Starved for Solutions

Book Review

Note

Calestous Juma reviews Betting on Famine: Why the World Still Goes Hungry by Jean Ziegler.

Some 870 million people suffer from chronic undernourishment, despite humanity's best efforts to improve agricultural productivity, create markets and boost nutrition. In Betting on Famine, sociologist Jean Ziegler sets out to provide a human rights-based approach to addressing world hunger. The book is a sweeping indictment of global injustice and provides ample facts and figures. "The destruction, every year, of tens of millions of men, women, and children from hunger is the greatest scandal of our era," says Ziegler, who was United Nations (UN) special rapporteur on the right to food from 2000 to 2008.

His main thesis, which is in no way innovative, is that the world is capable of feeding 12 billion people — 5 billion more than now exist. The main obstacle, in his view, is global inequality and corporate control of the food system. The solution, he says, is to return to the fundamental principles of the right to food, defined by the UN as having "regular, permanent and unrestricted access, either directly or by means of financial purchases, to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of the people"....

Read the full text here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v500/n7461/full/500148a.htmlhttp://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v500/n7461/full/500148a.html