On world hunger

We humans like to eat. It nourishes us, it satisfies us. I am grateful I always have enough to eat, and so do the people I love. Yet so many souls on this earth go to sleep with an empty tummy. This bothers me.

In 2010, 925 million people were hungry. Most were in Asia and the Pacific. A significant minority are in sub-Saharan Africa. A tiny minority are in developed countries such as the U.S. (Numbers courtesy United Nations)

Most of the undernourished are children. Undernourishment complicates and exacerbates illnesses. It's implicated directly in many deaths and makes the suffers fall to other diseases.

The world produces enough food. But not everyone has enough land to grow food or money to buy it.

Poverty is the prime cause. Harmful economic systems, in which a very wealthy and tiny minority control the resources and the rest must do without, is another main cause. Conflict causes hunger. Conflict displaces and destroys.

Peace prevails if conflict has just and nonviolent resolution. Peace's sisters are justice and love. With more justice, resources are more evenly distributed. In a just society with calm (another of peace's sisters)and stable conditions, people can find work or stick around to grow and harvest food.

Something to chew on....

Peace, y'all

Molly