in food prices, a drop

    in workers’ incomes, a change in government policy, or outbreak of war can suddenly

    leave millions hungry. The World Food Programme of the United Nations responds to

    food emergencies around the globe.

  • Intractable hunger and poverty remain enormous challenges to the world. In parts

    of Africa and the Middle East, killer famines recur whenever human conflicts converge

    with droughts in countries that have little food in reserve even in a peaceful year.

    Racial, ethnic, and religious hatred along with monetary greed often underlie the food

    deprivation of whole groups of people. Farmers become warriors and agricultural fields

    become battlegrounds while citizens starve. Food becomes a weapon when warring factions

    repel international famine relief, or steal it for themselves, in hopes of starving

    their opponents before they themselves succumb.

The Malnutrition of Extreme Poverty

• In the world’s most impoverished areas, persistent hunger inevitably leads to malnutrition.

  Multitudes of adults suffer day to day from the effects of malnutrition, but medical personnel

  often fail to properly diagnose these conditions. Most often, adults with malnutrition

  feel vaguely ill; they lose fat, muscle, and strength—they are thin and getting thinner.

  Their energy and enthusiasm are sapped away. With unrelenting food shortages, observable

  nutrient deficiency diseases develop.

Hidden Hunger—Vitamin and Mineral Deficiencies

• Almost 2 billion people worldwide who consume sufficient calories still lack the variety

  and quality of foods needed to provide sufficient vitamins and minerals—they suffer

  the hidden hunger of deficiencies. Nutrient deficiency diseases emerge as body systems

  begin to fail. Iron, iodine, vitamin A, and zinc are most commonly lacking, and the

  results can be severe—learning disabilities, mental retardation, impaired immunity,

  blindness, incapacity to work, and premature death.

• These tragedies are devastating not only to individuals but also to entire nations.

  When many citizens suffer from mental retardation or blindness, or are incapacitated

  from parasites and serious infections, or die early from malnutrition, national economies

  decline as productivity ceases and health-care costs soar.

• The World Health Organization sets broad goals to ensure access to safe, nutritious,

  and sufficient food for all people at all times, and to extinguish all forms of malnutrition.

  The COVID-19 pandemic dealt these goals a severe setback. An estimated 100 million

  additional people have been thrown into hunger, and many millions of them are

  children.

Malnutrition in adults most often appears as general thinness and loss of muscle.

Vitamin and mineral deficiencies cause much misery worldwide.

Consequences of Childhood Malnutrition

• In contrast to malnourished adults, young impoverished and malnourished

  children often exhibit specific, more readily identifiable conditions. The form

  malnutrition takes in a hungry child depends partly on the nature of the food

  shortage that caused it. The most perilous condition, severe acute malnutrition (SAM), occurs when food suddenly becomes unavailable, as in drought or war.

  Less immediately deadly but still damaging to health is chronic malnutrition,

  the unrelenting chronic food deprivation that occurs in areas where food supplies

  are chronically scanty and food quality is poor.

• SAM

  • About 10 percent of the world’s children suffer from SAM, often diagnosed

    by their degree of wasting. In the form of SAM called marasmus, lean

    and fat tissues have wasted away, burned off to provide energy to stay alive.

    Children with marasmus weigh too little for their height, and their upper arm

    circumferences measure smaller than normal. Loose skin on

    the buttocks and thighs often sags down, so that these children look as if they

    are wearing baggy pants. They often feel cold and are obviously ill. Sadly, such children

    are described as just “skin and bones.”

  • Some starving children face this threat to life by engaging in as little activity as

    possible—not even crying for food. Others cry inconsolably. All of the muscles, including

    the heart muscle, are weak and deteriorating. Enzymes are in short supply, and

    the GI tract lining deteriorates. Consequently, what little food is eaten often cannot be absorbed.

