The sound of a deep grumble coming from your stomach doesn’t seem to faze you. Knowing you won’t get fed or have clean drinking water isn’t new either, but seeing your baby sister cry from malnourishment is breaking your heart. Your mother and father work all day to make money but $1.25 per day isn’t going to keep you alive and neither are the crops that were destroyed by war in your country.

Hunger and poverty are well connected and are the cause of a global problem killing millions of people. Many people go hungry every day because of the lack of ability to come up with the money to keep food on the table for their families. It’s shocking to think there is enough food throughout the world to feed everyone, and yet 1.2 billion people suffer from hunger (shah). Food is wasted all around the globe; overall approximately $38 billion US dollars’ worth of food is thrown away every year (Shah). Food is wasted and thrown out without a second thought of the people everywhere suffering. Children seem to take up close to the largest percent of that suffering every day, usually in developing nations.

The world agriculture produces 17 percent more calories than it did 30 years ago; this is enough to provide the world with 2,720 kilocalories per person per day. The principle problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or a high enough income to purchase food (global report). Drought, flooding, and climate change also are major factors complicating food consumption. You would think that sense there is such a large number of people all over the world suffering that the problem would be a priority, and more people would be drawn to help. On the other hand there are thousands of people suffering from obesity, eating more than they should with little exercise and the problem with obesity is very well know. While there are millions of people suffering from the complete opposite form of malnutrition and it goes unspoken.

At a Millennium Summit in 2000 formed to discuss global poverty and hunger and promote education and development a goal was made. The U.N adopted this new goal and wants to put their plan into action. If the world’s richest countries doubled aid to the poorest countries then hunger and poverty would not be an issue, by 2015 the number of suffering could be cut in half and the problem could be eliminated by 2025 (Lederer) . If all 22 rich countries come up with the money, more than 500 million people can avoid poverty and tens of millions could escape certain death. It would be amazing to know that globally each country could come together as one and help its people from suffering. Everyone has the same rights as each other being a human being and suffering shouldn’t happen. There are thousands of wealthy people that don’t see what is happening all around the world, something needs to open their eyes or maybe their hearts.

It is devastating to think that there are kids in nations dying and losing family because of people not putting hunger or poverty high on their list of worries. There are ways that the problem can stop, but devotion is the key to a positive outcome. More people need to be informed of the problems that are affecting us as people, not just the smaller problems a nation is involved in. The more people involved in helping each other with simple things like food can make the world a better more loving place for everyone.