It’s Time to Shift Gears on Combating World Hunger & Poverty
More than 800 million people worldwide are food insecure. It is taking precedence on the global stage, with the Biden-Harris Administration recently announcing commitments to Advance Food Security in the Western Hemisphere. The UN Reports that the world is moving backwards on eliminating hunger and malnutrition, and that the number of people affected by hunger rose globally to 828 million in 2021, 46 million more in 2020, and 150 million more than in 2019. The UN Reports further that the global hunger crisis is pushing one child per minute into severe malnutrition. These are alarming figures of a situation that is worsening daily, and UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed is calling on all people to do better in our efforts to end hunger.
Hunger is a problem worldwide, from underdeveloped nations like the third world to the shining lights of civilization like the United States. Hunger Action Month serves as a reminder that nobody should go hungry, that there are people in the world who could use a helping hand, and that there are more than enough food resources on the planet to feed everyone.
Richard Lackey is a man who is committed to eliminating hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition on the planet. He founded the World Food Bank as a solution to addressing global food insecurities and helping 51,000,000 people get out of poverty. The World Food Bank™ is an institutional investment entity that operates much like a traditional bank, with extended shelf-life food as the core asset. It’s a prerogative to feed the world more efficiently by improving access to food commodities across the globe, bolstering economic conditions for smallholder farmers, and resolving food insecurities in regions affected by natural disasters and humanitarian crises. The World Food Bank is on the road to changing that globally to help 51,000,000 people escape poverty.
“We can eliminate hunger on the planet. And in doing so, we can not only find ways to produce enough food for every person across the globe, but we can also lift the world’s poorest farmers from poverty to middle income, creating a global economic boom like nothing ever seen before in history”, maintains Richard
In America alone, 1 in 6 children experience hunger, over twenty-six million do not get sufficient nutrition daily, and 30 million children depend on school for meals. The public health problem of hunger has detrimental consequences on a child’s academic and social development. Alarmingly in the USA, 108 billion pounds of food are wasted annually. That works out to 130 billion meals and more than $408 billion worth of food wasted annually. According to the USDA, 1/3 of food waste happens in supermarkets, 2/3 happens in homes, and the food that doesn’t make it from the field to the store isn’t even considered in this statistic. At the retailer level, close to 30% of waste is made up of fruits and vegetables. In response, The World Food Bank, in partnership with the team from Good Score(™) has stepped in to help solve this problem by providing a solution for schools with the Good Score bar. By upcycling crops, grocery store fruits and vegetables, and adding fortification, they have created super-tasty energy and meal-replacement bars for kids. The bars are available at a fraction of the market price so that school districts can purchase high-value nourishment at a low cost. This helps local farmers and grocers and provides students with high-quality, locally grown food without preservatives or chemicals.
Richard’s latest initiative is the Zero Hunger Formula, an interactive, data-driven website providing access to the latest facts and figures related to agriculture, hunger, and food security from across the globe. This website allows users not only to access this information but to collaborate with others from any country across the world.
This September, The World Food Bank urges you to do your part to fight hunger.
Food truck offers free food for earthquake-affected tourists in Lombok(Opens in a new browser tab)
About the World Food Bank
The World Food Bank is on a mission to revolutionize the agricultural markets in developing nations through an innovative investment platform that empowers stakeholders across sectors and creates efficiencies in food production and finance. Using extended shelf-life foods as our core asset, the World Food Bank leverages a standardized trading market and operates much like a bank. Our dried food products are held in reserve in a network of strategic locations around the globe. They are available for purchase when and where food is needed to normalize volatility in local food markets that are facing shortages due to market inefficiencies, environmental issues, or humanitarian crises.