Hunger is not a result of food scarcity.

As the number of people hunger in the world continues to increase, people place blame on a number of different factors. One cause of hunger that is constantly emphasized is the issue of food scarcity. This belief stems from the idea there isn’t enough food to feed the amount of people living in the world. “The Scarcity Fallacy” by Stephen J. Scanlan places hunger in a larger theory of “food security” rather than scarcity. There isn’t evidence showing that our food production does not supply an adequate amount for our population size. Instead, food production actually grew much faster than our exponential population growth.
By defining the problem of hunger with food scarcity, it has allowed our policy makers to create a “supermarket revolution.” This emphasizes larger corporate agriculture businesses and long commodity chains. While there is an easier access to food at supermarkets, the long list of middle men increases the cost of the food, which in turn makes them less attainable to the lower class. “Scarcity is largely a myth.” Today, there is enough food, but it isn’t easily accessible or equally distributed. By solely focusing on the scarcity issue, we continue to not fix the problem by missing many key factors. The attainability of the food is connected with poverty, sex and ethnic background. With a limited income supply, priority usually goes to electric bills, transportation and prescriptions with hope of the government providing food assistance. Females and ethnic minorities are more likely to suffer from hunger. How do we fix these inequalities? We need to see food as a basic human right. We need to eliminate the corruption and ensure that the people who are hungry get the food that they need.

I do agree with the myth that scarcity of food is the cause of world hunger. There is enough food for the people to consume, we just need to take the next step and make sure it gets to these people. During high school, I volunteered for Island Harvest, which focused on bringing excess food in the community to the people in need. These people included low income after school centers, families facing economic problem as well as battered women’s shelters. The problem is the accessibility that our policy makers need to change.

Similarly to how our previous reading labeled poverty with hunger, hunger is now labeled with food scarcity. If you had one label for hunger, what would it be? How would this label change enact different changes from the government?