The World Food Crisis (From Emile KAHOUN, Lycee Yadega)

People all over the world are concerned about the problem of hunger. Many individuals and religions, national and international organizations have worked to eliminate this terrible problem. However, their efforts have met with only limited success. In Asia and Africa for example, millions of people still, fight a constant battle against starvation. All of us agree that this crisis must be solved quickly and effectively. However the causes and solutions of the hunger problem are varied and complicated.
On the one hand, agricultural production has always depended on weather conditions. Even in today's modern world where great scientific advances are seen everywhere, humanity has not yet learned how to control or even influence the weather. The amount of rainfall is one very important factor that can cause agriculture to succeed or fail. Some countries have problems with floods, others suffer from the opposite condition: long periods of drought that leave land dry, hard and unproductive.
On the other hand, to increase food production, technology is needed, and the high cost of this technology is another problem of agriculture. Farm machinery is not cheap. Some machines cost thousands of dollars. The high price of oil also makes increasing agricultural production more expensive, because oil is needed to operate machines to produce and transport food and to produce most of the fertilizers that can be used to improve the quality of soils.
A third factor that causes the world wide food crisis is the extremely rapid rate of population increase. World population continues to increase at a nearly 100 million people a year. As a result, it is impossible for the agricultural production to keep up with the population growth. It has been predicted that if the agricultural output is not greatly increased, and the birth rate is not dramatically decreased, the situation will be more disastrous in the near future.

Notes:

Crisis : crises ;
hunger/starvation: faim ;

QUESTIONS

1) according to the text, what have people been doing all over the world? (3 marks)
2) Why is it difficult to eliminate hunger in the world? (3 marks)
3) Using the text, explain in your own worlds the problem of agriculture. (5 marks)
4) Overpopulation is one of the causes of hunger in the world. Explain. (5 marks)