Ending World Hunger

World hunger is probably one of the biggest issues in our world today.  As Josette Sheeran mentioned in her TED talk about ending hunger now, over one billion people on our planet are suffering from starvation and lack proper nutrition. This has been going on for years now, and while finding a solution has progressed a little bit, it seems we are still so far from solving this serious problem.

I think one of the main reasons why world hunger is still such a huge issue is because there is lack of food production in third world countries. Many of these countries cannot afford to produce healthy, nutritious food, and this is why it is our job as a nation, where there is a surplus of food, to help them financially and donate food. In the United States, the overproduction of food leads to many of us wasting food that could easily be sent to countries with no food instead. If we think about it, there are many times when people order food at a restaurant but later decide that they do not want to take their leftovers home because they “know they won’t eat it.” The obvious solution to this problem would be for restaurants to offer smaller portion sizes because so that people stop throwing away their food and throwing away their money. This also goes for supermarkets. As Tristham Stuart discusses in his TED talk, too many leftover unwanted food is being packaged and shipped off to landfills or thrown away. Instead of throwing away perfectly good food, it should be shipped off to malnourished countries because they need it and will benefit from it.

Another solution that Sheeran discussed in her TED talk was aiding small, local farms in these third world countries. Many of these farmers who have created farms to help provide for their villages struggle to produce enough food. If other countries around the world would send equipment or seeds that these local farmers need to succeed, then that is what we should all be doing.

World hunger is an issue that everyone knows exists but not enough people are motivated to change. More attention needs to be brought to this issue in order to fix it, and that starts with people joining together to fight this illness that is deeply affecting the world we live in.