Food: The New Gold

Food: The New Gold — page 3 — isn't it distributed to everyone equally How can we make sure that humans have enough safe healthy food for generations to come How do politics climate and science shape food supplies This book explores those questions and more DESPERATE FOR FOOD In the Caribbean nation ofHaiti poor women cannotafford the high price of rice and other basic foods Instead they buy dirt mix in vegetable shor tening salt and water and make cookies with it In the Central American nations of El Salvador Guatemala Honduras and Nicaragua the cost of corn beans and rice has doubled in one year People can afford only half what they could buy the year before Eating less is their only option

Food: The New Gold — page 4

Food: The New Gold — page 5 — A destitute family in Mauritania in Africa kills its goat to have meat for a few days But by killing the goat the family loses its supply of goat milk for breakfast In Somalia another African nation people look for food in a garbage dump Famine struck the Horn of Africa Somalia Ethiopia Eritrea and Djibouti in 2011 More than 13 million people in this region face malnourishment and starvation By August 2011 approximately thirty thousand children under the age of five had died from famine Of the seven billion people on Earth 925 million 13 percent suffer from hunger Worldwide one third of childhood deaths result from malnutrition unhealthy diet and hunger related illnesses The main cause of hunger and starvation is poverty Around the world one billion people live on less than one dollar per day Poverty itself is the result of many things including social inequalities government corruption and global economics These same forces often prevent food supplies from reaching the people who need them And in times of warfare or natural disaster the suffering of hungry people often orsens FEEDING THE WORLD's POOR Around the world many organizations work to feed the hungry On a local level churches food shelves and other charitable organizations provide food within their communities On a global level private organizations such as Oxfam International Bread for the World and other groups try to alleviate widespread hunger The United Nations UN an international peacekeeping and humanitarian organization is a leading force in feeding the world s poor For instance the UN World Food Programme sends emergency food aid to people living with natural disasters or war Many governments supply food aid to poor nations The United States provides more international food aid about 2 billion each year than any other country The United States distributes this money through the U S Agency for International Development USAID which gives grants money for specific projects to nonprofit organizations th transport deliver and distribute food in poor nations The shipments of food generally include nonperishable unlikely to spoil items such as wheat corn peas and lentils FOOD THE NEW GOLD

Food: The New Gold — page 6 — With skills learned fron the Intern ional Fund for Agricultural Development IFAD this farmer Lanka cears an irrigat canal in his field of onions TEACH A MAN TO FISH Have you ever heard the proverb Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime People dedicated to fighting world hunger often quote this saying They believe that helping hungry people must involve not only giving them food but also teaching and helping them to grow or obtain their own food so they can be self sufficient For example the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development IFAD gives loans and technical assistance to poor farmers One IFAD project loaned money to sheep farmers in a mountainous area of Tunisia in North Africa A woman named Siham used her loan to buy four ewes female sheep and a ram a male sheep The animals mated and gave birth to more sheep Siham sold some of the animals to be butchered for food She sold wool from some of the other sheep to a blanket manufacturer She used the money she earned to repay her loan and to expand her business Over time Siham s herd grew to sixteen sheep With her earnings she built a room onto her family house She

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