Personal Statement: Food For Peace

The second part of the book focused on the various organizations and institutions aimed at improving food security for those in need. There are “thirty-seven million Americans and fourteen million children who rely on food assistance” (Carney 2015:135). This represents an increase from previous years. The book criticizes the

Being a part of FFA has completely changed the course of my life. It is because of this amazing organization that I have learned to be service minded. Helping others has become the biggest goal I want to achieve in my lifetime. I want to leave a mark on the world and change it for the better. With the experience I have gained so far, an imminent change I want to make is to feed the world population by the year 2050. In 2050 the USDA reports that the agricultural industry will not be able to provide enough food to sustain the predicted world population of 9.7 billion people. This would mean potentially millions of people would become food insecure and not have adequate availability to a food supply to maintain a healthy diet. This is a very

Inter-Faith Food Shuttle (IFFS) is a $14.5 million nonprofit that uses a holistic approach to address and end hunger in the Research Triangle Region of North Carolina. IFFS believes that hunger is an issue that can be solved by, “creating sources of healthy food in every low-income neighborhood and grow opportunities for people to provide for themselves by learning job skills or growing their own food.” The pillars of this approach are feeding, teaching, and growing. (IFFS, 2016)

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (2012), defines food security as “when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (para. 1). The human right to have access to food is fundamental. There are many meal assistance services within Australia that aim to improve food security and fight hunger. FairShare is a food charity organisation that rescues and accepts donated food to cook nutritious meals each week for those in need. FairShare’s vision is “a society where food is not wasted and hunger is minimised” (FairShare, 2014).

While the world produces enough food to feed over seven billion people, more than one-third of it, approximately 1.3 billion tons, is tossed before getting on the dinner table. Although many do not think about the profound effect wasting food has on themselves, numbers of precious children’s lives are taken by severe poverty, and thus lack of food, every year around the world (“Feed”). An organization called “Feed My Starving Children (FMSC)” has been fighting this issue since 1987 in order alleviate hunger in children less fortunate countries. Its efficient global food assistance system, with unique food production, also contributes to American society by providing fantastic volunteer opportunities to raise one’s spirit, making it one of the best humanitarian efforts in the globe.

The world we live in today is growing at an extremely fast pace. It seems to be that everyday there are more buildings being built, more concrete being poured, and more free land being destroyed. The cause of these events is the worlds’ population rate. Every day our population reaches an all-time high, every day we gain more mouths to feed, and every day we are losing ways to feed these mouths. Food insecurity has risen significantly along with the rise of our population. We must find ways to lower the food insecurity rate by finding new farming practices, making the public more aware of this issue, and doing more ourselves to make sure that we make a change to this problem.

While most reports highlights the severity of hunger in many developing nations, many suffering from hunger can happen in our backyard too. In the US, prolific families suffering from malnourishment and food insecurity makes up 12.7%

everyday, you are probably wondering why nationwide hunger is an issue. Families that are subject to poverty generally have little money, goods, and don’t often have much support. Economic income does determine if a child is more likely to go hungry or not. Right here in the Central Valley and Imperial County have the highest percentage of child hunger. Due to high unemployment rates, people are having harder times to feed their families. Because of this Feeding America discovered that these families are forced to make the choice between feeding their household or paying bills and rent to provide a roof and warm bed. Even with organizations such as Hungry Harvest, Feed the Children, Meals on Wheels, Feeding America and No Kid Hungry, studies continue to show that nationwide hunger is still a serious issue in the United States. In order to solve this problem more people need to be made aware of how important it is to help those that don’t have the same luxuries and to create new organizations and programs that lower income families can benefit

Food for Peace, which is has been the United States primary program for overseas food assistance, is estimated to have benefitted 3 billion people in 150 countries. The program begun as a way for the United States to put its surplus foodstuffs to good use across the globe, and has since modernized into a competitive process in which the American government purchases commodities from US farmers (through a competitive process) and then allocates them to needy populations worldwide.

