Factors and Negative Impacts of Food Insecuirty

The podcast discusses the issue of food insecurity and its impact. It highlights factors contributing to food insecurity, such as climate change and rising food prices. Climate change is causing droughts that decrease crop yields, while food prices are increasing, making healthy food less affordable. The podcast also emphasizes the negative effects of food insecurity on human health, including a higher risk of type 2 diabetes and negative impacts on children's health. The host encourages listeners to take action by donating or volunteering at food banks. The importance of addressing food insecurity is emphasized, as it continues to be overlooked despite its widespread impact. Hello, and welcome to my new podcast called Why Food Insecurity Matters. As I'm your host, Ben Snell, this podcast series is going to discuss all things related to food insecurity and the importance of this issue. Today's episode is called The Factors and Impact of Food Insecurity. I hope you enjoyed that intro sound, which I got from freesound.org from the artist Johnny Holiday. We're going to be taking a deep dive into this crisis this morning as many people overlook the importance of this topic. To start off, I want to start with my opinion on this topic. My opinion on this topic is that food insecurity is a growing problem that is having major impacts all over the world. This problem is being overlooked by many, and the FAO needs to take a stronger initiative into solving this problem. We're going to be talking about some of these factors that are contributing to food insecurity and the overall effect that food insecurity is having on human health. I hope you all are excited as I am about today's podcast, so let's not waste another minute and get right into it. I wanted to give you a little bit of background information. Before getting into the first topic of today's podcast, I wanted to spit out some information about food insecurity that will catch your attention and make you realize how important this issue is. According to Blank Young and his fellow researchers from the article called Food Insecurity and the Negative Impacts on Brazilian Children's Health, Why Does Food Insecurity Matter for the Future and Prosperity? Well, in this article, they found there were 795 million people in hunger across the world. You would figure with this many people being affected that some government would have taken a strong action towards solving this issue, but they haven't. According to Molotov in his research from the article called Impacts of Land Use, Population and Climate Change on Global Food Insecurity, in this article, they found that food insecurity has been on the rise since 2014. You can think what you think, but it's obvious that food insecurity is an ongoing issue as it continues to rise every year. All right, enough with those facts, let's get into our first topic of today's podcast, which are the factors that are contributing to food insecurity. Some of the factors that are contributing to food insecurity are climate change and increase in food prices. Looking at climate change and how it's contributing to food insecurity, I wanted to insert a segment from the PNAS Science Session podcast where Brian Doctorow talks to Joshua Elliot, a research scientist at the Computational Institute of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Library. Joshua talks about how climate change and irrigation water can majorly affect crop yield in the future. Let's join in and listen to what Joshua has to say about this. More recently, Elliot has explored the potential impact of an extreme drought reminiscent of the 1930s Dust Bowl occurring today or in the near future, where climate warming could compound the effects. The worst drought year of the 1930s, which for agriculture was 1936, would be 50 percent worse for U.S. agriculture than the recent severe drought of 2012. While the 1930s were extremely dry, they weren't really all that hot. In fact, 2012 was actually hotter than 1936 was. And it turns out that as heat increases, it actually starts to dominate even the effects of precip in terms of the severity of impacts to crops. I think at four degrees of warming, so roughly by the 2050s, 2060s, the average year is as bad as the worst year from the 1930s. In the most severe scenario we looked at, which would be the equivalent of a Dust Bowl style event, but occurring in the 2050s, which would be about 3.8 degrees warmer than the 30s, we saw 80 percent losses in agricultural production across the United States, which would, of course, be just ridiculously devastating. Like Joshua has explained, as climate change is increasing, it is causing more drought throughout the country. If climate change increases, which Joshua predicts it will, we could experience a Dust Bowl in 2050, which could cause 80 percent loss in crops. This research has shown that climate change is decreasing our crop yields, making less food available. To add this, research done by Sharkeen and his article, Farmers Predict Worse Food Sorted Higher Prices in 23 Inflation and Drought Interest Rate Heights, found in 2021 that around three quarters of farmers saw a reduction in crop yields due to drought. This is just adding on to