Monday, September 12, 2011

Brace Yourself for Food Scarcity

Have you ever gone hungry? Ever had to scavenge for any scrap of food-like garbage simply to stave off your gnawing hunger?

Probably not. Most people in the affluent West can’t even begin to imagine it.

But of the nearly 7 billion people on Earth, an estimated 850 million are undernourished or chronically hungry. With global food production hurting and prices rising, this number is swiftly climbing.

In July, a famine was officially declared in the Horn of Africa, the first in 30 years. A reported 12,400,000 people don’t have enough food. Imagine it. There are 81,000 people in my town; this is every last person in this town and 152 more just like it, all going hungry.

Between May and July in that region, 29,000 children younger than 5 died of starvation.

The nightmare is expected to last into next year, and the number of afflicted to rise quickly to 15 million. These are the chilling effects of two years of drought—the worst in six decades—coupled with some absolutely shameful human behavior.

When your belly is plenty full, your tendency is to brush aside such facts. After all, what can you do?

But you need to give this some serious thought—because chances are extremely high that soon, you won’t just be reading about those hunger pains...

Full story:
http://www.thetrumpet.com/?q=8612.0.138.0

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