[News] Hundreds of Millions Are Dying of Hunger

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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*Hundreds of Millions Are Dying of Hunger: The Twenty-Second Newsletter 
(2025)*


Maksud Mirmuhamedov (Tajikistan), /Hearth/, 2020.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=749302bf45&e=d206d0a40d>.

I have written this newsletter before. In fact, I could write this 
newsletter every year when a new /Global Report on Food Crises/ 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=5ab7909994&e=d206d0a40d> 
is published. The report rests on four points:

 1.

    The number of people who are hungry is greater now than last year.

 2.

    The amount of food produced this year is greater than that produced
    last year.

 3.

    There is enough food to feed the total world population, and more.

 4.

    How do we explain why people are hungry?

Sao Sreymao (Cambodia), /Left Over/, 2017.

Let’s add in the data.

*Point no. 1:* 733 million people faced chronic hunger in 2023, 
according to studies 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=59434460a6&e=d206d0a40d> 
from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), World Food Programme, 
World Health Organisation, International Fund for Agricultural 
Development, and United Nations Children’s Fund.

*Point no. 2:* The world’s farmers and agribusinesses produced 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=d3143656de&e=d206d0a40d> 
11 billion metric tonnes of food (including meat, fish, and 9.6 billion 
metric tonnes of primary crops – such as maize, rice, and wheat) in 
2022, as the FAO reports.

*Point no. 3 *is made clear by a**simple calculation with one premise.

    *Premise:* A person eats one tonne or 1,000 kilograms of food per
    year (the FAO standard
    <https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=78d243eb41&e=d206d0a40d>
    for global average food consumption is 2,800 kilocalories per person
    per day).

    *Calculation:* If one tonne of food is needed for one person, and
    there are eleven billion tonnes of food produced, then there is
    enough food for eleven billion people.

    *Conclusion:* There are currently eight billion people on the
    planet. Therefore, there is enough food for all the people on the
    planet, with enough surplus to feed an additional three billion.

Latif Eshraq (Afghanistan), /Farkhunda/, 2017.

*Point no. 4:* How do we explain why people are hungry?

There are many reasons for the acuteness of hunger, but none of them can 
be attributed to a lack of food due to population growth, as 
Malthusians, who believe that population growth outstrips food 
production, allege.

There are at least three reasons why near famine persist in many parts 
of the world.

 1.

    First, wars destroy agricultural and food distribution systems. This
    is the most obvious creator of hunger. This is the reason
    <https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=25699e903e&e=d206d0a40d>
    why there is famine in Sudan, a country that has the largest
    <https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=c3cc18e7be&e=d206d0a40d>
    land area for farming in all of Africa and – if there were no war –
    could become the breadbasket of Africa. Despite the war, Sudan is
    the world’s largest
    <https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=3370fe0282&e=d206d0a40d>
    exporter of oily seeds (groundnuts, safflower, sesame, soybean, and
    sunflower). Around 80% of the world’s gum Arabic is produced in
    Sudan’s countryside. But most fields cannot be tended, and many of
    the farmers have been forced off the land or forced to pick up a gun
    because of war.

K. C. S. Paniker (India), /Words and Symbols/, 1968.

 2.

    Second, an ugly old habit of waste
    <https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=e39d11aeff&e=d206d0a40d>
    remains with us. One-fifth of all our food is lost or wasted (the
    equivalent of one billion meals a day), two-thirds of all
    consumption-level waste takes place in the richer countries, and 60%
    of global food waste happens at the household level. In the richer
    countries, most food waste happens at the retail and consumer stages
    largely because of the high level of processing and packaging as
    well as plate waste in households and restaurants. In the poorer
    countries, most food waste takes place at the point of production
    (due to bad weather, pests, and disease) and in storage (due to poor
    facilities with inadequate refrigeration and inefficient
    transportation systems).

Alioune Diagne (Senegal), XALÉ TEY – /Enfants d’aujourd’hui/, 2020.

 3.

    Third, the main reason why people do not eat is that they do not
    have the money to eat. Inequality, in other words, is the engine of
    hunger. Let us once more list the facts:

      *

        Over 700 million people in the world live
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        on less than $2.15 per day and cannot afford to buy food.

