The Face of Hunger in DPR Korea

[xomputer]

World Food Programme(WFP) released videos showing the reality of starving North Korean children and the aftermath of flooding.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAcwHZraZGs]The Face of Hunger in DPR Korea - YouTube[/ame]
This video shows the starved and malnourished children of a nursery of Hwanghaedo area, and flood-destroyed bridges, roads, and rice paddies.
The children of the nursery have no focus in their eyes due to the malnutrition, and skin diseases all over them due to unsanitary water. With just skin and bones, they don't even have the strength to stand; the whole nursery is full of children just sitting like living corpse. It is an extraordinarily saddening scene.

The food shortage of North Korea only worsened after the recent flooding. European Union and the USA have been showing willingness to provide food aids, but it is unclear whether the government of North Korea will actually and honestly deliever the food to the starving citizens.

Little children who should be playing outside innocently are dying helplessly because of a flawed society. We can only hope for North Korea's willingness to solve this food shortage problem.

 

[editec]

Evil place, North Korea.

 

[JWBooth]

Evil place, North Korea.

No place is evil, the state and it's policies that create starvation, now that's evil.

 

[waltky]

Multi-stratergy approach to solving world hunger...

The world can feed itself without ruining the planet, study says
October 14, 2011 - Author Jon Foley says feeding a growing world presents a huge challenge. But employing many strategies simultaneously can meet the problem.

Recent global population growth estimates (10 billion by 2100, anyone?) plus slowing annual increases in agricultural yields have a lot of analysts worried that many of those new people will suffer from chronic hunger – and that much of the land that hasn’t been converted to agriculture will be plowed under to grow crops. But a new study in the journal Nature argues that we can feed the world’s growing population without destroying the planet… if we make major adjustments now in agricultural and consumption practices and patterns. (Hey, if it were easy, we’d already be there, right?)

Based on new data about the Earth’s agricultural lands and crop yields, the study offers some core strategies to meet future food production needs and environmental challenges. Those strategies include:

* Stop farming in places like tropical rainforests, which have high ecological value and low food output;
* Improve crop yields in regions of Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, where farmland isn’t meeting its potential;
* Change farming practices to better manage water, nutrients, and chemicals;
* Shift diets away from meat; and
* Stop wasting food (up to 1/3 of all food grown is wasted either in production, transport, or after purchase).

Taken together, these strategies could lead to 100-180 percent more food available for consumption and sustain the lakes, rivers, forests, and soil that food production depends on. I talked with Jon Foley – lead author of the study and director of the University of Minnesota’s Institute for the Environment, as well as a member of The Nature Conservancy’s Science Council advisory board – to find out what it would take to make these recommendations a reality.

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[waltky]

People hungry all over the world...

Nearly 3 Million Facing Hunger in Afghanistan
Friday, November 18th, 2011 - A group of aid agencies has warned that nearly three million people in Afghanistan are facing hunger as the region's harsh winter months approach.

The group of nine charities, including Oxfam and Save the Children, said Friday this year's severe drought has left communities with very little food. The agencies said the scarcity, combined with soaring food prices, have caused families to skip meals, borrow money or even migrate. They said many schools have closed because children are having to work.

The United Nations launched an emergency appeal for $142 million in October to help relieve the situation, but so far international donors have funded only 7 percent of that amount.

Oxfam's director in Afghanistan, Manohar Shenoy, said there is little time left to provide communities with the help they need before certain areas become inaccessible due to inclement weather. He said snow is already falling in some areas.

Source

See also:

Chronic Malnutrition Crosses Borders
Nov 9, 2011* - Our Neighbors, Ourselves: Guatemala’s
Chronic Malnutrition Crosses Borders

The soil is fertile and the people have been farming it for generations. The climate is right for several growing seasons of corn, wheat, beans, and myriad other crops. Why then does Guatemala have more chronically malnourished children than any other country in the Western Hemisphere, ranking sixth among nations globally for this human development indicator? Food insecurity is not only a barrier to development in Guatemala—it has direct implications for neighbors in Central America and, ultimately, points north.

Guatemala’s crisis has been the subject of international press in the last couple of years—finally, the world is learning that one out of every two Guatemalan children younger than 5 years old is chronically malnourished. The national data mask an even worse situation among indigenous populations (mostly Maya people) where malnutrition stunts the growth of 65.9 percent of indigenous children ages 3 months to 59 months, compared with only 36.9 percent among non-indigenous children.

In Guatemala, leaders are just beginning to see how this situation holds everyone back, not just the malnourished and the poor who make up 51 percent of the population. Kevin Kelly, USAID/Guatemala mission director, explains: “Public awareness is growing that high levels of chronic malnutrition have far-reaching repercussions, including poverty and crippled economies that result in large numbers of disenfranchised youth migrating or engaging in criminal activities.”

How does this happen? Malnutrition stymies cognitive and physiological growth in the first 1,000 days of life—from a mother’s pregnancy through her child’s second year of life. This irreversible stunting dooms children to repetitive illness, inhibits them intellectually and physically, and ultimately reduces their productivity as adults by roughly a third. For society, this adds up to a dire scenario: Results from a recent UNICEF study show that chronic malnutrition costs Guatemala $8.4 million each day in reduced productivity, hospitalization, student failure, and repetition in the first three years of primary school.

