This was a second quarter writing assignment as a part of the unit What is the best way to

change the world for the better?

Jacob C.
Christian Studies Teacher
Christian Studies 8
18 November 2015
Solving the Worlds Problem of Hunger
In the African nation of Zambia, the value of food has gone up drastically between the
years of 2008 and 2009. Food prices were through the roof. When the citizens of Zambia, and
other countries with the same problem arising, millions are forced to become poverty-stricken.
People did not deal with this problem lightly, however. Theyve rioted, theyve destroyed food
markets, and theyve overthrown and toppled governments as a consequence of the prices of
food rising. This is only the beginning, the tip of the iceberg, however. If this crisis continues to
grow, not only will more innocent people be forced to live in poverty, but also civil restlessness
between the citizens and government will occur. However, all of this can be avoided if the
following four solutions to poverty are taken into consideration in order to prevent, or at least
reduce poverty in our world today.
One potential factor in solving this overarching problem of poverty is using our
technology and machines. One of the biggest challenges that technology faces today is finding
some kind of chemical that can increase the amount of food farmers can produce. This kind of

technology is probably far into the future. Luckily, the Titan supercomputer, developed by the
scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and Chinas Tianhe-2, the two most powerful
supercomputers in existence right now, are more than capable of finding and creating this
chemical. Right now, these computers are working on predicting earthquakes and simulation,
analysis, and government security applications. However, these extremely powerful machines are
more than capable of just these applications. The product these powerful computing devices will
make out to be especially useful in the sub-Saharan areas of Africa, where it is very hard for
farmers to produce as much as possible due to the lack of good equipment, fertilizer, seeds, etc.
There is no option to give our abundance of North American seeds away to Africa because the
soil and climate in Africa is much different than ours, resulting in no crops growing.
However, sometimes, technology and science works to no avail. That is where the second
solution to poverty comes in: we need to distribute our current food supply better. According to
Evan Fraser, if all the food in the entire world was divided equally among everyone, each person
would intake 2700 calories and 75 grams of protein. That is much more than what is necessary.
Now, imagine if we reduced the figures above to the amount of calories and protein you should
intake a day. After this, the worlds food supply probably would hardly have been affected. A
way we can make this a reality is making sure that international food banks have an easy access
to food stores just in case of times of crisis.
The third solution to the world hunger problem is keeping a healthy amount of farms and
farmers and making sure they are well-maintained. Food producers and our local food systems
act as a threshold between everyday consumers and global problems. Even if said local food
systems are not our primary source of nourishment, they represent an essential aspect in the
defense against hunger.

Finally, everything said above will never become a reality without stronger regulation
and an increase of pro-activeness in our national and global governments. Evan Fraser claims he
saw a feedlot that was meant to hold 100,000 cows, and that he saw a 410,000-ton pile of
manure. This a clear piece of evidence that governments need to have seriousness when
attempting to maintaining and promoting sustainable farms and farming conditions.
If I, personally, were to put all my time and effort into one of these solutions, it would
have to be the solution of using science and technology to find a way to grow more crops. With
computers with as much processing power as 30 petaflops, it would not take very long at all for
supercomputers capable of this much power to find and create a chemical that can drastically
increase the amount of crops produced. An extension to this could be that the chemical makes it
easier to grow crops in climates where crops do not usually grow well. In my own opinion,
poverty isnt a problem of how we handle our current resources. It is a problem of said resources
not being able to be produced where the amount of poverty is very high.