World Hunger

Roughly 37% percent of the total land mass is land that can be used for agriculture (1). This equates to approximately 49 million square km, or 12 billion acres. Out of the 12 billion acres, about 3.5 billion acres is arable (2). The main difference is that arable land is land where crops can be continuously replanted, whereas agricultural land includes arable land, as well as land with permanent crops, and permanent pastures used for grazing livestock (3).

The current American diet uses approximately 2.67 acres per person (4). If we were to use this average against the world population of 7.8 billion people (5), we would need about 21 billion acres. If everyone adopted a vegan diet, we would need approximately 2.34 billion acres (4). Considering there are only about 12 billion acres available to agriculture as a whole, we need to adjust our use of these resources if we wish to sustain a population of 7.8 billion. If everyone adopted the American diet, we would need another planet of almost the same size, or a population of ~4.5 billion on the planet we do have. If everyone adopted a vegan diet, we could sustain a population of ~40 billion.

Worldwide, smallholder farmers and their families represent about 2 billion people – almost a quarter of the world population – yet 85% of all farms are less than 5 acres in size (6). The majority of these farmers live on less than $2 per day, and buy more food than is produced (6). About 2/3 of the world’s population – 5,000,000,000+ people – lives on $10 or less per day (7). Given different variables, 854 million people are estimated to be undernourished at any given time (6).

Approximately 9.1 million people die each year from hunger, or hunger related causes – 3.6 million of which are children (6). To compare those statistics to that of a country of wealth, US deaths due to starvation are so little that there is no statistical data on the number of deaths per year due to hunger. Still, 42 million Americans lived with food insecurity in 2015, in struggling to put food on the table (8). More than 43 million Americans lived below the poverty line of less than $24,250 per year (8). Additionally, 30.3% of women-headed households were below the poverty line overall, while 35.7% of African-American women-headed households and 37.1% of Hispanic women-headed households were below the poverty line (8). Although deaths due to hunger are little in wealthier countries, there are still tens of millions struggling to eat regularly.

Globally, approximately 1,300,000,000 tons of food is lost or wasted each year – roughly a third of all food produced for human consumption (9). 66.5 million tons is contributed by the US (10). Annually, wealthy countries waste almost the same amount of food as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (10). If we were able to save even just a quarter of the food that is wasted globally, we could feed 870 million of the Earth’s hungry (10). Considering 854 million are estimated to be undernourished at any given time, we have the resources available to reduce hunger to nonexistence.

World hunger is a huge issue that ends millions of lives each year. With resource management, we could easily ensure that all people are fed on a global scale. As our population increases, wealthy countries will need to adjust their diets to accommodate a lifestyle that maintains a world without hunger. Ending hunger, however, is an obtainable goal that humanity should be working towards.