Crisis Cross-Pollination

 

[waltky]

Fishing for the right solution to hunger...

Aquaculture could help feed rising world demand for protein
December 19, 2011 - Fish farming needs fewer resources than raising livestock and can be more environmentally sound than open-water fishing.

According to a recent report by the World Fish Center, while natural fish stocks are being rapidly depleted aquaculture, or the farming of fish and other aquatic species, could play an important role in meeting rising global demand for marine and freshwater products. Aquaculture is one of the fastest-growing food production systems in the world – it grew more than 21-fold since 1970. Currently, half of the seafood we eat comes from aquaculture, and as the human population continues to rise, demand for marine and freshwater products is likely to continue to grow.

There are many positive aspects to aquaculture. When compared to global livestock production, aquaculture requires less land, water, and natural resources. Farming fish is a comparatively more efficient way of supplying protein primarily because fish are coldblooded and have low metabolic rates. This results in more units of energy of protein produced for each unit of energy it took to raise the fish. Aquaculture may also be the only means to markedly increase future seafood production, causing less detrimental impacts to marine ecosystems than fishing.

Furthermore, not only can aquaculture provide nutritious food, fishing and fish farming generate income and employment to millions of communities around the world. Trade in marine and freshwater products can help alleviate poverty and contribute to national economic growth in many developing countries. The World Fish Center states that while aquaculture has many positive characteristics, particularly in light of the current state of global fisheries and livestock, the degree of environmental impact depends greatly on a variety of factors, including the particular species being farmed and the production system being used. The wide range of impacts between different production methods indicates the need for improved regional learning networks, where new technologies and sustainable methodologies can be disseminated to other producers, particularly those in the developing world.

Aquaculture has a great potential to meet rising demand with limited impact to the environment, while also providing employment and economic opportunity to impoverished communities. These efforts, however, are stymied by poor oversight and inconsistent regulation. If aquaculture is to achieve its production potential with limited impact on the environment, the public and private sectors will need to develop a coordinated and consistent policy, and a robust regulatory and management framework.

Source

 

[waltky]

Too many starving children throughout the world...

Poor diet kills 2.6 million children per year: charity
Thu, Feb 16, 2012 - HIDDEN DANGER: Save the Children says lives are being destroyed by a hunger crisis, and suggested a world hunger summit to coincide with the Olympics

Malnutrition is the root cause of the deaths of 2.6 million children each year, and the bodies and brains of 450 million more will fail to develop properly due to inadequate diet over the next 15 years unless immediate action is taken, according to a survey published yesterday by a leading international charity. The survey of developing countries, A Life Free From Hunger, produced by Save the Children, estimates one in four children are already stunted because of malnutrition. In some developing countries the figure is one in three. In India 48 percent of children are stunted. In high population-growth Nigeria and Tanzania, the problem is escalating rapidly, it said.

Soaring food prices are an aggravating factor. However, these damaging trends can be halted and reversed using tried and tested solutions if the political will exists and public awareness is raised, the authors said. They urged British Prime Minister David Cameron to use the 2012 Olympics, when dozens of heads of state will be in London, to host a “world hunger summit” and launch a campaign to aid malnutrition victims. Campaigners also want the issue addressed at the G8 summit in Chicago in May. “This is a hidden hunger crisis that could destroy the lives of nearly [500 million] children unless world leaders act to stop it. Every hour of every day 300 children die from malnutrition-related causes simply because they don’t get to eat the basic, nutritious foods. Yet solutions are clear, cheap and necessary. Not only will tackling hunger save children’s lives but, at a time of economic meltdown, it will help reboot the global economy,” said Justin Forsyth, chief executive of Save the Children.

Overall progress had been made in recent years in reducing avoidable child deaths worldwide through immunization and training frontline health workers, Forsyth said. Now a big push was required on a third front, to reduce and ultimately eliminate malnutrition. The survey says this year is vital. By the middle of next year it will already be too late to provide protection from stunting for the last generation of children who will reach their second birthday — a key nutrition milestone — by the deadline set by the UN’s 2015 Millennium Development Goals. “Significant progress has been made in saving children’s lives. The number of children not making it to their fifth birthday has fallen from 12 million in 1990 to 7.6 million [last year],” the survey said. “Momentum is building — [last year] world leaders made critical progress on immunization by pledging to vaccinate 250 million children by 2015, saving four million lives, and 40 countries committed to filling the 3.5 million healthworkers gap,” it said. “At the same time we must accelerate efforts to improve nutrition, which holds the key to further progress,” it said.

The survey said progress on stunting has been extremely slow. About 80 percent of all stunted children live in 20 of the world’s poorest countries, and this has a significant impact on economic development. Sharply rising food prices are a big negative factor. In Nigeria 94 percent of families cited prices as their most pressing concern and nearly a third of parents said they had taken children out of school and sent them out to work to help pay for food. “In the past year nearly [250 million] parents in countries already struggling with malnutrition have cut back on food for their families,” Forsyth said.

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