Why are people still dying of starvation in this world when there are food mountains rotting in warehouses?

Answer 1

Distribution is not always easy. The highest cost for transporting potatoes to the grocery store (from a study I studied several decades ago) is in the last 5 or 10 miles, and I don't see that much structural difference in the meanwhile to challenge that.

I did some figuring a while back when a friend in a far off country was talking about how much a certain grain costs there, where his father bought it straight off the boat for his distribution company. Considering the local prices, I was sure I was going to get rich selling it to him for cheaper--transportation, taxes, paperwork, and insurance made the price my friend's father paid look cheap.

Just recently, however, I saw where aid workers in Sudan were giving up en masse. They could get the food to the country but because of the instabilities and poor infrastructure (roads and available fuel), they couldn't get the food to those who were starving. Sure there was greed--theivery at gunpoint was rife--but it was also an issue of power, like that horrible morass that is called Somolia. Then too, as I recall more than one aid worker tell me personally, that to get through some of the cities of Africa you had to leave a trail of money as a myriad of checkpoints and bureaucrats stood, some in sight of the one before, with their hands out waiting to be greased with green (or whatever the currency's color) before you could be about your business.

Bear in mind before you chalk up all those glib "greed" answers, the biggest hurdles are far closer to home to those who starve than some fat office in a big western city. A little reality for some here to chew on.

Answer 2

Really it comes back to cultural differences.

People can starve in a land of milk and honey if they don't
know how to eat what is available. That is how
Thanksgiving came about. John Smith (via Pochahuntas)
taught his community to eat the native foods, which the
snooty immigrant high brows disdained.......... fancy eating
the foods the natives were eating! No they wanted English
Peas and Pheasant, not turkey and pumpkin.

People can starve owing to a lack of order in their
community, for instance toss a bag of Christmas Candy into
a crowd of children, and there will have to be at least one
kid who can't get any of it.

People starve because their cultural/economic activity has
nothing to trade with others, or in other words, they cannot
afford it. No one works for nothing.......... It takes much
effort by a lot of people to produce, transport, preserve and
dispense food. If the hungry only want it "delivered" in a
UPS van or a Pizza Hut car, they will probably starve.

Deni Hines (Marcia's Daughter) has quoted statistics to wit:
There are more obese people in the world than there are
famished. Don't know where she got those statistics, but I
am happy to run with them. Why then are we not more
concerned about the obese than we are about the famished?

Charities quote isolated cases far too often in their zeal for
raising money. Charities are only required by law (in my
country) to spend 6% of their take at the coal face indicated
by their charter. In other words, only 6 cents in the dollar's
worth of food has to be consumed by the needy folk. That
gives you some idea just how much effort is required to
actually get it to their parched and quivering lips. They
probably spend far more than that on their advertising
campaigns.

Also, we project onto every humanoid the status we afford
ourselves. But there is no clear line really, between
humans and animals. We are all animals, and we all have
different life patterns, and we die as we have lived.

Once we had the planet's starving humans all fed, we would
start worrying about the starving bees in the desert, etc.
Hey, that's a good new charity we could start up and get a
license to solicit funds that will be tax exempt!

I assume you are not starving, otherwise you would not be
concerned about others who were, you would be more
focused on your own needs. You are not starving because
your Forebears, and the community around have worked
hard to maintain a good food chain. Enjoy it and don't let
the charities make you feel guilty about the very small
percentage of folk who starve. Just start making notes on
how they always quote isolated single cases, not
percentages.

No charity ever told you when the rains came
in Chad and all those guys got fat again! No, they just kept
pounding you with images of their malnourished infants and
holding out their hands for more donations. Well, OK, its
good work if you can get it, but the message they are
selling is driven by their need to run their 'industry.' You
are not compelled by law to buy into their doctrine. I wonder
if they are not collecting money from the gullible in South Africa
ostensibly to feed the starving masses in North America!#?

A good activity that helps prevent starvation is to plant
some seeds in your garden and grow some food. It works
for me!

Happy Grazing!

Answer 3

Because they have not put in place a suitable form of government and or religion to match population to food supply.
The Food Mountains were to smooth fluctuations in EU supply and demand and would probably be too old to be accepted by nations alledgedly starving, Any nation claiming to need Money to cure starvation is lying, In the UK in such a disaster he Government would requisition all food and means of distribution, money would not be considered until compensation was paid.
Foreign aid money is hndy for buying a presidential jet.
I only give to Charities which take rescources, Food, Fuel, Landrovers into the affected countries when someone says there are supplies available in theater they just need money they lie, they need Christian kindness not money.
The Food Mountain will shrink a farmers move to growing Fuel instead of food, US grain will stop flowing into the bellies of Africans, who iuncidentally live in a land richer in rescourses than North America, and into the fuel tanks of Big V8s. The end of Fossil fuels will mean difficult changes for humanity, No children before 30, one child each, child entitlement trading even, to stabilise the population but we will need to shrink populations to an overall average of 25% of present levels, to sustain present living standards without fossil fuels.
And think on, every African who survives this drought will contribute to the next one.
One Child each, that is the message they must learn.

Answer 4

Corruption and greed - it's a horrible world. Even if the warehouses shipped the food to the poor countries it would either rot before it got there or some "official" would take a large percentage of it as payment for their services.

Answer 5

It's due to a lack of safe trade routes. Throw in a few conspiracy theories regarding the CIA, puppet regimes and maybe the World Bank into the mix and that's my answer.

If you're talking about Africa, it could also be the lack of natural resources in much of the continent that makes the land (and therefore the people) dispensible in the minds of people with the power to make change. Oprah and Bono talk the talk, but they certainly could do a hell of a lot more.

Answer 6

Unfortunately the food mountains are in one place and the starving people in another place .Perishable food is just that, so it can not be transported anywhere. Some of it can be dehydrated and sent to areas where it is needed, but this costs money for the processing, packages, transport and distribution.Whereas a company may give away its` surplus food, it may not have the funds available to do all this. If you advertised a bicycle"Free " you would not expect to pay your self to have it transported to another country for the person who answered the advertisement.

Answer 7

There's no money to be made in giving food away.

I ask the same thing many times. In a country as bountiful as this, people of all ages go to bed hungry and some of them sleep on a sheet of cardboard covered over with dirty newspaper. If they are rich, they have a dirty blanket to cover over with. There is so much money out there, you would think there is enough to go around for everyone.

Answer 8

Until there is some type of birth control this is going to continue happening. There is no system that can feed everyone in the world

Answer 9

Because a few people on this earth is owning a maximum of money while the other have less than 2$ per day to live.

Answer 10

Because human beings have developed in such a way as to look and act like intelligent beings while behaving like cockroaches. Ref Trojan....

I would like issue an immediate apology to all the cockroaches on here.