Imagine trying to fall asleep at night, uncertain of when your next meal will be while your belly growls and aches for food. It’s nearly impossible for well-fed populations to place themselves in the shoes of someone suffering from malnutrition. From the safety of our own homes, problems of malnourishment and hunger seem so far away. However, we also need to recognize that while rates of hunger are concentrated in sub-saharan Africa and South Asian countries, no country fully escapes the epidemic.

According to the World Food Program’s 2014 report on hunger, about 842 million people in the world do not eat enough to be healthy. Most of these people are children in sub-saharan Africa and South Asia. Moreover, “By 2050, climate change and erratic weather patterns could have pushed another 24 million children into hunger. Almost half of these children would be in sub-Saharan Africa” (1).

It is evident that hunger is:

a. Of epidemic quantities in concentrated areas of sub-saharan Africa and South Asia.

b. Threatening to greatly increase in the next century.

So the question becomes: how do we feed the existing 842 million people living in hunger while also making preparations to decrease growth rates of the malnourished in the future?

While there is no single, all-encompassing answer, there are certain inputs that could help our hungry world to become satiated in the future.

1. Tackling Climate Change

While climate change and global warming are often referred to as threats of the future, their impacts are already being tangibly realized from farms in California to fields in West Africa. There is very little doubt that the climate is changing now, and has been for the past century. We are moving quickly into an era where notions of subsistence will be forced to evolve in order to nourish the expanding global population. Thus, steps must be taken both structurally, through political and social movements, and individually, through independent initiatives, to alleviate the current stress that we have placed on our planet and marginalized populations.

2. Finding mainstay and highly nutritious crops that are hardy enough to persist in a fluctuating climate. This way we can feed the existing hungry population while also preparing ourselves for the future.

In its 2014 Report on Climate Change, the IPCC states that “there may be a threshold of global warming beyond which current agricultural practices can no longer support large human civilizations, and the impacts on malnourishment and undernutrition will become much more severe” (2). Therefore, it is imperative that we find or develop crops that are hardy enough to withstand a fluctuating environment. An example is Moringa oliefera, which can grow to full maturity with little to no water (cite). As we cultivate hardy crops, it is important that we make changes to crop rotations, irrigation, and general farming practices.

3. Empowering hungry populations to develop their own solutions to move away from the technical fixes that come along with foreign aid.

While generally benevolent in intention, food aid does more harm than good by deepening dependencies of poor countries on outside support, which, when combined with pre-existing resource deficits, directs sources of power towards the donor country (3). One step in the right direction is through the support of locally-owned cooperatives. According to the IPCC’s Report, most poor countries have a larger fraction of people living in rural areas and poverty rates tend to be higher in rural settings. Cooperatives, built through local community ties, have a huge potential to change this. According to Guy Ryder, Director-General of the UN International Labour Organization (ILO), “[Cooperatives] respond to the triple bottom line of sustainable development: economic development, social justice, and environmental protection”(4). Cooperatives allow local groups to take control of their own livelihoods, which in turn, creates a longer-lasting solution to hunger and poverty that is not dependent on outside support. Kuli Kuli’s work with women’s cooperatives seeks to do just that. Rather than becoming a donor force, we act as a market player when sourcing moringa for our products.

It is nearly impossible for a well-fed individual to experience the level of malnutrition that plagues much of the world. However, it is possible to understand that we all have a role in both perpetuating and lessening worldwide hunger. While many inputs that could ease the epidemic are out of the individual’s hands and rely on large-scale structural change, there are certain individual initiatives that, when implemented, can create effective change. Working to lessen one’s impact on the environment is crucial. Also becoming aware of the meaning of food in one’s life and questioning how and at what cost it was created and sourced. Lastly, supporting local movements to improve livelihoods, such as cooperatives, rather than international aid groups helps to place long-term solution-making power in the right hands.