Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'End hunger globally' that was published in Newsband

End hunger globally

In our world there are 870 million, or one in eight people, who go hungry every day. United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation is fighting a desperate battle to end hunger in the world.

Hunger problem is connected with wastage of food too. A high volume of wastage that occurs right through the food supply chain exerts an adverse impact on land, water, biodiversity and climate change. Food wastage results from natural disasters, excessive supply, distributional bottlenecks and eating habits of consumers. In Asia, volumes of wastage occur owing to inadequate storage facilities. Wasted meat in high income regions is to the extent of 67 per cent - not to mention losses from perishables such as fruit and vegetables.

The judicious use of available food ought to be a critical global priority.

Studies have estimated that agricultural output would have to increase by 60 per cent by 2050 to cope with the demands of a growing population. The recent rise in food grain prices has only added to the problem.

Rich nations must endeavour to mitigate further economic and environmental cost through aggressive deployment of scientific know-how and technology transfers to poor countries. Under-nourishment and hunger remain the biggest risks to health today. They can be tackled only if there is a political will.

The impact of Global Warming is becoming stronger, and so it is the need of the hour to reduce wasted food which is a major contributor to emission of carbon dioxide. Countries must not resort to technology known in their country, but exploit this era of Globalization to deploy latest and efficient technologies to alleviate this problem.

Multi National Companies pay high salary to engineers for working out new technologies. If these engineers are paid well for developing technologies in order to increase agricultural productivity and proper food storage systems, the problem of hunger may be sorted out up to some extent. The money which we invest in buying technologies from other country can be paid to our talented engineers and that technology may also be sold to other country for getting the invested money back. Here IIT-ians may take interest in this field.

India produces largest number of engineers and yet we have to import

technical know-how for agricultural infrastructure. It is matter of shame for our engineers who only think about jobs in multi national companies and not about the technological development of our nation.

In India the wastage of food occurs owing to reasons like post harvest losses, transport losses, storage losses, cooked food wastage [functions], etc. At farmers level there is no storage facilities and thus with unusual rains the grains rot in the rain. Too much production needs storage otherwise the grains perish.

Starvation is not due to non-availability of food but improper distribution under PDS and also quality of food supplied is not good. The sad thing is that we in India are wasting a predominant percent of

food grains and other farm produce unknowingly depriving poor of basic food availability.

There is an urgent need to implement drastic methods to end hunger not only in India but also globally.