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According to U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates there are 925 million hungry people in the world.¹  Between June 2010 and February 2011 rising food prices soared to record levels and pushed an additional 44 million people into hunger.²

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, 50 million Americans experienced food insecurity in 2009, including 17 million children. This represents nearly one in four American children.³

What is Hunger?

Hunger is “the uneasy or painful sensation caused by a lack of food” or “the recurrent and involuntary lack of access to food.”⁴

What is Food Security?  What is Food Insecurity?

Food security is “access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.” Food security includes, at a minimum:

• the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and
• an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (e.g., without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing or other coping strategies).”⁵

The FAO defines food security as a state that “exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets theirdietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”.

In contrast, food insecurity implies a limited ability to secure adequate food. Specifically, food insecurity is having “limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways.”⁵

While anti-hunger organizations in the United States prefer the word “hunger,” the United States Department of Agriculture prefers to use “food security” or “food insecurity” as more precise terms than “hunger.”  Food security is an essential component of a healthy and well nourished population, but it is important to note that the term food security has a vastly different meaning internationally. Individuals living on less than a dollar a day have significantly greater challenges than food insecure households in the U.S. In many developing countries 30 percent of a household’s monthly income is spent on food.  In some countries, purchasing food may require 90 percent of a household’s monthly income. Many developing countries lack social safety nets, such as school meals for children during the school day, or food benefits designed to prevent hunger (like the SNAP Program in the U.S.).

What causes Hunger?

Hunger is not solely about the absence of food.  Globally, hunger may exist in places plagued by natural disasters and war or conflict, with weak agricultural infrastructure  and over exploited farming environment. Domestically and internationally, it is worsened by racism, gender discrimination, trade and economic policies and unequal access to resources and power. It exists in situations where people lack opportunity to earn a sustainable income, to meet other basic life needs (i.e., health, housing, education), and have limited control over their own lives and communities. Poverty, social inequality and the lack of political will to end hunger are primary causes of this solvable crisis.

Why is developing a movement of future anti-hunger leaders important?

If the absence of political will is a primary cause of hunger, we must develop a movement of effective leaders with a deep understanding of hunger and poverty at the local, national, and international levels, enabling them to find innovative solutions and create the political will to end hunger.

1. FAO, 2010: www.fao.org/docrep/012/al390e/al390e00.pdf [↩]
2. World Bank, 2011: www.worldbank.org/foodcrisis/food_price_watch_report_feb2011.html [↩]
3. USDA, 2009: www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR108/ERR108.pdf [↩]
4. Anderson, 1990:jn.nutrition.org/content/120/11_Suppl/1555.full.pdf [↩]
5. Anderson, 1990:jn.nutrition.org/content/120/11_Suppl/1555.full.pdf [↩] [↩]

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