In the second half of the 20th century, famine no longer is a scourge of nature but results from war, politics and other misdeeds of man.
Thanks to breakthroughs in science and agriculture, the world now produces enough food to feed every man, woman and child on the planet. But hunger and starvation persist. And in many places, they appear to be worsening.
Despite a worldwide glut of food, 18 million people die of starvation, malnutrition and related causes every year, according to a newly released Johns Hopkins University study. And more than 800 million people are chronically undernourished, U.N. statistics show.
More often than not, the reasons for this cruel paradox--hunger in the midst of global plenty--have little to do with natural causes. Of the millions who go hungry every day, "we estimate that only 10% are victims of disaster," said World Food Program Executive Director Catherine Bertini.
At last year's World Food Summit in Rome, a U.S. Department of Agriculture report identified some of the forces that create hunger: war and civil strife, misguided national policies, trade barriers such as crop subsidies, technology, environmental degradation, poverty, and gender inequality.
The most dramatic moment at the Summit came when Cuba's aging revolutionary Fidel Castro rose and asked the audience, "If the world has more than enough food to feed all its people, why should even one person starve? Why should even one child go hungry?
"Hunger, the inseparable companion of the poor, is the offspring of the unequal distribution of the wealth and the injustices in this world. The rich do not know hunger" said Castro. "What kind of cosmetic solutions are we going to provide so that in 20 years from now there will only be 400 million instead of 800 million starving people?"