Food security and hunger

Many authors suggest that humans have an in-built sense of obligation to ensure that all people have sufficient food. Simone Weil (2002) points to this as an innate characteristic of human conscience that has not varied over millennia. She suggests that even the ancient Egyptians felt a deep sense of obligation to be in a position to say that they had never allowed any of their countrymen suffer from hunger. The early Christians were also very clear about this, and there are numerous quotes in the New Testament that emphasise that feeding the hungry is a fundamental duty of all individuals in society. In fact, all major faith groups, including Muslims, Christians, Jews and Hindus, can find clear guidance in their holy books and in their traditions, calling for strong action to fight hunger and poverty. And there are contemporary echoes of this approach in Maslow’s (1987) hierarchy of needs that identifies food as one of the most fundamental needs at the very base of the hierarchy. More recently, these ideas have been discussed and summarised by Hulme (2015) in the context of motivating concerns about global poverty. ¹ The most common motivation arises from people’s desire to relieve the suffering of others, reflecting the idea that those who have secure access to food and other necessities should help those who do not have such access, even if they are not members of the same family or kinship group (Singer, 1972). A second set of arguments suggests that those who can meet their basic needs should help those who cannot, in order to promote social cohesion and reduce the likelihood that excluded and disadvantaged groups may threaten economic and social stability for everybody else. A final motivation is based on the idea that the economic and political structures that create and maintain current levels of global prosperity are also responsible for creating global hunger and poverty. Thus, citizens in industrialised countries with mature political and economic systems have a duty to confront the problems of global poverty and hunger, since these problems are a side effect of the political, economic and financial systems supporting their prosperity.