Progress 2 - The World Food Problem

This is the second report on the reading progress of "The World Food Problem". In the last report, I explained the difference between undernutrition and malnutrition. This time, I will be explaining how researchers around the world tried to measure the extent of hunger. 

There has been numerous attemps to measure the extent of hunger in the past, both nationally and internationally. However, it was very difficult to measure it precisely due to its difficulty and complexity of the conducted surveys. The First World Food Survey by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was first conducted in 1946, and there hasn't been much reliable datas before than that. Therefore, some alternatives had to be used when researchers tried to measure the extent of hunger. 

The first method was to measure the weight and height of the people in the countries that were said to be suffering from hunger, and compare the numbers with the same datas from the developed countries. It was believed that lighter weight and shorter height was the sign of undernutrition, since there has been a significant differences in those numbers when compared. This method however, neglects the fact that short and slim people who are also healthy exists. 

The second method was to measure the number of total national food supply in calories, and devide the number of national population. FAO has determined that approximately 3000 calories per day is the necessary amount to maintain health, and if the calories per day per caput is below 3000, it was believed that the country is suffering from undernutrition. This method has some problems to consider. Firstly, even if the number exceeds 3000 per day per caput, the foods are obviously not distributed evenly in the country, if not in any countries. Secondly, it neglects the existence of malnutrition. Finally, the reliability of agricultural output number used to calculate the total national food supply was skeptical. This was because the farmers who participated into this survey were likely to be lying about their yields of the crops from the fear of taxes, despite its actual purpose of the surveys differs from what they were afraid of.

The third method was to use average national income as a measure instead of national food supply per caput. Again, money isn't evenly distributed, thus poor may still be suffering from undernutrition. Also, even if people had enough money to afford an adequete diet, they might spend their money on something else rather than food. 

As you can see, none of the methods can measure the extent of hunger precisely. However, it is still useful to know roughly how much the country is suffering.