Ending Hunger 64. Roma, Italy

Ending Hunger Worldwide challenges the naive notion that everyone wants hunger to end. Hunger ensures that employers make good profits and consumers enjoy cheap goods. Most of the hungry are far away. Those who are well-off have little interest in ending hunger. Action to end it has not matched the talk about it because those who have the power to end the problem are not the ones who have the problem. The powerful care about hunger, but not enough. Hunger analysts typically focus on agriculture yields and interventions with capsules and supplements. They rarely acknowledge that hunger is a deeply social issue that is shaped by the ways in which people treat each other. The central concept that drives the book is that in strong communities, people don t go hungry. Strong communities have high levels of concern about one another s well-being. People may provide food to one another when that is necessary, but more fundamentally, they ensure that all have decent opportunities to provide for themselves. Given decent opportunities, people will not allow themselves or their families to go hungry. There is no shortage of food in the world; there is a shortage of opportunities. People who have decent opportunities either to produce food or to earn money to purchase food will manage to provide for themselves and their families. Ending Hunger Worldwide argues that if people do not care enough about other people's well-being, there is little prospect for ending hunger in the world. Strengthening communities by building care certainly would not be an easy route to ending hunger. The argument for this approach is that it is true to the realities of the hunger problem. Without adequate caring, the many things that could be done to end hunger will not get done.