Joshua's findings on how climate change is affecting our crop production through drought. If we do not do something about this, we could be fatal, as in 2050 there are going to be 9.7 billion people on the globe, which Molotov predicts from his article impacts the land use population and climate change on global food insecurity. This is also when Joshua predicts 80 percent loss in crop production. This could be horrible. Another factor that is causing food insecurity to increase could be the decrease in crop production as the increase in food prices. Food prices have increased 10.4 percent in just one year, which is the largest food price increase since 1981, which Kelly and Kulanish found in their article, more Americans are going hungry and it costs us more to feed them. This also led to Olra from his article, The Nutritional Quality of Food Parcels Provided by Food Banks and the Effectiveness of Food Banks at Reducing Food Insecurity in Developed Countries. In this article, they found that the price increase is making nutrient-rich food more expensive compared to nutrient-poor food that has become more affordable. This is making it harder for families to provide healthy food to the table, which is causing a decrease in food insecurity. The honest truth is that I don't see food prices coming down anytime soon. I just see them continue to rise. Alright, let's start with topic two of the day, which is the negative impacts on human health from food insecurity. Food insecurity has many horrible impacts on human health, but in my opinion, I would have to say the biggest impact that it's having on human health is on human health. Once a crisis starts affecting someone's physical well-being, it usually catches people's attention. The effect that food insecurity is having on human health has caught some attention from people, but still, many people do not know the true effect of food insecurity. Food insecurity is nothing to mess around with, according to Cheyenne, from their article, Food Bank Based on Diabetes Prevention and Intervention to Address Food Security, Dietary Intake and Physical Activity of Food Insecure Cohort of High-Risk Diabetes. In this article, they found someone who is food insecure has a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. This is a major problem because it is causing an additional health care cost of $77.5 billion, which Cheyenne and its researchers also discovered. You would figure since food insecurity is causing this much of a rise in health care costs, someone would have noticed it by now and solved the problem, but guess what? Nothing has changed. If the risk of your chance of type 2 diabetes did not catch your attention, does Children's Health get it? Yes. Food insecurity affects children's health. Food insecurity has major impacts on children's health in Brazil. According to Poliziano, in his article, Food Insecurity Has Negative Impacts on Presenting of Children's Health and Why Does Food Insecurity Matter for Our Future Prosperity? They noted that children in Brazil that were in a food insecure house were 30% more likely to be hospitalized for diarrhea. They also found that children in Brazil that were underweight were 40% more likely from a food insecure house. Food insecurity is affecting all ages, but especially children. A child should not worry about having enough to eat or when their next meal might be present. We need to step up to the plate big time and make some big changes so that we can help these children live normal lives. Alright, if I've caught your attention today on the importance of food insecurity, which I figured I have, there are a couple things you can do if you want to get involved in becoming the solution of the problem. One of the easiest things you can do is to donate online today at www.actionagainsthunger.org, which all the proceeds will go towards ending hunger worldwide. Another option you could do is work at your local food bank, just like I talked about in this food podcast. Food banks could be a solution to ending hunger, so why don't you call your food bank today and volunteer to serve the hungry. Hopefully after listening to today's podcast, I've taught you something new that you didn't know about food insecurity. We covered a lot of things like factors that are causing food insecurity to rise, and we also talked about negative effects food insecurity is having on human health. But if we do not take initiative in solving this crisis, it is going to continue to rise and thus affect millions of people. This is a serious issue that continues to be overlooked by so many and no action is taken to resolve it. So I've told you there are ways that even you can get involved to help work towards a more food secure globe. If we do not stand up today and fight for food security, we might never see it happen. Thank you for listening today, and thank you again Johnny Holliday from freesound.org for this sound. If you enjoyed listening to this, follow my Twitter account at GIFIC2023 to get a weekly update on what is happening with food insecurity. If you would like to listen to more podcasts, you can find them on my Twitter account where new episodes will be posted every Monday at 5pm. Thank you again for listening, and I wish you the best of luck.