  • A less common form of SAM is kwashiorkor. Its distinguishing feature is edema,

    a fluid shift out of the blood and into the tissues that causes swelling. Loss of hair color

    is also common, and telltale patchy and scaly skin develops, often with sores that fail

    to heal. In a dangerous combination condition—marasmic kwashiorkor—muscles

    waste, but the wasting may not be apparent because the child’s face, limbs, and abdomen

    are swollen with edema. Historically, kwashiorkor was attributed to too little

    protein in the diet, but today researchers recognize that the meager diets of starving

    children do not differ much—they all lack protein and many other nutrients.

  • Each year, 3.1 million children, some 6 children every minute, die as a result of poor

    nutrition. Most of them do not starve to death—they die from the diarrhea and dehydration

    that accompany infections, such as malaria, measles, and pneumonia.

• Chronic Malnutrition

  • A much greater number of children worldwide live with

    chronic malnutrition. They subsist on diluted cereal drinks that supply scant energy

    and even less protein; such food allows them to survive but not to thrive. Intestinal

    parasites drain nourishment away, too. Growth ceases because they chronically lack

    the nutrients required to grow normally—they develop stunting, and it can be irreversible.

    13 They may appear normal because their bodies are normally proportioned, but these stunted children may be no larger at age 4 than at 2, and they often suffer the

    miseries of malnutrition: frequent infections and diarrhea, and vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

Malnutrition in adults is widespread but is often overlooked; severe observable deficiency diseases develop as body systems fail.

Many of the world’s children suffer from wasting due to severe acute malnutrition, the deadliest form of malnutrition.

Many more children’s growth is stunted because they chronically lack the nutrients needed to grow normally.

Medical Nutrition Therapy

• Loss of appetite and impaired nutrient absorption interfere with attempts to provide

  nourishment to a malnourished child. Even with hospital care, many children do not

  recover from SAM—their malnutrition proves fatal. For a chance to restore metabolic

  balance and to resume physical growth and mental development, children with

  SAM need medication and nursing care for their illnesses, and skillful reintroduction of nutrients from specially formulated fluids and foods.

• Children dehydrated from diarrhea need immediate rehydration. With severe fluid and

  mineral losses, blood pressure drops and the heartbeat weakens. The right fluid, given

  quickly by knowledgeable providers, can help raise the blood pressure and strengthen

  the heartbeat, thereby averting death. Health-care workers save millions of lives each

  year by reversing dehydration with oral rehydration therapy (ORT). In addition, such

  children need adequate sanitation and a safe water supply to prevent infectious diseases.

• Once medically stable, malnourished children benefit from ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF), specially formulated food products intended to promote rapid reversal of

  weight loss and nutrient deficiencies. Manufacturers blend smooth pastes of oil and

  sugars with ground peanuts, powdered milk, or other protein sources and seal premeasured

  single doses in sterilized pouches. RUTF are ready to eat: they need not be mixed

  with water (a plus in areas with unclean water sources) or prepared in any way, and

  the pouches resist bacterial contamination. Importantly, RUTF can be safely stored for 3

  to 4 months without refrigeration, a rare luxury in many impoverished areas.

• Cost is the downside of commercial RUTF products: they are expensive to buy and

  ship to impoverished areas. A child may need to receive daily RUTF for up to 3 months

  for a full recovery with a low risk of relapse. To lower the cost, RUTF pastes can often

  be made on site from affordable local ingredients, increasing its availability to children suffering from severe malnutrition.

Oral rehydration therapy and ready-to-use therapeutic foods, if properly administered, can save the lives of starving children.

Commercial RUTF products are costly, but similar foods made from local ingredients cost less.

The Future Food Supply and the Environment

• Banishing hunger for all of the world’s people poses two major challenges. The first is

  to provide enough food to meet the needs of the Earth’s growing population without

  destroying the natural resources and conditions needed to continue producing food.

  The second challenge is to ensure that all people have access to enough nutritious food to live active, healthy lives.

• By all accounts, today’s total world food supply can feed the entire current population.

  For future supplies to remain ample, the world must cope with forces that threaten

  the production and distribution of its food.

