World hunger is a problem that has been with us for hundreds and hundreds of years. Today, more than ever, there are increasingly more hungry people to feed. However, this is not a problem for only a few countries. World hunger is a worldly problem. It affects all countries of the world in one way or another. To most, there is no doubt that there is a world food problem. However, the issue on which people have differing viewpoints is not that there is a world hunger problem, but rather why we even have a problem at all. In this essay, I am going to prove that today’s world hunger problem started hundreds of years ago with the development of the modern society rather than from more modern or current causes.

Hunger is a day-in-day-out chronic feeling that over 700 million people in the world suffer from. Further, it kills as many as 18 to 20 million people a year (Collins, 2). In terms of universal human emotions, four really characterize the feelings of people suffering from hunger. These four emotions are anguish, grief, humiliation, and fear. First of all, the hungry populations in today’s society experience anguish. This is the kind of anguish of making impossible choices about food and their family. Many families are forced with decisions like paying off the mortgage of their home so they don’t lose their land while knowing that completing this action will only result in lack of money for food for their family. Secondly, hunger is the feeling of grief of watching your loved ones suffer and even die of starvation and malnutrition. The third emotion associated with hunger is the humiliation of living under such conditions feeling that it is your fault that you and your family are forced to live like this (Collins, 3). Lastly, fear is the last emotion directly associated with the hungry populations on earth. An example of this fear is demonstrated in the instance that occurred in Guatemala in 1978. Two poor highland peasants taught their neighbors new farming techniques on how to reduce erosion on the steep slopes that the wealthy landowners had pushed them onto after taking the flat valley land. They had learned these techniques from World Neighbors, an Oklahoma City-based voluntary aid group. Two years later, one of these men was forced into hiding, and the other one was killed for helping the poor learn new and better ways to farm the land in hopes to make a little bit more money to feed their own families (Collins, 4).

Over the years, there have been different modern theories and ideas about why there is a world food crisis today that affects so many people of the world. However, some of these more modern theories are false. For example, some of the most common myths of why there is a problem is that world hunger is caused by the lack of food produced on the earth, natural disasters such as droughts and floods, and over population (Collins, 9,15,23). All of these modern theories are based on the idea that today's world hunger problem has been a result of events which are currently happening in the present day. As you continue to read, you will see that these proposed causes for world hunger are false and that the problem of world hunger stems from the way the world’s countries were developed and modernized hundreds of years ago.

Because the cause of world hunger stems from the way the modern world was developed, we need to understand what kind of society we live in today and why. Because of the world’s developmental and modernization history we now live in a divided world where there is an increasing gap between the rich and the poor. The rich have the power and the money and the poor are powerless and penniless. This economic gap was started at the time of industrialization in Europe, and it has continues up to the present day, widening every year. One other contributor to the hunger problem is the colonization of the countries known today as the developing nations by the industrial leaders in Europe at that time of industrialization (Nassar, Jan.23, 1999). These two events both helped cause the hunger problem that the world is now facing mainly because they both pushed the economic development of the rich industrialized countries, and they held back and slowed the development of the poor countries. This led to the huge economic gap between the rich and the poor, which ultimately explains the number one reason why even today there is a world hunger problem- unequal distribution of food.

To understand the concept of unequal distribution of food, we need to understand the difference in the two main classifications of countries in the world today that are a result of industrialization, colonization, and the gap between the rich and poor. Today we have rich countries and poor countries. The rich countries are typically characterized as northern countries, industrialized, overfed, overweight, and literate. On the other hand, the poor countries are generally characterized as southern countries, agrarian, underfed, malnourished, and illiterate (Nassar, Jan 27, 1999). Now, keep in mind that today the majority of the people on earth live in the poor countries. Therefore, the majority of the people on the earth are considered poor. However, there is a small percent of the total poor population that live in the rich countries. Conversely, only about 20% of the people on earth are considered wealthy. The interesting thing about these facts is that before the industrial revolution, all people were poor, and all countries were equal. After the industrial revolution, the gap between the industrialized nations (generally northern) and the unindustrialized, agrarian nations (generally southern) started. The gap is determined or measured by the ratio of what the average annual income for a person in the north amounts to verses that of someone from the south. In 1850, the gap was 2 to 1. This means that on average someone in the north was making twice as much as someone in the south. In 1950, the gap was 10 to 1. In 1960, the gap grew to 15 to 1, and in the year 2000, if patterns continue, the gap is expected to reach an all time high of 30 to 1.

As mentioned before, the gap started with the industrial revolution. During the industrial revolution, Europeans used science and technology to get ahead of all other countries for the first time in the history of the world. As they gained power and money, they used it to take over other countries and other peoples. With this newly gained power and money the industrialized nations were able to colonize the unindustrialized nations of the world (Nassar, Jan. 27, 1999). In this colonialization, the rich and powerful countries managed to dominate the world by going into the less powerful countries and taking from them everything that was to some degree valuable- mainly natural resources. Because of the gap between the rich and poor that both industrialization a colonization helped create, we ultimately have a very divided economy. With this divided economy, we get the control and power for the rich and poverty and suffering for the poor (Nassar, Jan. 29, 1999). This is the reason we have an unequal distribution of food, which is the explanation for why we have a world hunger problem today.