More than 1 billion people in the world right now are suffering from hunger. Food security is “the access by all people at all times to the food needed for a healthy life,” as defined by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. There are four points to food security, which are “availability, access, utilization, and stability.” When one or even all these points are missing, it is described as food insecurity. The rise of food prices in 2008 shocked and affected millions of people, many of whom were very poor. Because of the rise of food prices, there were protests and hunger was put at the top of the list, although it did not stay there. Science has to understand how to deal with hunger as the problem grows. Using scientific research and changing policies can have a huge impact on the issue of hunger. Population is

Some of the reason why so many children die from poverty each are because of the lack of adequate water, food, sanitation, and hygiene. Malnutrition is a frequently related to poverty. Children don’t get the nutrition they need, in fact many children eat once or twice per day if their parents are able to provide, in some cases parents are not. Children need special cares and healthy meals at least three times a day. Not eating enough or eating unhealthy food may lead to malnutrition or even worse, death. It is tragic to image a child dying because of the lack of sustenance. My plan to change this is creating food banks around developing communities where healthy fruits, vegetable, and balanced meals are created. Malnutrition can be turned around, death

After reading the extensive “The New Face of Hunger” (Tracie McMillan), my eyes became more open to the overall issue of hunger, faced by many people today. In a few words, I was absolutely shocked by the true meaning and examples provided of what exactly food insecurity is. Honestly speaking, when I hear the word “hunger” I think of a human who has no food, living on the streets. “The New Face of hunger” brought to my attention that food insecurity is much more than simply having no food. In fact, “In 2006 the U.S. government replaced “hunger” with the term “food insecure” to describe any household where, sometime during the previous year, people didn’t have enough food to eat” (The New Face of Hunger). Not only was I able to see the harsh

In between 1990-92 and 2010-12, the number of undernourished people, who mostly live in developing region, specifically South-Eastern Asia, has been rapidly decreasing for about 44% (FAO, 2012). Through this past few years, communities, government, and practitioners have done many efforts to enhance individual’s food security level. BYRC, or known as Broadway Youth Resource Centre teams up with several programs to provide food, life, housing, employment, and education services to low socioeconomic youths, between age 13-24 years old. Other communities have been working to maintain sustainable food systems through building community gardens, volunteering, and buying local produce. Moreover, government also plays a critical role in subsidizing funds or offering volunteer opportunities and training programs, and finally, practitioner has invented several sustainable agriculture techniques, including organic farming. Unfortunately, these efforts are not well received by every individual in the whole nation, resulting in the expansion number of undernourished people in some other parts of the world, for example in sub-Saharan Africa and Western Asia (FAO, 2012). By providing some synergies and tensions between communities, government, and practitioner approaches to improve food security, this paper is assessed to show the reasons why the progress of the efforts is unstable or sometimes diminishes, leading to the results

Food security is defined as ‘when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life’ (The World Food Summit 1996, quoted by The World Health Organization 2015). Thus food insecurity is any situation that deviates from this definition. The research for this report was carried out in Todmorden, West Yorkshire and focused on Incredible Edible, a local food growing and campaigning group. The organisation is run by volunteers, and their aim is ‘to provide access to good local food for all’ (Incredible Edible Todmorden 2015). This is done mainly through their ‘food to share’ (also know as ‘eating the street’) initiative, where they have adopted small, communal areas of land through out Todmorden to grow herbs, fruit and vegetables which is managed and grown by volunteers and is free for anyone to pick. They also focus on education about the issues surrounding food insecurity in the UK and the local area. The key stakeholders involved in our research are Mary Clear and Estelle Brown, the leading figures in Incredible Edible. Mary is a co-founder of the project. From it’s beginning in Todmorden the movement has now expanded worldwide and there are between 50 and 100 independent Incredible Edible groups in Britain and many more around the world (Incredible Edible Network 2012).

We hope to promote an environment for women and children to thrive. We need to include aid from the government and associated civil-society movements as well as other individuals and organizations working for the common good. Susceptible groups including single mothers, adolescents, and migrants are impacted by malnutrition thus making it our goal to create an inclusive environment focusing on young populaces and exposed groups.