Threats to the Food Supply

• Many forces compound to threaten world food production and distribution, both

  today and in coming decades.

  • Populattion growth. Every 60 seconds, 109 people die in the world, but in that

    same 60 seconds 255 are born to replace them. Every year, the Earth gains

    another 80,000,000 new residents to feed, most born in impoverished areas. By

    2050, a billion additional tons of grain will be needed to feed the world’s population,

    but such an increase may not be possible if the human population exceeds

    the Earth’s carrying capacity.

  • Loss of food-producing land. Agriculture uses about half of the world’s habitable

    land. Food-producing land is becoming saltier, eroding, and being paved over.

    The world’s deserts are expanding. As a result, huge natural areas are converted

    to food production each year.

  • Fossil fuel use. The entire food industry, from production and harvest through processing

    and delivery, requires 30 percent of all energy used worldwide, contributing

    significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. Fossil fuel use underlies much

    world economic growth, with associated pollution of air, soil, and water.

  • Greenhouse gases. More than 25 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases come

    directly from food systems. Agricultural sources include livestock methane production,

    fossil fuel use, fertilizer manufacture and application, and machinery. Other

    sources involve food processing, transport, packaging, and retail operations.

  • Rapid, widespread, and intensifying global climate change. That climate change is

    occurring is no longer a serious academic debate. Strong evidence indicates that

    recent warming is largely caused by human activities, especially the release of

    greenhouse gases through the burning of fossil fuels.

  In every world region, changes to the Earth’s climate appear to be occurring much faster than predicted. Many changes already set into motion are unprecedented, and some, such as sea level rise, are irreversible over centuries or millennia.

  • Increasing natural disasters. Society’s slow response to heed the warnings of

    scientists jeopardizes human life and livelihoods. Bouts of unsurvivable heat

    and humidity in some coastal subtropical areas now occur twice as often as

    they did in 1980. Everywhere, heat waves, droughts, fires, violent storms, and

    floods thwart farmers and destroy crops. Arid deserts are projected to expand by

    200 million acres in coming years in sub-Sarahan Africa alone. As ocean heat

    builds up, ocean food chains are likely to fail. Starting today, strong and sustained

    reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases could quickly limit some of

    these effects, but stabilizing global temperatures could take decades.

  • Species extinctions. Agricultural practices are responsible for 80 percent of extinction

    threats. Extinctions of species are occurring at an unprecedented and accelerating

    rate, including extinctions of soil microbes, amphibians, birds, mammals, sea life,

    plants, and pollinators on which food supplies depend. Of an estimated 14,000

    potential edible plants, only 150 to 200 are cultivated, leaving the remaining wild

    species at risk. Wild species may hold keys to climate change resiliency. A drought-resistant

    wild corn, for example, may contain genes needed to confer drought tolerance

    on domestic corn. Loss of wild species threatens global food security.

  • Fresh water shortages. Agriculture uses 70 percent of the world’s fresh water. Irrigation

    and rain wash fertilizers into waterways, polluting them and feeding algae overgrowth

    in lakes and oceans, causing dead zones that kill fish and other marine life.

  Over 2 billion people live in countries experiencing high water stress, particularly in the Middle East and Africa. If climate change and population growth continue on their current course, water supplies in arid and semi-arid places will dry up, forcing tens of millions of people from their homelands in just a decade or two.

  • Flooding and wildfires. Crop-damaging localized heavy

    storms are becoming more frequent and severe, causing

    flash floods that erode vast acreages of topsoil from

    parched land. As the climate warms and areas become

    drier, wildfires burn hotter and sweep through millions

    of acres of formerly lush forests.

  • Ocean pollution, warming, and acidification. Ocean pollution

    of many kinds is killing fish in large “dead zones” that

    expand as excessive algal growth and decay deplete dissolved

    oxygen in the water. Ocean water acidity increases

    as it dissolves excess carbon dioxide from fossil fuel

    emissions, threatening the acid-base balance and other

    environmental conditions critical to sea life.

