Food
Insecurity
What Is it & What Can We Do?
1 in 7
1 in 7 People are Hungry
1/3 of Food is Wasted
The world produces enough food to feed all of its 8 billion people, yet 828 million people go hungry every day
PEACE
BEGINS
WHEN
the HUNGRY
are FED
- Dorothy Day
2.3 Billion - 29.6% of the global population - don’t have adequate access to food
9 million people die from hunger - related causes every year; Many are children under the age of 5
Rising global food prices will cause 1.5 million more children to be undernourished
Timeline of Food Insecurities
1700s & 1800s: Famines had mainly natural causes such as prolonged drought, resulting in crops failing.
1900s: Famines continued but took on new causes such as conflict in regions and totalitarian regimes. The deadliest famine took place in China with about 30 million victims between 1959 - 1961.
1961: The World Food Programme is created to provide food aid through the UN system.
1967 - 1970: After Nigeria declared independence, the country’s eastern territory of Biafra also declared independence. Starvation was used as a weapon of war and food was cut off for 13 million people. In three years, an estimated 2 million, or 15% of Biafra’s population, died.
1975 - 1979: The Cambodian Civil War claimed about 25-33% of the country’s pre-war population. Many of these deaths were because of Khmer Rouge’s labor camps, where malnutrition was rampant. Beyond these camps, hunger continued as emergency services were unable to get food into Cambodia. An estimated 500,000 people died due to famine alone.