The economic gap between the rich and poor, the importance of money in today's society, and the control of the world food supply affect the distribution of food in the world. First of all, from the beginning of time, the first, most important task of all people was to get food. The first people on earth were gatherers and collectors of food. Eventually, they became hunters of food, cultivators of food, and finally farmers of food like in today’s modern society. This change in the production of food was in part due to the industrial revolution. During this time new technologies and strategies were starting to be developed and all areas of life- including agriculture- were advanced. The techniques and advancements in raising animals and growing crops eventually led to the development of a surplus food supply. Keep in mind that the advancements made during this time were strictly advancements to help the rich and industrialized nations, not the poor countries that were constantly and consistently held back over the years from making progress of any kind including economic, industrial, and technological. Because of this, the richest, most powerful food producers of the industrialized nations began to take control of the food supply. It is interesting to note that before the new technologies and techniques of farming that were introduced during the industrial revolution and beyond, the earth was capable of producing enough food to feed 10 million people. After agricultural advances such as I-8 Miracle Rice, hybrid seeds, genetic cloning, and others, the earth’s possible production of food increased to the point where 6 billion people could be fed a year (Nassar, Jan. 29, 1999). This is enough to feed every person in the world 3,600 calories a day. Such caloric intake is enough to make some people fat (Collins, 10). However, there is still a hunger problem because even though there is enough food to feed every person on earth, industrialization and colonization, money, and power, led to a gap between the rich and the poor which continues to widen even today. Moreover, this gap or difference in incomes leads to an unequal distribution of food in the world.

This unequal distribution of food can be best explained by examining the demand for food. There are two forces that affect the demand for food. One is by a large population or increasing population, and the other is by rising incomes (Nassar, Feb. 1, 1999). This makes sense in a way because if you think about it, the more people a country has in it, the more food they need. Also, the higher the people’s incomes, the more food they are able to buy. Now wait a minute. The majority of the world’s population lives in the poor countries and only 20% of all people are considered wealthy, so in comparison with the population of the poor countries, the rich countries have less people, but more money to buy the food. This shows that the distribution of food in the world is not equal.

To further illustrate this point I have a few statistical facts to point out. The U.S. is one of the major drains of the world’s food because they have the money to do it. Year after year, the U.S. brags about how much food it grows and produces every year, when in actuality the U.S. imports more food and agricultural products from other countries than it sells every year. Furthermore, the U.S. alone only makes up a mere 5.5% of the worlds total population. Considering this, it makes no sense why the U.S. controls 40% of all international trade in beef. This means that the U.S. imports nearly half of the world’s beef that is produced in one single year. The U.S. also controls 33% of all international trade in dairy products and in seafood each year. In other words, we are only 5.5% of the world’s total population and yet we manage to buy one third of the world’s total seafood and dairy supply simply because we have continually rising incomes in this country, which increase the demand for food (Nassar, Feb. 1, 1999).

The fact that the U.S. is such a small portion of the world’s total population and that it imports so much of the world’s total food supply brings up many interesting points about the unequal distribution of food in regards to world hunger. For example, most of the food the US imports is produced in poor countries that have significantly large numbers of starving and malnourished people, but in order to compete with richer nations they sell their products to countries like the US in hopes of becoming richer and more powerful. This happens all too often considering that these countries have such a serious hunger problem (Weatherby, 275). In addition, another interesting point to bring up is the fact that the U.S. wastes so much of this imported food. For example, there are 115 million registered cats and dogs in America. These animals on average eat more protein a year than all of the people of Latin America put together. Again, the reason for this is that the U.S. can afford it. In addition, the average American consumes a whopping 155 lbs. of meat per year. This exceeds the RDAs standard for the average person. Another example of how the food the U.S. buys and produces is wasted is shown by amount of beer produced in this country per year. If we could take all the grain that is used to make beer in a single year, and used it strictly to feed people, 80 million humans a year could be fed (Nassar, Feb. 1, 1999). All these examples are given to show that because of wealth and power of rich countries that was first established hundreds of years ago there is an unequal and unfair distribution of food in the world that leads to world hunger and malnutrition.

To summarize, the world food problem has been thought by many to be a result of insufficient amounts of food produced on earth, natural disasters, and over population. However, it has been proven that the problem is a product of the way our society has been set up. Our modern society has developed over many, many years into a society where money equals power. From the beginning of the industrial revolution, the European countries gained technological, scientific, and industrial advantage over all others. Thus, they became the richest, most powerful countries in the world. This gave them the power to take over control of the poorer, less developed nations of the world and exploit and loot the people and their resources. This colonization kept these countries from developing and from advancing like their richer counterparts. Consequentially, an economic gap between the rich and the poor was created and the size of the gap dramatically increased more and more each year. This gap that was created long ago continues today and it is the main cause of the unequal distribution of food, which is the cause of a world wide hunger and malnutrition problem that has ultimately gotten out of control.