• The global problems just described are all related, and, often,

  so are their solutions. To think positively, this means that any

  initiative people take to address one problem will help solve

  many others. To create sustainable, resilient food systems will require that everyone

  play a role, starting today. An obvious first step is to stop wasting the food already available.

Current food production and distribution methods are damaging the environmental systems and animal and plant species on which future food production depends.

Future food security is currently threatened by many forces.

Table 15–5: How to Reduce Waste and Stretch Food Dollars

Controversy 15: How Can We Feed Ourselves Sustainably?

• If predictions hold true, farmers will soon

  face greater pressures to feed a burgeoning

  world population while arable

  lands on which to do so are diminishing.

  To produce this food will require

  more land, water, and energy, and it

  must be accomplished while conserving

  the natural resources that make

  growing crops and animals possible into

  the future. What is needed is nothing

  short of another green revolution, except

  that this one must be doubly green:

  increasing the productivity of available

  land while protecting or restoring the

  environment. In addition, people today

  are urged to cut food waste and adopt

  a sustainable diet, to help ensure that

  resources are conserved as people are fed.

The Costs of Current Food Production Methods

• Producing food costs the Earth dearly.

  The environmental impacts of agriculture

  and the food industry take many

  forms, including water use and pollution,

  greenhouse gas emissions, and resource

  overuse. Related concerns of pressing

  importance but that exceed the scope of

  this discussion include the human costs

  of food production, such as child labor,

  exposure of farm workers to pesticides,

  unfair farm labor policies, and other

  social justice issues associated with

  agriculture both domestically and around the world.

Soil and Water Depletion

• Earth’s soil and fresh water are being

  depleted by today’s agricultural practices.

  Indiscriminate land clearing

  (deforestation) and overuse by cattle

  (overgrazing) are major causes. Traditional

  farming methods that turn over all topsoil each season expose vast areas

  to the erosive forces of wind and water.

  Exposed topsoil blows away on the wind or washes into the sea with rain, leaving unfertile areas

  behind. Moisture rapidly evaporates from

  exposed soil, drying it, necessitating

  more frequent water applications.

• Such unsustainable agriculture has

  already destroyed many once-fertile

  regions where civilizations formerly flourished.

  The dry, salty deserts of North

  Africa were once rich soils, the plowed

  and irrigated wheat fields that fed the

  mighty Roman Empire. Today, the

  Earth’s remaining rich soil areas are suffering

  the same mistreatment, causing

  destruction on an unprecedented scale.

Hidden Costs of Food Production

• Clearly, food imposes an additional cost

  on the environment—a constellation of

  inputs not simple to grasp by consumers

  in the grocery store and not reflected in

  the price tags. For example, to produce

  300 calories of canned corn, more

  than 6,000 calories of fuel are used to

  produce both corn and can, and then

  transport it. These other “hidden” costs

  must be accounted for, so that our food

  systems can adapt to changing conditions

  with workable plans to feed future

  populations.

Defining a Sustainable Diet

• Not all diets are equally taxing on the

  environment, and people today can

  choose to eat a more sustainable diet.

  A sustainable diet significantly reduces

  the environmental costs of producing

  food. Such a diet is higher than the typical

  U.S. diet in legumes, whole grains,

  nuts, seeds, fruit, and vegetables and

  lower in red meats and highly processed

  foods. Perhaps the greatest reason

  to choose a sustainable diet is self-interest—

  its foods are highly nutritious

  and, with regular consumption, it can

  reduce the risks of chronic diseases.

• Sustainable diets can be diverse in

  their cultural characteristics, but they all

  have these things in common. Sustainable diets:

  • 1. Ensure optimal human nutrition and support health at every life stage.

  • 2. Protect the natural environment and biodiversity.

  • 3. Achieve fairness in the economics of food production and purchase.

  • 4. Reflect societal and cultural values and protect animal welfare.

• These four domains often collide

  in ways that pose difficulties

  for decision-makers, particularly

  when considering individual

  foods. For example, sugar from

  beets provides food energy

  cheaply and supports farm and

  labor incomes. Processing beet

  sugar uses little water and emits

  minimal greenhouse gases.

