The reproach of hunger : food, justice, and money in the twenty-first century

Summary: "The 1990s held up the idea that hunger and poverty were the results of war, mismanagement, and undemocratic societies. The international community, and humanitarian focus, acted to address these threats above all others--instilling democracy and free markets would generate greater wealth for more people. The assumption was that natural disasters were unlikely to constitute a challenge on anywhere near the same level as human rights emergencies, which had created tens of millions of refugees and internally displaced people. The plan didn't work. This is a book about the global crisis we did not expect. Even as the world races to grab and hold energy resources the next great challenge is building in complexity: famine--world hunger. In 2009, unlike in 1999, the most important UN relief agency was not the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) but the World Food Program (WFP), and the most pressing crisis is not resettling refugees, but making sure tens of millions of people--many in countries where there is no war at all--do not starve to death. What the food crisis illustrates for us is one dark side of globalism--not the system that will eventually make everyone prosperous, but rather a zero sum game in which full bellies in one country and empty bellies in another are inextricably linked. An increasing push towards "One world, ready or not," has paradoxically raised the living standards of hundreds of millions of people to previously unachieved levels, but at the same time the prosperity of one is fraught with the potential tragedy for another. The Reproach of Hunger describes the tragedy of the world hunger pandemic, and explains how we continue to struggle to feed the "new hungry" of the world. It is an issue not of availability, but rather of affordability."--