The Challenge of Global Hunger Today Isn't Production Based, It's Access Based -- Jim Harkness

"By 2007, over two-thirds of developing countries were dependent on food imports to feed their people. Then in 2007-08, and again last January, global food prices hit record highs, and those countries were priced out of the market. The result was a hundred million more people hungry, food riots and in some cases, revolution." 

"In early 2008, we heard that farmers in the Midwest were having trouble getting forward contracts from the local grain elevator. We looked into it, and later that year put out a report showing how a series of deregulatory moves in Congress and in the executive branch opened up commodity futures markets— which include agriculture—to a wave of new speculative money. This money played a role in dramatically driving up prices in 2007-08, and after a massive sell-off, prices collapsed." 

"In just the last year, we saw nearly 20 percent of the U.S., primarily in the south, under extreme or exceptional drought. In the upper Midwest, torrential spring and early summer rains and flooding along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers wiped out cropland. At the global level, a severe drought in East Africa threatens the lives of more than 10 million people. Major agriculture producing countries like Russia, China, Brazil and Australia have experienced either extreme drought or widespread flooding in recent years that is affecting global food production." 

"If we’re going to address poverty, food production and climate change all at once, we need to rebuild these systems through agro- ecology, an integrated approach that applies ecological principles to agriculture, with an emphasis toward what works for small-scale agriculture."

"...just because there is access to calories doesn’t mean there is access to healthy food. In fact, in many parts of the world struggling with food security, including within the U.S., unhealthy food is the most readily available."