Preview

Food for All in the 21st Century by Gordon Conway

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
6039 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Food for All in the 21st Century by Gordon Conway
Food For All In The 21st Century By Gordon Conway
Gordon Conway is president of the Rockefeller Foundation in New York City. His expertise is in the field of agricultural ecology. This article is drawn from his most recent book. The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the 21st Century (Ithaca. N.Y.: Cornell University Press. 1998). Conway is a former contributing editor of Environment. He can be contacted at the Rockefeller Foundation, 420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018.

For most of the industrialized countries, there does not seem to be a food problem. They produce a surfeit of food, and health problems have more to do with being overweight than with hunger. In the rest of the world there are periodic famines, but few in the industrialized countries realize that millions of people lack enough food most days of their lives.1 The Green Revolution was one of the great success stories of the second half of the 20th century. Food production in developing countries kept pace with population growth. Yet today about 800 million people, or some 15 percent of the world's population, get less than 2000 calories per day and live a life of permanent or intermittent hunger and are chronically undernourished.2 Many of the hungry are women and children. More than 180 million children under five years of age are underweight, that is, they are more than two standard deviations below the standard weight for their age. This represents one-third of the under-fives in the developing countries. Young children cruically need food because they are growing fast and, once weaned, are liable to succumb to infections. Seventeen million children under five die each year, and malnourishment contributes to at least one-third of these children's deaths. Lack of protein. vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients in the diet is also widespread. About 100 million children suffer from vitamin A deficiency.3 As has long been known, lack of this vitamin can cause eye damage. Half a

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    In Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation” he talks about the truth behind fast food. We never really wonder, when we eat fast food, where it came from, or what we are really eating, or how it came to be sitting in front of us. Well Schlosser uses his undeniable phraseology, his overall facts on the history of fast food, and his brutal honesty to describe and challenge our fast food nation, as we know it. In his book Schlosser argues that the fast food industry utilizes its political influence to avoid its main problems with health issues and its terrible working conditions, all the while greatly increasing profits and its expansion.…

    • 744 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Michael Pollan informs us that the Western diet of highly processed foods, fast foods, loads of added fat, sugar, salt, and tons of refined grains is not good for our bodies and detrimental to our overall health and well being. Our bodies need many more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains than most people are eating. The overall message of this book is that anyone can nourish their bodies and become healthy if they stay away from the Western diet. Obesity, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer are linked to this exact diet. In this eater’s manual, Pollan strives to aid Americans in the simplest way possible. He creates a manual that instructs people how to make small changes in their everyday life and eat a more traditional diet. Those who abandon Western-eating habits often experience significant improvements in their overall health.…

    • 868 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Peter Singer and Jim Mason have written a book entitled The Ethics of What We Eat. Pages 241-248 of this book discuss the idea of whether factory farming is ethical or not. For this short reflection paper I will discuss the ideas that they brought up about the ethics of factory farming, while at the same time bringing in my views of factoring farming and the ethics behind animal treatment.…

    • 610 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Have you ever thought of adjusting your outlook in life? Transitioning to entirely different types of jobs and positions that change your position in life. In the novel, The Good Food Revolution, Will Allen retells his life story as he switches off from being a professional basketball player, to an executive for KFC and Procter & Gamble to a…

    • 60 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The continuing globalisation makes many places become cities, and comforts people’s life. Many people can easily find supermarkets and grocery stores, and buy some fresh food with an affordable price, but what’s happening now is the amount of imported food in many developed countries is rising too high, for example, twenty years ago the food consumed by the people in Britain was 20% imported, but now it is doubled. In contrast, people in the countries that grow vegetables and fruits, and the ranching countries, which are mostly in Asia and Africa have less chance to consume the products they’ve made. Correspondingly, there is not enough food for people in many countries in those continents. According to poverty facts and Statistics last year, around 27-28% of all children in developing countries are estimated to be underweight or stunted. The most affected countries are Congo, Ethiopia, Chad, and the rest in sub Saharan Africa, even though some countries in this area are big sources of fresh food.…

    • 623 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Many children in Africa do not get enough food to eat. They do not grow well, they become ill, many of them lose their lives or do not grow up as they should.…

    • 491 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    GMOs

    • 522 Words
    • 1 Page

    countries around the world are underdeveloped, which can result in very low supplies of food…

    • 522 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Business Studies

    • 7279 Words
    • 30 Pages

    Most children today eat a diet which is high in fat, sugar and salt and lacking in fruit and vegetables. Children from lower income families often have the poorest diets of all, eating more sweet foods, soft drinks and crisps and less fruit and vegetables than those from higher income households. A recent survey found that the average child eats only two of the recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables each day, and one in five has no fruit or vegetables at all. In comparison 80% of…

    • 7279 Words
    • 30 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Child Malnurition in India

    • 3968 Words
    • 16 Pages

    India has the highest prevalence of underweight and malnourished children in the world and is almost double of the Sub-Saharan Africa. One in every three malnourished children in the world lives in India (World Health Organisation, 2008). Indian National Family Healthy Survey reports that, 48% of children under the age of three are malnourished and 19.8% suffered from acute malnutrition (IIPS, 2006). There are many inequalities across castes and gender in particular regions of India, with rural and remote populations suffering the most vulnerability (Mishra, RN 2006).…

    • 3968 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Yo Momma

    • 672 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Good nutrition, particularly in the first three years of life, is important in establishing a good foundation that has implications for a child’s future physical and mental health, academic achievement, and economic productivity. Unfortunately, food insecurity is an obstacle that threatens that critical foundation. According to the United…

    • 672 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Effects of Malnutrion

    • 2224 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Worldwide, children less than five years of age are known to be vulnerable and susceptible in many respects, especially on matters of health. Nutritional deficiencies and malnutrition have been identified to generally affect children more than any other group. This is primarily due to poor nutrition which has been identified to occur most in developing countries, as well as in more prosperous areas of the world. WHO Progress Report (2002) indicates that hunger and malnutrition remain the most devastating problems to the world’s poor and needy.…

    • 2224 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Home Management

    • 3007 Words
    • 13 Pages

    Children living in poverty often battle with the added stress of material deprivation and unstable emotional lives, circumstances that leave them particularly at risk of malnutrition. Amongst hospitalised children in the U.K it’s been found that 16% were severely stunted, 14% wasted and 20% at risk of severe malnutrition.…

    • 3007 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Food practice

    • 365 Words
    • 2 Pages

    diseases and diabetes are the commonly seen. Moreover, the food weakens a child. The low nutrients food effects the children's…

    • 365 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Best Essays

    Malnutrition in early childhood is associated with significant functional impairment in adult life, reduced work capacity, and decreasing economic productivity. 2 Researches show that the root causes of many health problems especially malnutrition is poverty. It found out that those who lived in developing countries with low family income have the most malnourished children. Asia, Africa, and Latin America have a higher prevalence of malnutrition according to the studies. 3 The children from households with a low or very low socioeconomic status had 2.5 times the risk of being underweight relative to children who came from households with middle to upper socioeconomic status. 4 As evidenced by the studies, it is clear that childhood malnutrition is associated with a number of socioeconomic and environmental characteristics such as poverty, parents ' education/occupation, and access to health care services. 3,5…

    • 2498 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Better Essays

    3. Muller,O. , & Krawinkel, M. (2005). Malnutrition and health in developing countries. CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association Journal, 173(3), 279, Retrieved from http://web.ebscohost.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=20895c2c-2b27-443d-be5f-e5ca649ec3aa%40sessionmgr113&vid=2&hid=105…

    • 1335 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays

Related Topics