IGCSE Comfest Day-2

  The second day of comfest started off with a very intense topic of global food crisis  and the timeline of the various famines since the 14^th century.

Dr. Sridevi Assistant lecturer, Department of economics, (our guest lecturer for the day) suggested that it was not just physical access to food, but as well as economic power that accounts to consumption of food.

She highlighted that food crisis didn’t have a single root cause, but a chain  of problems that lead to it. Poor weather being one of the natural causes that reduces crop production all together. Also with the increase in fuel prices poor farmers with good supply of good grains did not have access to effective and safe transportation.

The very controversial choice of the international market over the local ones also affects the regional purchase and so the people cannot consume the right amount of calories. This is because of weak social security measures. The ‘Right to food campaign’ had stated that each individual needs economic and physical access to food, but due to the drain of resources by the richer classes, the poor tend to face the problem of malnutrition.

An average person from the lower class tends to cope with food shortage by two meals a day instead of three meals. Ms Sridevi said that the low class population with low income is where child labour is seen the most. To gain physical access to food, affordability counts as well.

She concluded by saying that the government groups should appoint officials to identify the poor and ensure that the stocks should be equally distributed among the lower classes and the people should have a say in the distribution of food by surveys to eliminate world hunger.