Editor's Note [Volume 22 No. 7 (2022)]
What is hunger?
When we talk of how many people go to bed hungry, what exactly do we mean? According to the 2022 Global Report on Food Crises [1], 180m people across 40 countries face food insecurity, which will ultimately be associated with malnutrition, hunger, and famine. The type of malnutrition referred to here is that where the body does not get enough energy or nutrients to sustain it. There are cases where over-nutrition manifests in overweight and obesity. What is famine? Famine is a situation where there is extreme scarcity of food; for example, when there has been a natural disaster, such as drought, floods, mud/lava/slides, hurricanes or where there are conflicts and farmers have to move and are therefore unable to cultivate. According to the World Food Program appeals, which we now see in the media regularly, the situation this year is dire .Look, we have managed to bring under control the Corona pandemic, but only after nations of the world started to work together to tackle a common problem, Now the pandemic is passed, even though the CORONA virus is still around. There have been famines since time immemorial. These are mentioned in the Bible, for those of us familiar with the Holy Book. Ten famine periods in almost two millennia, fear, mass deaths, cultural decisions, indecisions, and disruptions. People moved to Egypt because there was food there. When Egypt started to run out of food, citizens would cry out to Pharoah, the ruler then, for food just as we do today, to governments [2]. The challenge we face today is the frequency of adverse events, affecting a lot of people- climate variability, fast population growth, conflicts and wars. Can hunger truly be eliminated? Are we just deceiving ourselves? How can we at least ensure better equity and minimize suffering due to food scarcity? I am just thinking. But we must also act sympathetically.
1GRFC 2022.
2Dando WA 1982 World Population, food production, famine: who will survive. In: Tension areas of the world. Edited by Bennet D.G. 31-34 Champaign, Park Press.
I wish you all great reading of these fine articles in this issue. We have a total of 16 well reviewed articles. We thank and recognize our amazing authors who keep sending us much better written manuscripts on very important subjects.
Ruth Khasaya Oniang'o
Editor-in-Chief, AJFAND
