Do you agree that quantity is more important than quality in the struggle to solve the problems of food shortage in the world?
Food shortage is a widespread famine that is usually accompanied by starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Despite today’s extreme wealth and technology, this horrific phenomenon is chronic and even growing. The reason that it is ever-existing, although there are plenty of foods that can feed about ten times the whole world population, and abundant technologies, is because the main cause of the food shortage is not a lack of food; it is the unfair distribution of food. According to a research done by United Nations, 10% of the world population accounts for 80% of world’s wealth. Furthermore, 20% of the population is eating so well that they are obese while the rest of the 40% are dying from hunger. As the result, it becomes obvious that we can solve the food shortage problem. With the clear evidence and our awareness of the significance, we must solve the problem.
Yet there are those hopeful possibilities, another controversy appears in the process of food-aid; quality or quantity? Some people argue that the quality of food must be guaranteed before the amount, emphasizing the right to live as human. They claim that all humans are equal, thus people in Africa and those in America have to have the same quality of food. Although it sounds very thoughtful and sympathetic, what they are saying is just a sentimental and emotional opinion regardless of the real situation. The reality is so rush and emergent that the quality cannot be considered that much. Haiti, recently hit by a terrible tsunami can be the example. The tsunami hit Haiti causing thousands of casualties and uncounted social, economic damages. As the destruction was so huge, even the survivors couldn’t maintain their lives any longer. The way they chose to live is to make mud-cooking, oil-and-sugar patties. They maintained their lives scantly by eating this dirt just because it made their stomachs quiet down. This shows the people who are in need of food, actually don’t care about the quality. They need something to sooth their hunger no matter what it is, or they would starve. Thus, to solve the food shortage problems, the first and the most-in-hurry action to be taken is to provide them enough amount of food to stop them from dying.
Thanks to scientific advances in farming, world food production has been increasing faster than population. If the developed countries share the farming skills to those poor and support them by offering the products which excess their needs, the gap between countries will decrease. Also, there is a new biological technology making genetic modified food (GMF), whose size is much bigger than the normal one while the nutrition is being maintained. The super rice is one of the examples, which has the size of a fist. While this grows as the same way with the normal rice, and requires same conditions to be cultivated, the amount of output is much more outstanding. This advanced technology will solve the food shortage problems quickly and efficiently by providing the enough amount of food for those starving.
There is a Korean saying ‘Get the fire on the top side of your foot’, which means that you should do first what is in hurry. To solve the problems of food shortage, most of all, the amount of people suffering hunger should decrease. The more quantity of foods are distributes equally, the more people will be saved from starving and the faster the food shortage problems will be solved.