The Real Cause of Hunger
If we have plenty of food to feed today's population and to support population growth for the foreseeable future, why do 800 million people still go hungry every day? One basic cause is food dependence. The industrial system has, over centuries and in virtually every area of the globe, "enclosed" farmland, forcing subsistence peasants off the land, so that it can be used for growing high-priced export crops rather than diverse crops for local populations.

The result of enclosure was, and continues to be, that untold millions of peasants lose their land, community, traditions, and most directly their ability to grow their own food -- their food independence. Removed from their land and means of survival, the new "landless" then flock to the newly industrialized cities where they quickly become a class of urban poor competing for low-paying jobs and doomed to long-term hunger or starvation.

The victims of enclosure are becoming ever more numerous. Just 50 years ago, only 18 percent of the population of developing countries resided in cities; by the year 2000 the figure jumped to 40 percent. Unless current policies change, by 2030 it is estimated that 56 percent of the developing world will be urban dwellers. A United Nations report has found that close to 50 percent of this urban population growth is due to migration, much of it forced, from rural to urban communities.

After enclosure, both the urban and rural poor are completely food dependent. Their access to food is solely by purchase. Very often they simply do not have enough money to buy food, so they starve. Increasing agricultural output has little effect on the hungry because it fails to address the key issues of access to land and purchasing power that are at the root of hunger. As a Food First report noted, if you don't have land on which to grow food or the money to buy it, you go hungry no matter how much food is produced.

Farmers Who Can't Buy Food
Industrial agriculture causes mass starvation not only among the urban poor but also in the world's farming communities. Over the last decades the chemical and technological inputs and patented seeds brought to farmers in the third world by agribusiness have dramatically increased the costs of farming. Even as the farmer must pay more and more to farm "industrially," higher yields and worldwide competition lower prices paid to the farmer (but because of high middleman costs, the prices of food are not generally lower for the consumer).

Advances in industrial agriculture have therefore put millions of the world's farmers in a fatal bind, as they spend ever more in production costs, yet receive ever less income. The cruel irony is that even as these farmers grow the world's food, they cannot afford food for themselves or their families. This has resulted in mass starvation in the rural communities, epidemics of farmer suicides, and the annihilation of farm communities throughout the globe. Currently, more than half a billion rural people in the third world have become landless or do not have either sufficient land to grow their own food or money to buy that food.

Exports Devour People
Yet another way that industrial agriculture increases hunger is by what it grows. The problem is that corporate-driven agriculture, after it "encloses" land and evicts the farm communities from these lands, does not grow staple foods for the hungry. Global corporations favor high-profit luxury items like flowers, sugarcane, beef, shrimp, cotton, coffee, and soybeans for export to wealthy countries. Local people are often left with nothing.

In Africa, where severe famines have occurred in the past decade, industrialized agriculture has not produced foods for the people, but rather record crops of cotton and sugarcane. As export crops and livestock use up available land, small farmers are forced to use marginal, less fertile lands. Staple food production for local use plummets and hunger increases. In fact, one could classify the world's population into three groups: about 1.2 billion "overconsumers" who eat the equivalent of 850 kilograms of grain each year, mostly in the form of animal products or other "luxury" foods; 3.5 billion "sustainers" who consume the equivalent of 350 kilograms of grain in a mixed diet; and 1.2 billion who are surviving on only 150 kilograms or less each year. With this understanding, it is not surprising that during industrial agriculture's prime years (1970--90), the number of hungry people in every country except China actually increased by more than 11 percent.

Currently, most government and private efforts to reduce world hunger are focused on the technological quest to produce ever higher yields on agricultural land. This misguided approach is actually increasing the hunger crisis and is causing environmental and social devastation.

Equally troubling is that the myth that more food will cure hunger diverts attention from the urgent need for economic reforms, land redistribution, and sustainable and affordable farm practices. We need a major shift in efforts to feed the world, where the focus is on supporting local agriculture, where people live close to (or on) the land, grow food to feed their own communities, and use ecologically sustainable techniques. In other words, hunger can only be solved by an agricultural system that promotes food independence.

You may also want to see:
Asserting Democratic Control of Food and Agriculture by Dave Henson

Playing Genetic Roulette With Our Food by Jeffrey Kaplan

Genetically Altered Food and the Corporate Campaigns of Deception by George Monbiot

More resources are available on our Food, Health and Environment page

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Each week we review dozens of articles and essays from both corporate and independent media sources and choose one that we believe brings you unique or important information or perspectives on issues of democracy and corporate power. Opinions presented do not necessarily reflect those of ReclaimDemocracy.org. Index of past features