      *

        3.4 billion people live
        <https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=dc6cc32742&e=d206d0a40d>
        on less than $5.50 per day, which makes it unlikely that they
        can afford to eat.

      *

        In 2023, the world’s total wealth
        <https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=34e45da36f&e=d206d0a40d>
        was approximately $432 trillion. Of that, the top 1% of the
        global adult population collectively owned 47.5% of the world’s
        total wealth, equivalent to $213.8 trillion (an average of $2.7
        million per person). The bottom 50%, or 4 billion people, owned
        less than 1% of global wealth or $4.5 trillion ($1,125 per
        person). The yawning gap of wealth inequality continues to
        increase every year.

      *

        Those with lower incomes simply cannot afford to eat because the
        inflation of food and fuel prices consume their budgets.

      *

        Hunger rates among women are higher
        <https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=a68b77d1cd&e=d206d0a40d>
        than among men because when there is less food in a household,
        women eat less. In women-headed households, hunger rates are
        higher
        <https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=fa1686e2a7&e=d206d0a40d>.

      *

        While indigenous peoples constitute
        <https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=1e6e8a247a&e=d206d0a40d>
        less than 5% of the world’s population, they represent 15% of
        the extreme poor and suffer higher rates of hunger than other
        communities.

As the FAO argued 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=5a0b2216a0&e=d206d0a40d> 
in 2021, ‘Poverty remains the main cause of food insecurity worldwide, 
as people lack the resources to access adequate food, even when it is 
available’.

Aubrey Williams (Guyana), /Hymn to the Sun V (Olmec-Maya and Now)/, 1984.

A newsletter like this, resting on statistics, cannot explain the damage 
that poverty does to the human spirit. The sullenness of poverty 
produces a kind of fatalism which makes it difficult for the 
impoverished person to explain their situation. Cold statistics alone do 
not explain to the impoverished the reality of their circumstances, 
which they already know very well. Sometimes, it is poetry that is best 
able to articulate the capitalist structure of poverty and the impact it 
has on the human spirit.

Nicolás Guillén (1902–1989) was one of the greatest Cuban poets both 
before and after the revolution. In 1931, he published the poem ‘Caña’ 
(Sugarcane) in his collection /Sóngoro Cosongo/, a title based on the 
sound of the Afro-Cuban drums:

El negro
junto al cañaveral.

El yanqui
sobre el cañaveral.

La tierra
bajo el cañaveral.

¡Sangre
que se nos va!

	The Black man
beside the canefield.

The Yankee
atop the canefield.

The land
beneath the canefield.

Blood
that slips away from us!

Isn’t that the truth?

Saïdou Dicko (Burkina Faso), /La branche de la liberté/ (The Branch of 
Liberty), 2018.

If you want to end hunger, you must end poverty. In 2021, the Chinese 
people ended 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=02728fc798&e=d206d0a40d> 
absolute poverty in their country. By November 2025, the people of 
Kerala, India, will have ended 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=0b45243a01&e=d206d0a40d> 
extreme poverty – one year ahead of their target date. Vietnam is on the 
road to eliminating absolute poverty. This was also the ambition of 
Burkina Faso under Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) and has been reborn under 
the country’s new leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré. Not through charity or 
foreign aid, but through self-reliance. At the National Conference for 
the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution in Ouagadougou on 4 
April 1986, Sankara declared, ‘We must succeed in producing more – 
producing more, because it’s natural that he who feeds you, also imposes 
his will’. In 2023, Traoré raised Sankara’s spirit and said 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=20c8da711a&e=d206d0a40d>, 
‘Our predecessors taught us one thing: a slave who cannot assume his own 
revolt does not deserve to be pitied. We do not feel sorry for 
ourselves, we do not ask anyone to feel sorry for us. The people of 
Burkina Faso have decided to fight, to fight against terrorism, in order 
to relaunch their development’. The people of Burkina Faso, today, he 
added, are asking the following questions:

    We do not understand how Africa, with so much wealth on our soil,
    with generous nature, water, sunshine in abundance – how Africa is
    today the poorest continent. Africa is a hungry continent. And how
    come there are heads of state all over the world begging? These are
    the questions we are asking ourselves, and we have no answers so far.

But they will soon have answers, and when they do, they will ask new 
questions, and then history will move forward.

Warmly,

Vijay

Website <www.eltricontinental.org>

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