Introduction
In our world today poverty and hunger are more prevalent than ever before, with developing countries suffering the most devastating statistics. Approximately 925 million people are living in poverty and hunger, with 98% of these people living in developing countries (World Food Programme 2012).
Poverty can be defined by people who lack the means to satisfy their basic needs (Yapa 1996).
This is a very broad definition of poverty and can incorporate both absolute poverty which means those who lack the necessities for survival like food and water and relative poverty which means people who are unable to meet a standard of living in a community like not being able to afford dentistry (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2012).
Whereas hunger can be defined as a feeling of weakness coupled with the desire to eat (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2012).
So why does so much of the world’s population live in hunger and poverty? It can be stated that the answer to this question is an inequality of distribution of resources. This essay will explore how poverty and hunger is largely a distribution of resources issues by exploring such social matters as; food as a commodity and the consequences, poverty and hunger as a failure of entitlements and lastly democracy as a cure for absolute poverty and hunger.
Food as a commodity and the consequences
To begin to understand how poverty and hunger developed through an unequal distribution of resources an understanding of the evolution of food production is needed. For thousands of years human beings were gathers and hunters finding and foraging for food (Robbins 2010), they later domesticated food, planted, and cultivated crops (Robbins 2010).
The Essay on World Hunger Food People Land
Can't find it here? Try Research Assistance world hunger By: Anonymous World Hunger Every day an estimated 24, 000 people die from hunger or hunger related causes. Three-fourths of these deaths are children under the age of five. One may wonder how this can be living in a country were it seems so much food is wasted everyday. Food restaurants and grocery stores throw away food every night before ...
For hundreds if not thousands of years humans lived and earned from their own lands (Robbins 2010), but this was to become a thing of the past. The industrial revolution was the birth of the capitalist system (or the production for the purpose of sale and profit, instead of production use) (Magdoff 2012), this meant that farmers/peasants had to flock into the cities to earn wages, as imperial powers demanded monetary taxes rather than good taxes, as well as new agricultural technologies minimising the need for human labour (Kuyek 2011).
This began a process that had converted food into a commodity and as cities and capitalism grew larger, so did food as a commodity to profit from (Magdoff 2012).
Food production became and still is a capitalist intensive industry (Kuyek 2011), which in turn has meant that access to food is largely determined by money.
The consequences of turning food into a commodity, using less human labour for food production and placing the ownership of food production in the hands of a few, means that people are more dependent on wages to access food (Robbins 2010).
Capitalism has produced, and runs according to a stratification of wealth (Magdoff 2012), meaning that if an individual becomes unemployed, their wages fall, or food prices soar they can starve despite being surrounded by food (Robbins 2010).
Therefore the market is not determined by the global need for food, but by the demand and money (Robbins 2010), this means that poverty and hunger exists because of an unequal distribution of monetary funds, as succinctly put by Robbins (2010) it is rare to starve when an individual has economic means. Food being used as a commodity also means that it may not always be used for human consumption but where ever the highest demand and prices come from (Magdoff 2012).
The Essay on Food Production and Poverty
Most people live on just a few dollars a day. Whether you live in the wealthiest nations in the world or the poorest, you will see high levels of inequality. In a world of plenty, a huge number go hungry. Hunger is more than just the result of food production and meeting demands. The causes of hunger are related to the causes of poverty. One of the major causes of hunger is poverty itself. The ...
For example the push for governments in the USA and Europe to lessen their dependency on oil and use ‘greener’ substitutes like biofuels (made from corn liquids) has consequently raised the price of corn. This rise in demand for food commodities means that poorer countries cannot afford to keep up with the demand and rising prices of corn (Magdoff 2012).
This again proves that poverty and hunger can largely be attributed to an unequal distribution of resources.
Poverty and Hunger as a failure of entitlements
As Amartya Sen stated people who are victims of poverty and hunger, are so when they cannot acquire enough food (Devereux 1988; Woldemeske 1990).
