ACCESS TO FOOD

What follows tend to apply to most LEDCs, but not to all.

Access to Food Enough grain (mainly wheat and rice) is produced to feed everyone more than 3000 calories a day. – even without allowing for any other food production such as vegetables, fruit, fish and meat.

MEDCs dump food rather than sell it for a price that is too low. There have never been so many people suffering from starvation or malnutrition than now. 7 million people are dying of hunger or hunger-related disease each year.

It is not being distributed effectively. Why? It is not being distributed effectively.

Reasons The producer sells to the person that will pay the highest price.

The problem is made worse when we realise that the food energy a person would get from a tonne of wheat is reduced by 90% if it is eaten in the form of wheat-fattened beef rather than as bread.

Food aid

Although food production per capita is increasing in most parts of the world, it is declining in Africa.

Although the quantity of food production has grown in most parts of the world, production per capita was declining in some regions, with the largest declines occurring in the developing countries of Oceania, the Middle East, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and industrialised countries in Oceania and Asia. On the other hand, the largest increases in food production per capita have been occurring in the developing economies of North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, East Asia, South-east Asia and South Asia.

Why? Growing population

Characteristics of farming

The impact of agricultural reforms has not been felt

Characteristics of farming Subsistence farming (no specialization) Traditional farming methods (broadcasting seeds, wooden ploughs and animal power) Poor storage facilities (insect pests) Small divided landholdings Absentee landlords Agribusiness companies encourage commercial crops Smaller number of people engaged in agriculture

Agribusiness (large corporations) With the backing of organisations such as the World Bank, large profit-driven corporations have persuaded many subsistence farmers in poorer countries to abandon food production and switch to commercial production of non-food crops — a program known as crop substitution. Prices for the export crops have often failed to meet expectations, so farmers have not even been able to buy the amounts of food they had previously grown for themselves. Farmers in Europe and North America can now sell some of their surplus production at new markets in the poorer countries.

Some countries have been more successful (Green Revolution) H.Y.V.s Irrigation schemes Chemical pesticides and fertilizers Mechanisation

OBESITY NOT JUST AN AMERICAN PROBLEM ANYMORE NEWSWEEK: Your thesis is that we're all getting fat because we're eating more and moving less. That makes sense for individuals: if I sit around eating donuts, I'll gain weight. But you're talking about whole countries--the whole world, really. So what is going on?

As countries develop economically, three related  transitions typically occur.

The Nutritional Transition

Although progression through each stage of the nutrition transition is closely related to the process of economic development, globalisation is spreading energy-dense but nutrient-deficient pattern 4 diets to less economically developed countries, leading to a more rapid shift from pattern 2 and pattern 3 diets. The Double Burden Of ‘Malnutrition’ And ‘Mall-nutrition’ (from an Indian article)

Pattern 5: Behavioural Change.