Till date, we all used to believe that the countries of the world that battle with drought situations are merely bearing a consequence of the issue of global warming but in reality, the truth is something else..
Raj Patel, an economist at the California University, who left India to get settled in America, has written a book named ‘Hidden battle for the World food system.’
In this book Raj Patel goes on to boldly state that the real reason behind the starvation of millions of people is the multinational companies. According to him, even today, food that is capable of meeting the entire world’s population demand; in fact a lot more than just their needs, is being produced. Food produced by lakhs of farmers is being consumed by millions of people, but unfortunately the business of these farmers has now gotten into the hands of some handful multinational companies. These companies buy food grains in bulk quantity from the farmers at a very cheap rate but go on to sell it in the market at a much higher price, through which they earn profits equal to million to billion dollars.
In his book, Raj Patel wrote that behind the huge famine situations of the world, more than the multinational companies, organisations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are at fault.
Through these organisations, the ideas of globalisation and liberalisation are highly promoted. Due to the pressure inflicted by organisations like the World Trade Center, the governments of the developing countries were made to bring changes in their economic strategies.
Because of various developments and changes being brought in the schemes regarding the storage facilities and the amount of food that is delivered to the poor people, the people of the world now rely on the mercy of certain handful multinational companies. These companies and organisations do not care about erasing the hunger issues prevailing in the world or about the society’s health, and instead, only focus on their personal motives of earning profits- this is something obvious and doesn’t need to be explained.
According to a rough guess, today approximately 80 crore people are starving and around one arab people are suffering with a health condition called obesity. Because of the greediness of these multinational companies, the poor are suffering from starvation and the rich are made to endure issues related to their physical health. After buying stuff from the poor farmers at a cheap rate, these companies mix them with salt, sugar and various other fats to finally process them into fast foods and beverages.
At present, approximately 50% of America’s total population is affected with health issues like obesity, BP and sugar.