Food Crisis

The cars,bunglows ,jewellery, and everything is secondary when there is no food. food production in the world is falling at an alarming rate whereas there is a staggering rise in numbber of people projected to be food insecure.There is no balance between food supply and the population growth. Agricultural lands and forests are vanishing and in the name of development, and concrete jungles are replacing these lands. Statistics shows that 345.2 million people are going to be food insecure in 2023.Overpopulation is a serious threat to food supply and could run out of food by 2027,according to Food and Agriculture organisation.According to UNICEF more than half of the world's children are affected by malnutrition.Added to the human negligence towards increasing the agricultural output ,droughts,famines.floods ,poor monsoon rainfall and other imbalances in nature are the causes for falling food production. Even when there is excess food production in certain regions, lack of facilities and technology to preserve and store food for future consumption is leading to wastage of food.There is no proper distribution mechanism to match the food shortage and excess production.

If we look in to the reasons for present enormous scale of global hunger and malnutrition ,there are many ,of which some are controlable and some are uncontrolable . The controlable causes are--- 1. Over population: Over population means increased demand for food and water,pollution,depletion of precious resources and migration. 2. conflicts and wars : 70 percent of the world's hungry people are living in the areas afflicted by war. Due to Russia Ukraine war there is a significant impact on global food market.Ukrain is the leading exporter of grain and after the outbreak of war,there is a dramatic drop in its exports,resulting in shortage of supply affecting millions of people around the world.Russia and Ukrain together export nearly one third of world's wheat and barley and also corn and 70% of Sunflower oil.Russia is also the largest fertilizer producer.This war has triggered global food crisis. 3.food wastage: About one-third of world's food is thrown away.Food wastage occurs during production,processing,distribution,ratailing and food consumption.Especially at the consumption stage, conciously discarding the food ,that is fit for consumption is a serious problem,leading to mismatch between hunger and wastage.In the US 40% of the food goes uneaten and world wide one-third of food produced is thrown away uneaten.India's contribution to wasted food is 68.8 million tonnes annually and its value is Rs 92000 crores per annum.Weddings,restaurants,hotels.social and family functions and households spew out about 40% of the food in India. 4. Deforestation: increased deforestation is causing climate change,floods,soil erosion, fewer crops,lesser yield and increased greenhouse gases. These things in turn are affecting food production. 5.Food imbalance: There is a food imbalance in the world ,while millions of people are starving,food is being thrown away by some people around the world. All the above causes can be controlled by proper policies and collective effort of all the nations.there should be stringent punishments for people who waste the food . there should be organisations to collect the waste food and distribute it to the starved .Proper food preserving and storage techniques are to be followed.More and more land should be brought under agriculture. Some of the uncontrolable causes are- 1. droughts,famines and floods 2. Fungus and other crop diseases. 3.Climate change 4.Decreasing fertility of land. 5.outbreak of Covid. Finally we as individuals can do our best to contribute to solve this problem by not wasting food,by utilizig whatever small space we have for producing vegetables and fruits .instead of throwing away excess food ,distributing it to the hungry and deserving people. Let us all join our hands in this effort to overcome the alarming food crisis and save our world.