I recently published a book that took me many years to finish. It’s called “Hunger” because that’s what it is about. It’s an attempt to tell how, where and why people don’t eat what they need. To answer these questions, I traveled through India, Bangladesh, Niger, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Madagascar, Argentina, the United States. I talked to hundreds of people, read tons of pages, immersed myself in figures, tried thinking even just a little — and I think, for once, I learned a couple of things.
I learned that the world might be filled with different problems, complications, defeats and dramas, but behind them there is always the ghost of hunger.
I learned that I find nothing as awful as millions and millions of people who don’t eat enough.
I learned that 18 people in the world die every minute due to hunger and its effects. Eighteen people per minute — one every four seconds — killed by hunger.
I learned that hunger no longer represents those pictures of famine, stunted children with distended bellies, ghastly glares, but the slow destruction of millions and millions who eat too little and poorly and do not die of starvation but of diseases that for us are a temporary nuisance — and for them are mortal.
I learned that hunger does not have only one cause but several, and I tried to study them, understand them, explain them.
I learned that hunger is a matter of ownership and of distribution. There is enough food for everyone, only some keep more than what they need, so there is not enough for the rest.
I learned, for example, that in England half of the food is thrown away.
I learned that we the privileged are not ashamed to waste resources that millions need. I do it, too, and I wonder why, and then do it again.
I learned that, ever since the existence of humanity, hunger has been an inevitable plague. But that is no longer the case: It is a political decision.
I learned that the current state of hunger is the worst it has been at any other point in history. That, until very recently, the world did not produce enough food — and that there were regions that, due to a drought or a flood or a war or a regime, could run out of food and nothing was done. But now the world produces food for 12 billion people, and there are enough leftovers and transportation for everyone to eat what they need. If a billion don’t survive, it’s not because there isn’t any food, but because something prevented them from getting it.
I learned that, 20 years ago, the globalized economic system discovered that food was perfect for financial speculation, and, since then, the price for wheat, soy, rice and other essential foods rose 500 percent in international markets — and condemned millions to eat less and less.
I learned the strong power of a Colombian word: desechable (disposables).
I learned that the globalized economic system has 1 billion or 1.5 billion more people than what it can handle. Due to technical and social changes the system does not know how to take advantage of its resources, how to exploit them. This is a gross error of the system. It has therefore left these people in the margins, and if they could be eliminated they would be. But since that wouldn’t look good they are left lying there, and, from time to time, to seem like good human beings, some people send them bags of food.
I learned that large corporations and wealthy states are taking over millions of hectares in Africa, Asia and Latin America to secure their food supply — expelling their peasants in a neo-colonial movement that guarantees the hunger of the future.
I learned to listen to tiny, banal, scary stories, and I learned that there can be many differences — cultural, racial, religious — between people. But, at the end of the day, hunger, the despair of hunger, is the same to all those who suffer from it.
And I learned, lastly, that it’s so easy to look the other way. But, to get to that point, it helps not to learn … to know nothing.
That’s why I wonder, how do we get to live knowing that these things happen?
That is why, once again, my questions remain unanswered.
Martín Caparrós is the author of “Hunger: The Oldest Problem.” He is one of the Spanish-speaking world’s most preeminent and influential writers. The author of fifteen award-winning books, including works of fiction and journalism, he is currently A. D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. He also writes a regular column for the Spanish edition of The New York Times. He currently lives in New York and Madrid.
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