  However, sugar fails to meet the

  primary sustainable criterion—

  sugar is low in nutrients, and

  high sugar intakes are linked

  with dental caries, suboptimal

  nutrient intakes, and metabolic

  diseases. Conversely, fresh

  fruit and vegetables meet

  the human health criterion

  superbly, but growing, processing,

  and delivering them have

  greater environmental and

  monetary costs than does beet

  sugar. In addition, growers

  and harvesters of fruits and

  vegetables may work in unfair conditions, problems that must be remedied

  to meet sustainability criteria.

The Burden of Livestock

• Cattle, buffalo, and sheep are ruminants,

  animals with specialized stomachs that

  allow them to ferment and absorb energy

  from fibrous plants, such as grasses, hay,

  beet fiber (a byproduct of sugar beet processing),

  and other roughage that people

  cannot consume directly. The animals

  convert these fibrous materials into valuable

  protein that people can eat, digest,

  and use to build and maintain body tissues

  and support critical body functions.

• Raising livestock, and particularly

  cattle, in wealthy, food-rich nations takes

  an enormous toll on land and energy

  resources. Cattle herds occupy land

  that once maintained itself in a richly

  biodiverse natural state. As too many

  of the same kinds of animals overgraze

  and trample the same land continuously,

  it suffers species loss, soil erosion, and

  water depletion. Livestock use more than

  75 percent of agricultural land but produce

  less than 20 percent of the world’s

  calories and less than 40 percent of the

  world’s protein that people require.

U.S. Meat Production

• When animals are raised in concentrated

  areas such as cattle feedlots or giant

  hog or chicken ”farms,” huge masses

  of manure are produced in these overcrowded,

  factory-style farms. These

  masses of manure emit potent greenhouse

  gases into the air as they decay and, with

  rain, they leach into local soils and water

  supplies, polluting them. In addition, fermentation

  of fibers in the ruminant digestive

  tract produces methane gas (a highly

  potent greenhouse gas) as a byproduct.

  The methane is released into the air,

  mostly from the animals’ mouths.

• Food animals themselves must be

  fed, and grain and soy are grown for them

  on other land. This often necessitates

  plowing fields and applying fertilizers,

  herbicides, pesticides, and irrigation.

  Fertilizers emit nitrous oxide, a greenhouse

  gas with 265 times the global

  warming potential of carbon dioxide. In

  all, almost 15 percent of yearly global

  greenhouse gas emissions derive from

  livestock production.

Some Benefits of Livestock in the Developing World

• In food-stressed areas of the world,

  where nutrients are in short supply, the

  benefits of ruminant animals appear to

  outweigh their environmental costs, at

  least temporarily. Ruminants help provide

  needed nourishment to marginally

  fed women and children, help stabilize

  local economies, provide income

  streams to families, and contribute to

  regional food security. Food animals

  raised in these areas graze on sparse

  wild grasses or shrubs that grow mostly

  on lands unsuitable to other uses, thus

  converting inedible plants into milk

  and meat that can be consumed, sold,

  or traded. To find enough food, these

  animals must continually travel to new

  grazing areas, allowing previously grazed

  areas time to regenerate and grow.

• At some point in an area’s economic

  development, incomes rise and so does

  consumer demand for meat and dairy

  products, putting greater pressure on

  ecological systems. In 1999, meat and

  milk consumption in East Asia was

  about 100 pounds per person per year;

  by 2030, yearly consumption will have

  risen to almost 170 pounds per person.

  This unsustainable global trend poses a

  growing threat, particularly when cattle

  are raised in unsustainable ways. The

  sheer number of cattle currently on

  Earth, almost 1 billion, creates a serious

  environmental impact that is worsening

  with growing numbers of herds.

Advances in Agroecology

• Should plants replace all livestock in U.S.

  agriculture, then? Would this shift cause

  nutrient inadequacies in the U.S. diet?

