How can we as individuals help to reduce the Food Crisis that the entire world is facing today?

Question

Please tell me what I can do --

*at home

*in office

*while shopping

-- to help reduce the Food Crisis

Answer 1

Two things.  At a purely personal level the answer is that you should remain physically fit.  Your choices should be driven by what is healthy for you as a person.  This makes you as productive as possible as a person and this makes you more valuable to the rest of the world.  If you eat too little you will harm your body and harm the world.  If you over eat, you harm your body, you harm yourself and you reduce the value of your productivity over time.

The other is to oppose politicians who seek to help farmers out by subsidies, tariffs or other controls to protect farmers or farm wages.  Although this seems to be the opposite of what would be good advice, subsidies, tariffs, wage and price controls reduce the production of food globally.  If you want the best price for food, the largest amount of food and competitive wages, make the politicians remove protections from farmers and the food crisis may very well go away all by itself.  The current food crisis is government created, not nature created.

Answer 2

Well, we in the United States are doing our part: (1) record crop production in several foods, and (2) lower currency prices.

It may not be politically correct to say it, but if we make more food and with a cheaper currency to trade for it in, that sounds like a winning combination.

Unfortunately, Africa has problems with the continued drought and pestilance such as wheat rust, persistently archaic food production methods, political corruption, and diminished  efforts to produce their own from disease and displacement. I know some people there, one couple just recently came from a visit in Senegal and another from Mauritania. Both told of abandoned farms yet people packed in cities depending on government food distributions which come from various international aid operations. Some that I know who have been to Kenya and Congo talk of diminished production and sky high prices. While the U.S. currency is the talk of the world for its depreciated value, the hyperinflation in numerous african countries makes even our comparatively cheap exports outrageously expensive to the locals because their own currencies are not worth the ink that is used on the paper. Check the exchange rates in Zimbawee sometime, and they used to be the biggest food exporter on the continent.

You don't address the world food crisis by what you do "at home", "in the office", or even "while shopping" -- you reduce the food crisis by (1) making more food, (2) delivering more food, (3) getting more of the food to the people who need it. Haiti has food rotting on the docks while Haitians are eating mud pies, and this is not because of what you or I have done at home or office or our personal shopping decisions, it is because of petty politicians in turf war in Haiti!

Answer 3

The food crisis is NOT new; we're just hearing about it now because developed countries are having their prices affected, too.

To understand what you can do, you first need to look at the reasons behind poverty (education, disease, water sanitation, climate change, displacement, to name a few top contenders), and then look at the reasons that food prices have suddenly increased (depletion of reserves, start of climate change, natural and manmade disasters, oil prices, inflation). Third, the best thing you can do from home is a) find small ways to reduce your own energy usage, and b) to help financially support others who are developing, researching, testing, and delivering solutions to the world's poor. Some of the best investments:

-vaccine research

-malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS research

-research that investigates strategies to combat climate change in agricultural production

-sustainable development initiatives for hunger eradication (check out web sites for OxFam, Heifer International, CARE, Save the Children, Grameen Bank, Ashoka Foundation, Gates Foundation, etc.) Start with Heifer- their focus is hunger, and they have a lot of great reference materials on their web pages.

-alternative energy technology

-if you have interest in a particular region of the world, find out if anyone is serving the needs of that region, and write to them. Ask them what they need. You might be surprised. For example, persons providing basic medical and agricultural education aid often can use donations of basic supplies- pens, pencils, backpacks, notebooks, gauze pads, electrolyte drink mixes, etc.

Finally, don't let apathy get to you. if you really want to help, focus on the persons who are actively doing the work, and get involved. Don't let anyone tell you that your actions could not possibly make a difference, and that money being spent on the world's poor is wasted. It is not.

Answer 4

Kill yourself

Answer 5

joining a gym and going on a diet

helps not to eat alot and look fit and healthy

Answer 6

If you owned farm land you could plant more food . Best bet is to insure you have enough food to survive .

Answer 7

Go on a diet! Stop eating like a pig , exercise, and maybe the fat tax isnt so bad after all.