World Food Report: Hunger – the result of complete ignorance

A tenth of the world’s population does not have enough to eat – because the global food and market system is failing. Now is the time for a united fight against hunger.

Anyone who is shocked is lying. A shock comes unexpectedly. The damning record of the World Food Report does not do it. The fact that a tenth of the world’s population does not have enough to eat in the 21st century is the result of complete ignorance. The rich world in the soup coma. And it’s getting more and more absurd.

Three billionaires are currently competing to fly their Playmobiles into space: faster, higher, limitless. The Bransons, Bezos, and Musks want to send tourists there on vacation. No, no cliché whining: they should be happy to do that. Because if not, no child will starve less in Africa. But: Why doesn’t the world invest as much energy, technology and money in the development of our food systems as the superbrains in their space dreams?

First climate change …

In Canada, the cornfields have been flaring for weeks. The northwest of one of the richest industrial countries fears for its harvest. Climate experts clearly state: This heat wave is man-made. The next one is just around the corner. And the politicians who clung to another environmentally hazardous oil pipeline until yesterday say: We have to adapt to climate change.

… then Corona

Corona was more surprising than climate change. According to the report, the pandemic is said to have increased the number of starving people. The number of children who are too small and too thin. Who cannot study properly because they are never full. And it wasn’t before the pandemic either. When UN chief Antonio Guterres pleaded that at least in the difficult times of Corona the guns should be silent around the world, there was no less conflict than before. Pathetic – no surprise either.

But everyone has a good excuse again: Corona and the consequences have increased the number of people who are hungry worldwide by 18 percent. Now everyone sees black for the UN goal that by 2030 nobody in the world will go hungry anymore. 660 million people are missing – more than eight times as many as live in Germany.

No more apologies

Now should be an end to ignorance. We have to change our global food and sales market system – to ensure that a plate of bean soup in South Sudan is not a hundred times more expensive than one in Berlin – namely, more money than an average daily wage. The fight against hunger must be as united as the one against the corona pandemic. And with so much energy that the no-hunger goal is achieved before the musks of this world are on the moon.