  Would it achieve sustainability? Answers

  to these and other pressing questions are

  emerging from studies in agroecology,

  the field of science focused on the needs

  of agriculture and the environment.

The Carbon Sink Concept

• Unlike animals, living plants act as a

  carbon sink, a sort of carbon storage

  unit. Green plants growing on land or

  in oceans capture and remove carbon

  dioxide from the air. The soil itself, left undisturbed, also indirectly sequesters

  carbon from atmospheric carbon

  dioxide. Using photosynthesis, plants

  incorporate carbon atoms in the carbohydrates

  that form their tissues

  and structures. Plant roots also

  release carbon into the soil where it nourishes

  microbes that form part of a vast,

  biodiverse community of organisms that

  enrich the soil, making it more hospitable

  to growing plants—a beneficial cycle.

• Carbon sinks remain intact until

  some force acts to release their carbon,

  such as farm tilling that exposes the

  soil to the air and eliminates plant

  roots, or applying pesticides that

  destroy the soil’s microbial and animal

  communities. A principle of agroecology,

  called “no-till” farming, protects the

  carbon sink of soils by keeping the soil

  covered with plants as much as possible

  and disturbing root systems as little as

  possible during planting and harvesting

  of foods. The pesticide-free methods

  of organic farming and composting

  also improve soil integrity and foster its

  carbon sink function by protecting and

  feeding its living inhabitants.

The Future of Livestock

• The problem with cattle may not be the

  cows themselves as much as the unsustainable

  techniques used to raise them. In

  fact, herds can be part of at least one solution.

  When farmers plant cover crops to

  let their fields rest, cattle herds can graze

  those fields, providing extra income for the

  farmers while keeping the fields trimmed

  and the soil in good condition for the next

  year’s crops. Rotating herds among various

  pastures and fields reduces damage,

  adds nutrients from manure, and allows

  forage plants to recover and diversify.

  Another way to minimize ecological impact

  of livestock is to capture the gases released

  from cattle, hog, and poultry manure

  before the gasses enter the atmosphere

  and the manure runs off into water. The

  recovered gases can be used as an energy

  source for electricity, heating, or transportation

  fuel on the farm. Safely composted

  manure makes excellent fertilizer.

• In truth, changing farming methods

  on a global scale will take more

  than scientific discovery. It will require large-scale commitment to adopting new

  practices, along with strong professional

  group and government support. So

  far, progress has been too slow to

  ensure a sustainable future for our

  food supply.

Sustainable Protein Choices

• Despite advances in agroecology, today’s

  animal protein foods are far more taxing

  than plant-based proteins on ecological

  resources and systems. Replacing

  just one meal of animal protein with

  plant protein each day can significantly

  reduce greenhouse emissions and water

  consumption, while improving diet

  quality for most people.

Legumes

• Producing a meal of beef emits 60 times

  more greenhouse gas than does producing

  a nutritionally similar meal of

  legumes. Legumes enrich soil, too,

  because they capture nitrogen from the

  atmosphere and transfer it to nodules

  on their roots and ultimately to the soil. When

  farmers alternate their cash crops with

  deep-rooted legumes, the legume plants

  remove nitrogen and carbon dioxide from

  the atmosphere, and drive these elements

  deep into the soil where they stay sequestered

  until they are taken up and used by

  the next season’s cash crops.

Nuts

• Nuts provide valuable protein with little

  or no environmental impact. Groves of nut

  trees absorb carbon dioxide to build

  their massive roots, trunks, leaves, nuts,

  and other structures—they are carbon

  sinks. With the exception of water for

  trees grown in arid zones, nuts require

  few inputs, and after initial planting, they

  bear crops for decades with no soil disturbance.

  As with all foods, inputs are

  required for harvesting, processing, and

  transporting the nuts to market.

