Hunger: The Oldest Problem

Henrietta L Moore at Literary Review:

How do those of us who have enough to eat account for hunger? We often imagine it’s about drought, famine, lack of rain, corruption and incompetence. We need to be much more imaginative. Hunger is about land-grabbing, cartels, early marriage, immunisation, genetically modified crops, child development, slums, climate change, subsidies, chemical pollution, derivative markets, deforestation, child labour, food banks and much, much more. Systemic hunger is about the failure of our food systems and the fact that one half of the world is eating the food of the other half. This is not new. In the 19th century, Europe improved its food availability and quality by importing foodstuffs grown elsewhere.

more here.