The Hunger Games.

Prologue.

When we think about starvation, famine, and hunger, do we all know what actually happen? What’s actually going on in this world? How this could even happen when we claimed humanity is in the age of its science and technology advancements? Do we really out of food? Do we need a bigger earth to feed all people? Do we need to stop and think a way to maintain or reduce the current total human population? What is the solution? What actually happen?

In my academic sphere there is seems a tug of war between the idea of decreasing human population and increasing food production.

There was once, a presenter in my class on a topic ‘Solution on Global Population Growth’ asked for votes to their suggested solutions; reduce the population or increase food production.  The votes really did go on equal sides.

Even there was one who proposed for mass human extermination as the solution. But, of course she was just trying to make a joke.

Inspiration.

Last year, I attended a public lecture by Bro. Hamza Tzortis and he said something that was very profound. He said, “Don’t ever tell me that we don’t have enough foods to feed the people when in one corner of the world thousands of people died because of obesity where on another thousands were dying because of starvation”.

The inspiration also came from my environmental science professor, Monika Havelka when she told us a story of world leaders in a conference. One of the European leaders addresses his desolation towards Bangladesh, one of the countries with high population density.  He said “Your country should stop your population growth which had put a burden on this earth to feed them and sustain the global ecosystem”. Then the Bangladesh representative said, “You know what, my 10 children consume much less than a child of yours. Tell me all of this when you stop buying X-Box and all other stuffs for your kids [when all of you start to consume less]”.

Now, let’s us explore the story. It is the story of women walking hundreds of kilometers to secure food for her children. It is the story of the children in a line for their entire day just to obtain water for their families. It really bothers me.  But, the stories really start to catch my attention when I learn about the sciences behind it.  I explored the issue in the topic of ‘Population Biology and Human Population’ under my environmental sciences studies. I will be talking about the sciences behind the stories. And try to tell you what actually happen.

Food Security.

Food security is the term coined to the problem of ensuring people getting their minimum requirement of foods/nutrients to perform their day to day activities.

So, to ensure food security, there is two basic issues.

Production-related and distribution-related issues.

to be continued...