Fish and Seafood

• Choosing fish and seafood in place of

  some meat is sensible, too, because

  fish convert feed to edible protein with

  relative efficiency. However, some species are overfished and in danger of

  collapse, while some others are raised or

  harvested unsustainably. Much of the

  world’s fish and seafood today is supplied

  by aquaculture, fish farms stocked

  with edible species raised in ocean

  cages or inland pools and fed with fishmeal.

  Fish meal is often made from wild

  fish captures, further depleting wild fish

  stocks, also an unsustainable practice.

• Buying sustainable seafood can be

  tricky; strategies change as fisheries

  adapt and stocks recover.

Meat Alternatives

• For meat-loving but concerned consumers,

  plant-based meat alternatives that

  mimic the taste and texture of burgers or

  chicken may ease the transition from a

  meat-centered dietary pattern to a plantbased

  diet. The manufactures claim

  that, compared with beef, their products

  require less energy, water, and land, and

  generate fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

  Some questions remain about the

  role of these highly processed foods as

  part of a healthy and sustainable diet.

Good for You, Good for the Planet

• Conscientious consumers are making

  a difference through the choices they

  make, and are sending clear signals to

  growers and manufacturers that they

  demand more sustainable products.

  New, fresh ways of thinking about how

  to obtain foods can also enliven the diet

  and enrich daily life.

Keeping Local Profits Local

• Farmers selling their broccoli, carrots,

  and apples at city farmers markets and

  roadside stands often net a higher profit

  than when selling to wholesalers. Buying

  local supports farm fairness, too. Farm

  workers in food-insecure countries earn

  meager wages to grow and harvest foods

  shipped to wealthy nations. This keeps

  food prices low for wealthy consumers

  but traps the farm workers in inescapable poverty.

• The answer is not simply to “buy

  local.” Shopping for local foods makes

  sense for local economies, but what

  consumers buy rather than where

  may make the greatest environmental

  impact. A meal of locally grown beef or

  chicken has a larger ecological cost than

  legumes or vegetables grown elsewhere

  and shipped. If “elsewhere” is an area

  known to pay fair farm wages, this

  choice supports social justice as well.

Buying in Season

• Buying local in-season foods provides

  several other benefits. Off-season produce,

  fresh or frozen, must be refrigerated

  and transported often thousands

  of miles by jet planes, freighter ships,

  freight trains, or semitrucks, greatly

  increasing its ecological impact. In addition,

  families who buy homegrown produce

  or grow it themselves tend to eat

  greater quantities and varieties of fruit

  and vegetables, and the health benefits

  of this practice are well known. Alternatively,

  through a farm share, consumers

  can buy weekly shares of a local farmer’s

  fresh harvest in season.

Conclusion

• The problems of providing food for future

  generations are global in scope, yet the

  actions of individual people lie at the

  heart of their solutions.

• Do what you can to tread lightly on

  the Earth. Advocate for sustainability

  and agricultural fairness, and vote with

  your food purchases. Celebrate changes

  that are possible today by making them

  permanent and reap the benefits of

  increased health, and the promise of

  sustainability for future generations. Do

  the same with changes that become possible

  tomorrow and every day thereafter.

Key Terms

• Hunger

  • physical discomfort, illness, weakness, or pain beyond a mild uneasy sensation arising from a prolonged involuntary lack of food; a consequence of food insecurity.

• Food Crisis

  • a steep decline in food availability with a proportional rise in hunger and malnutrition at the local, national, or global level.

• Food Poverty

  • hunger occurring when enough food exists in an area but some of the people cannot obtain it because they lack money, are being deprived for political reasons, live in a country at war, or suffer from other problems such as underemployment, unemployment, or lack of transportation.

• Food Recovery

  • collecting wholesome surplus food for distribution to people who lack food.

• Food Banks

  • facilities that collect and distribute food donations to authorized organizations feeding the hungry.

• Food Pantries

  • community food collection programs that provide groceries to be prepared and eaten at home.

• Emergency Kitchens

  • programs that provide prepared meals to those who need them. Mobile emergency kitchens can be dispatched to wherever the need is greatest; permanent facilities are often called soup kitchens or congregate meal sites.