The Covid 19 Pandemic has taken a toll not only on the world’s best healthcare system, but it has also largely impacted the livelihood of millions across the world. In India, hunger has been an issue for multiple decades, being ignored by many previous governments on account of not being as important as any other issue. In 2019, India ranked at 102 out of 117 countries at Global Hunger Index.
Ahmedabad, a second tier City in Gujarat, went under a full week curfew in order to bring in control to its rising cases. The police shut down five stores of a hypermarket on the basis that it is a ‘mall’. According to The Economic Times, women dwelling in slum defied curfew orders and took to the streets with placards saying ‘Not corona, but hunger will kill us.’ The stress of lockdown and joblessness with no food saw Kanu Solanki, a daily wager, committing suicide in Ramdevnagar area of Ahmedabad.
In the West portion of India, states like Gujarat and Maharashtra faced various transport issues with freshly harvested crops. Farmers were forced to sell their goods underpriced as storage facilities were overflowing. Maharashtra, the biggest exporter of Grapes has exported only 74,000 tonnes of grapes this year as compared to 89,000 tonnes last year in March.
The northern part of India faced a large shortage of labourers and transportation, causing the already harvested crops and vegetables to rot in storage. Karnataka, the largest coffee producing state in India was unable to meet the demand for coffee due to no transport medium being available. In an interview for Aljazeera, Anumeha Yadav interviewed Sunita Devi, a worker in Delhi who was worried about how to feed her four daughters through the rest of lockdown. Devi is one of the thousands workers in Delhi surviving on Government distribution for food.
The low income group of societies who already faced daily troubles in earning their livelihood now also faced problems in acquiring daily rations. Hundreds of migrant workers, who have been stuck in Delhi after the lockdown was imposed in March with little warning, sat under the shade of a bridge waiting for food to arrive. The Government has set up soup kitchens, yet workers go hungry as the throngs at these centres have increased in recent days.
Food prices skyrocketed across the nation as retailers took advantage of the situation by raising the prices on existing stocks. increased demand from returning migrant workers pushed up prices by 9% at the wholesale level and 11% at the retail level.
As wages have dried up, half a million people are estimated to have left cities to walk home, setting off the nation’s “largest mass migration since independence,” said Amitabh Behar, the chief executive of Oxfam India, in an interview with New York Times.
Already, 135 million people around the world had been facing acute food shortages, but now with the pandemic, 130 million more could go hungry in 2020, said Arif Husain, chief economist at the World Food Program, a United Nations agency. Altogether, an estimated 265 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by year’s end. 45 Million people were pushed into food insecurity due to the pandemic in the month of March – April, out of which 33 million reside in South And South East Asia.
In Asia, a lot of countries are food dependent on imports, but countries which are rich like Singapore and Hong kong will survive if this lasts for a long time. The bigger problem will be faced by poorer countries who are largely import-dependent.
In Afghanistan, measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have disrupted planting, leaving Afghan farmers unable to sow their crops on time, while in urban areas food prices are rising with shortages in the food supply becoming more urgent. In Bangladesh, a nationwide survey by BRAC found that 93 percent of respondents have suffered a loss of earnings, with 54 percent reporting no income in March. The study estimated a 60 percentage-point increase in extreme poverty (from 24 percent to 84 percent). Increased poverty of this magnitude will likely push many people into food insecurity in the short term. In Pakistan, ongoing drought in Sindh and Balochistan have pushed more than 3 million people into Integrated Food Security Phase Classification 3 or above, and desert locust infestations will exacerbate the situation. Which means that the food insecurity in the country is severe.
From Honduras to South Africa to India, protests and looting have broken out amid frustrations from lockdowns and worries about hunger. With classes shut down, over 368 million children have lost the nutritious meals and snacks they normally receive in school. In Nigeria, transportation and trade have come to a halt, so there is no company or organisation to move the food around. Sub-Saharan Africa is the world’s largest rice-importing region, and it could be heading into a food crisis. In Kenya and East Africa, Covid-19 coupled with the locusts plague have dried up governments’ food reserves. Supply chain has also been disrupted, so supply cannot get to the demand. Stampedes have occurred over food.
In South Africa, aerial footage shows that thousands have queued up for charity food. The line was 4 kilometres long, near shantytowns on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Most of the food seekers are foreign migrants from nearby countries like Zimbabwe. They do not qualify for government food rations, which are not enough to take care of South Africa’s poor in the first place.
In Belgium, charities and NGOs have to decrease service or shut down because volunteers are no longer working. The situation might lead to an increase in the number of homeless people when people are supposed to remain indoors.
In southern Italy, charity groups reveal that “people are calling us not because people are sick from the virus, but because people are hungry.”
Hunger is a particularly severe issue among the migrant population, mostly from West and North Africa. The situation in United States isn’t any better, as portrayed in The New York Times article by Nicholas Kulish. In the state of Omaha, a food bank that typically serves 100 people saw 900 people show up on a single day. In Washington State and Louisiana, the National Guard has been called into help pack food boxes and ensure smooth distribution. In Ohio, where 1 million people lost their jobs, 30 thousand Ohioans applied for food stamp benefits in one week in April, almost tripling the applications during the same period last year.
Feeding America, the biggest network of food banks in the U.S., projects a $1.4 billion shortfall in the next six months. Food donations fell by more than half, and food prices for food banks increased nearly tenfold.
The world has experienced severe hunger crises before, but those were regional and caused by one factor or another — extreme weather, economic downturns, wars or political instability.This hunger crisis is global and caused by multiple reasons linked to the ongoing pandemic, interrupting the economic order by the sudden loss in income for countless millions, collapse in oil prices, shortage of currency, drying up of tourism, migrant workers not having enough money to send home, population dislocation and many more problems.
There is no shortage of food globally or mass starvation yet. The problem lies in planting, harvesting and transportation of food, which will leave under developed countries exposed, specially those reliant on imports. All of the following data and information shows that there is a food scarcity around the world not because there is not enough harvest, but because of the logical issues, that is, the non-availability of workers and transport or the markets being closed down due to lockdowns. The countries which import their food have no options as trade bans are being put up by countries across the world.
From the supply side of the market, farmers have no buyers or medium of selling. From the buyer side of the market, only those who have enough earnings to buy food have the luxury of filling their stomachs. The Lower Classes suffer as they are unemployed and starving.
To relieve the impact of this crisis, some governments are fixing prices on food items, delivering free food and putting in place plans to send money transfers to the poorest households. In the short term, this lack of economic access to food is a major challenge that must be dealt with. This means cash disbursements and free distribution of food in some cases. Communities across the world are also taking matters into their own hands. Some are raising money through crowdfunding platforms, while others have begun programs to buy meals for needy families. Organisations focused on data and information communication technology, like Impactree, CI Metrices and EDUCO, have joined forces to track migrant workers stranded in Mumbai, India. These groups send this information to NGOs distributing food in the communities where these labourers are located.
The Government, private sectors and individuals are stepping up tp help those in need, but more needs to be done.
- Sakshi gupta
English