Food Supply

List of Tables List of Figures Preface Introduction The Analytical Framework Methodology Worldwide Impending Hunger: The Empirical Picture The Evidence of Effective Malthusian Pressures: The Empirical Record Changes in the Agricultural Tehcnology Summary Appendixes Bibliography Index

The main focus of this book is on the causation of starvation in general and of famines in particular. The author develops the alternative method of analysis--the 'entitlement approach'--concentrating on ownership and exchange, not on food supply. The book also provides a general analysis of the characterization and measurement of poverty. Various approaches used in economics, sociology, and political theory are critically examined. The predominance of distributional issues, including distribution between different occupation groups, links up the problem of conceptualizing poverty with that of analyzing starvation.

This book is the first history of the World Food Programme, the food aid arm of the United Nations. It tells the story of the growth of WFP from modest beginings as a three-year experiment in 1963-65 to its current role as the main source of international food aid for both disaster relief and development against the background of the evolution and development of food aid.

China has a population of 1.3 billion people which puts strain on her natural resources. This volume, by one of the leading scholars on the earth's biosphere, is the result of a lifetime of study, and provides the fullest account yet of the environmental challenges that China faces. The author examines China's energy resources, their uses, impacts and prospects, from the 1970s oil crisis to the present day, before analysing the key question of how China can best produce enough food to feed its enormous population.

This book recognizes that any attempt to reduce hunger requires a sound understanding of which people are affected. It differentiates between food shortage (regional food scarcity), food poverty (inadequate household food supplies), and food deprivation (individual malnutrition) in order to identify the causes of hunger and recommend ways to effectively target interventions. It also focuses on a critical second question--how do we know who the hungry are? The authors explain commonly-used means of measuring hunger, the assumptions embedded in these measures, and what can and cannot be concluded from the evidence. They examine how rules for food distribution operate under normal versus crisis conditions. The shortage/poverty/deprivation framework is designed to call attention to hunger even when food is abundant, as well as to learn how hunger is avoided even when food is scarce. With many tools in place for combating hunger, the book draws attention to the policies that are working and to the individuals, households, and communities that are underserved. The book refines common thinking about the underlying causes of hunger by examining who are most affected.