SOC450 Week 7 Assignment 2 Latest 2019 January Question # 00598465 Course Code : SOC450 Subject: Sociology Due on: 02/23/2019 Posted On: 02/23/2019 05:22 AM Tutorials: 1 Rating: 4.8/5

SOC450
Solutions to Global Issues

Week 7 Assignment
2

Assignment 2: Poverty and Food Security

The members of the United Nations appreciated the content
you provided on population growth. Now they are asking you to expand the
whitepaper to include global food security as it relates to population growth
and poverty. Read the Case Study and provide an assessment based on the
questions below.

(For a brief list of resources for this assignment, please
see the end of the course guide.)

Overview

We can view global food security as the effort to build food
systems that can feed everyone, everywhere, and every day by improving food
quality and promoting nutritional agriculture.[1] That said, there are certain
practices that can advance this project:

Identifying the underlying causes of hunger and malnutrition

Investing in country-specific recovery plans

Strengthening strategic coordination with institutions like
the UN and the World Bank

Developed countries making sustained financial commitments
to the success of the project

We must bear in mind that more than three billion people,
nearly one-half of the global population, subsist on as little as $2.50 a day
and that nearly 1.5 billion are living in extreme poverty on less than $1.25 a
day. According to the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and other
relief agencies, about 20,000 people (mostly children) starve to death in the
world every day, for a total of about seven million people a year.

In addition, about 750 million (twice the population of the
United States) do not have access to clean drinking water, meaning that some
one million people die every year from diarrhea caused by water-borne diseases.

The population of Earth is expected to grow from 7 billion
in 2010 to 8 billion in 2025, 9 billion in 2040, and 11 billion by the end of
the 21st century.[2] If the demand for food is predicted to grow by 50% by 2030
and 70% by 2050, the real problem is not necessarily growing that much food.
Rather, it is making that amount available to people.

Moreover, foodborne illnesses are prevalent, with nearly 600
million reported cases of foodborne diseases each year. These affect mainly
children, but also negatively impact the livelihood of farmers, vendors, trade
associations and, ultimately, the Gross Domestic Product (national income) of a
country. These issues can impose tremendous human, economic, social, and fiscal
costs on countries Addressing them allows governments to devote more resources
to making desperately needed improvements in infrastructure that raise the
quality of life for everyone.

It is not enough to have adequate supplies of food
available. Policies that focus exclusively on food production can exacerbate
the problem, particularly if, to satisfy the need for quantity, the quality of
the food is left wanting.

Reasons for Food Insecurity

Certainly, poverty and the systemic internal conditions
creating it inside a country are the unmistakable driving factors behind
keeping adequate food resources from reaching people. It is only one factor of
several, however. Others include the following:

Inadequate Food Distribution: The reality is that there is
more than enough food in the world to feed its people. The primary cause of
famines is not poor weather conditions as much as it is getting the needed
amount of food to the people who need it most. Quite often causes result from
political instability and poor infrastructure, often involving a country’s port
facilities, transportation availability and quality of road networks.
Paradoxically, although the population is going to increase in the coming decades,
the amount of food potentially available will increase along with it. This is
due mostly to advances in bio agricultural engineering and increased seed
immunity to molds.

Writing in the late 18th century, Thomas Malthus warned that
global population would exceed the capacity of Earth to grow food, in that
while population would grow exponentially, food production would grow only
arithmetically. Although this theory has been proven invalid, the unfortunate
result of its propagation has been for some governments to rationalize
political choices that avoid helping the poverty-ridden and starving.

Political-Agricultural Practices: The widespread use of
microbiological, chemical, and other forms of pesticides in food continues to
be a serious issue throughout the global food chain. Widespread use of
fertilizers also causes illness in millions of people every year, not only from
the food itself, but from run-off into streams and rivers, contaminating entire
water supplies. The human, social, and economic costs of such practices impede
improvements being made not only in the raising of crops, but in their
distribution. Added to this, the rising demand in developed countries for
biofuels, currently refined mostly from corn and soy beans, reduces the amount of
arable land devoted to producing food.

The failure of many farmers in the developing world to
rotate their crops harms the replenishing of nutrients necessary to continue
growing crops. In addition, the repeated use of agricultural land without
allowing it to lie fallow in order to replenish needed soil nutrients thereby
increasing fertility and maximizing crop yield results in reduced agricultural
output and insufficient crop yields.

Economic Issues: The fact is, government policies that focus
on growing cash crops, for example, are designed solely to export them to earn
foreign exchange. This may be fine for the government in its efforts to earn
money, but the result is that farmers end up growing for foreign markets and
not domestic ones. This leads to shortages of necessary staples. Consequently,
the poorest of the population are frozen out of the local markets because they
cannot afford the food that remains to be sold.[3]

Civil Strife: Civil war can interrupt the flow of food from
gathering depots, such as ports, to distribution centers where it can be handed
out to people. During the 1990s, Somalia was particularly hard hit by their
civil war, as clans fought for control of the main port at Mogadishu. This
affected the flow of food to the rest of the population. In this case, as with
many civil wars, whoever controls the supply of food controls the country. In
failed and failing states like Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti,
South Sudan, Yemen, and Libya, food very often is another weapon used by one
segment of the population against another.

II. Case Assessment

The issue is not the lack of food in the world, but the
access to food. Simply put, food is not getting to where it needs to be in
time. In developing countries, the food shortage is due to governmental control
over food. These governments maintain their control and preference for certain
groups by limiting access of nutritious food to certain other groups. The
result is the weaponizing of food.

In this second part of your whitepaper, research the impact
of poverty on global food security and the technology available potentially to
remedy this situation. Write a minimum of four pages assessing the impact,
citing at least five credible sources in your research. Refer specifically to
the role these issues have had in the developing country of your choice. In
this assessment, please include:

A cover page with your name, title of the course, date, and
the name of your instructor

A one-half page introduction

A middle section that is numbered and divided into three
one-page sections. Each of these sections should answer one of the following
questions:

What is food insecurity and what role does population growth
play in it?

What factors specifically interrupt the flow of food from
the source to the people in the developing country you selected?

What forms of technology can be used to reduce hunger and
improve food security? Explain how these technical solutions can do that.

A one-half page conclusion

Cite at least five credible sources excluding Wikipedia,
dictionaries, and encyclopedias for your assessment.

For a brief list of resources for this assignment, please
see the end of the course guide.

This course requires use of new Strayer Writing Standards
(SWS). The format is different than other Strayer University courses. Please
take a moment to review the SWS documentation for details. (Note: You will be
prompted to enter your Blackboard login credentials to view these standards.)

The specific course learning outcomes associated with this
assignment are:

Propose a plan to address the issue of global food security
in underdeveloped countries that considers the impact of prior solutions.

[1] For a good overview of food security in general, see
Peter Timmer, Food Security and Scarcity: Why Ending Hunger Is So Hard, Foreign
Affairs, May/June 2015, Reviewed by Richard N. Cooper.

[2]World Population Prospects, United Nations Population
Division, 2017.

[3] Will Martin, Food Security and Poverty: A Precarious
Balance,The World Bank, (Blog, Lets Talk Development), November 5, 2010.