Sen’s entitlement theory (as referenced in Devereux 1988) goes on to state that when poverty and hunger occurs, it only affects specific groups of people who lack access to resources, and not the entire population of the geographical area affected. As stated in Devereux (1988) by Sen, food availability decline cannot cause poverty and hunger; it is the access to resources that causes poverty and hunger. For example just because a geographical area yields poor crops, does not mean that surplus food could not be brought from neighboring countries. And poverty and hunger can also occur in areas with no noted shortage of food availability, this could be due to unemployment and lack of monetary fund’s to gain access to food (Devereux 1988).
Again as Sen states the reason for poverty and hunger is a failure of distribution (Woldemeske 1990) and he explains this by how different people acquire their access to food in different ways. For example if Fred earns a wage, he will exchange this for food; called an exchanged entitlement to food (Woldemeske 1990).
Whereas Henry grows his own food; this gives him a direct entitlement to food (Woldemeske 1990).
If there was a flood that wiped out the food supply in the village, Fred can take his money to buy food elsewhere and may not be affected by the flood, but Henry who grows his own food and is reliant on its successful bearing could be a victim of poverty. As proven by Sen (referenced in Woldemeske 1990; Devereux 1988) poverty and hunger is largely an unequal distribution of resources or a failure of entitlements and not a largely a physical manifestation.
The Essay on Is Poverty Easy Food And Shelter
Is Poverty Easy Is poverty easy Some say yes and argue that the poor have so few things to worry about: food and shelter. People say that the poor have little money that they do not think what to do with it and who might be taking it away secretively. Yet, if one drives through their local downtown area and scans the area, one can see that being poor is not easy; rather it is probably the hardest ...
Democracy the Cure for Absolute Poverty and Hunger
An established modern day democratic nation with a free press does not experience absolute poverty and hunger, compared to non-democratic nations that are more likely to experience famine, hunger and absolute poverty (Sen 1994).
Each government no matter democratic or otherwise controls the distribution of resources to their people (D’Souza 1994), but without free press who enforces and reports to the people how the government distributes resources? As Sen (1994) argues free press is the corner stone of democracy, because it enforces the truth. Without free press there is no accountability for how governments spend money, historically money has been spent for governments own political purposes while sacrificing the needs of their people (D’Souza 1994).
If we take for example Australia, a country that is known for harsh climates of drought, and flood which creates a possible vulnerability of poverty and hunger, its saving features are that of democracy and free press. The Australian government is held accountable through elections, and free press, which has a strong foundation and tradition of political debate. Moreover the government is held accountable if absolute poverty occurs; schemes which prevent absolute poverty like financial government assistance packages evenly distribute resources. Factors like this guarantee that although Australia is vulnerable to droughts and food shortages it will never suffer widespread absolute poverty, as long as democracy prevails. In a democratic nation resources are more evenly distributed, due to free press and consequently public accountability of the government (D’Souza 1994), this means that poverty and hunger is largely a distribution of resources issue.
Conclusion
As recognized above through the themes of food as a commodity and the consequences, poverty and hunger as a failure to entitlements and democracy the cure for absolute poverty and hunger, it is clearly established that poverty and hunger is largely an issue of distribution resources. Food as a commodity and the consequences of a capitalist system means that access to food is now largely directly linked to the resource of money, as Robbins (2010) stated rarely anyone starves when they have the economic means, proving that poverty and hunger is largely a resource issue. Poverty and hunger as a failure to entitlements demonstrates that Sen’s theory of entitlements proves that poverty and hunger do not simply occur to due to natural disasters, but have many impacting social consequences, which again is largely a resources issue. And lastly this essay has looked at how democracy positively reduces/eliminates poverty and hunger through fairer distribution of resources, than those countries that are not democratic, again proving that poverty and hunger is largely a distribution of resources issue than anything else.
The Term Paper on Capitalism And Democracy Freedom Government Free
From the very dawn of intelligent human interaction to the present day, the concept of capitalism has dominated the way we trade goods and acquire wealth. Except for the necessity of a simple communist society in pre-modern times, or the noble humanistic notion of a socialist society, the free market has always been the most efficient way to run the economy once the most basic needs of life have ...
