Editing Hunger (section)

===Pre World War II===
[[File:Unemployed men queued outside a depression soup kitchen opened in Chicago by Al Capone, 02-1931 - NARA - 541927.jpg|thumb|210px|Unemployed men outside a soup kitchen in Chicago, 1931|upright=1.15]]
Throughout history, the need to aid those suffering from hunger has been commonly, though not universally,<ref>As an example of historical opposition to food aid, during the [[Hungry Forties]], English [[Laissez-faire]] advocates were largely successful in preventing it being deployed by Great Britain to relief the Irish famine; see for example the section on "Ideology and relief"' in Chpt. 2 of ''The Great Irish Famine'' by [[Cormac Ó Gráda]].

For a detailed description of how [[Hunger in the United Kingdom#Attitudes towards hunger relief|views opposed to hunger relief]] became dominant within Great Britain's policy making circles during the 19th century, and also their subsequent displacement, see ''Hunger: A Modern History'' (2007) by James Vernon, esp. Chpts. 1–3. In 2012, advocates of small government spoke out against the US food stamp programme, saying it discourages people from fending for themselves, in the same way as it is not always a good idea to feed hungry wild animals. ( See [http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/07/14/4099922/food-stamp-debate-brings-out-the.html Food stamp debate brings out the haters] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130123061653/http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/07/14/4099922/food-stamp-debate-brings-out-the.html |date=23 January 2013 }} published by the ''Star Telegram''. )</ref> recognized. The philosopher [[Simone Weil]] wrote that feeding the hungry when you have resources to do so is the most obvious of all human [[Moral obligation|obligations]]. She says that as far back as [[Ancient Egypt]], many believed that people had to show they had helped the hungry in order to justify themselves in the afterlife. Weil writes that [[Social progress]] is commonly held to be first of all, "...a transition to a state of human society in which people will not suffer from hunger."<ref>{{cite book
|author=Simone Weil
|title=The Need for Roots
|page = 6
|year=2002
|orig-date= 1942
|isbn=0-415-27102-9
|publisher = [[Routledge]]|author-link=Simone Weil
|title-link=The Need for Roots
}}</ref>
Social historian [[Karl Polanyi]] wrote that before markets became the world's dominant form of economic organization in the 19th century, most human societies would either starve all together or not at all, because communities would invariably share their food.<ref>{{Cite book
 | author = Karl Polanyi
 | title = The Great Transformation
 | year = 2002 |orig-date=1942
 | chapter = chpt. 4
 | isbn = 978-0-8070-5643-1
 | publisher=Beacon Press | author-link = Karl Polanyi
 | title-link = The Great Transformation (book)
 }}</ref>

While some of the principles for avoiding famines had been laid out in the first book of the [[Bible]],<ref>See the story of [[Joseph (son of Jacob)|Jacob]] and the seven years of plenty, seven years of famine:
[http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2041&version=NIV Genesis 41] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221120012324/https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2041&version=NIV |date=20 November 2022 }}</ref> they were not always understood. Historical hunger relief efforts were often largely left to religious organizations and individual kindness. Even up to early modern times, political leaders often reacted to famine with bewilderment and confusion. From the first age of globalization, which began in the 19th century, it became more common for the elite to consider problems like hunger in global terms. However, as early globalization largely coincided with the high peak of influence for [[classical liberalism]], there was relatively little call for politicians to address world hunger.<ref>For further info see [[Hunger in the United Kingdom#Attitudes towards hunger relief]].</ref><ref>
There were many exceptions. For example, in ''Hunger: A Modern History'' (2007), James Vernon describes dozens of 18th and 19th century campaigners who spoke in favor of hunger relief.</ref>
[[File:Hunger - For three years America has fought starvation in Belgium - Will you eat less wheat, meat, fats and sugar that we may still send food in ship loads? - DPLA - 99ce44df6c024ced4d69ce75d6ebe7d1.jpg|alt=A pencil sketch image depicts a mother with her head downcast, holding an infant in her arms. Near her are two other children, looking thin and sickly. There is no father depicted. Everyone is drawn slumped over and appears melancholy.|thumb|A poster made by the United States Food Administration around the years 1914-1917 urging Americans to ration]]
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the view that politicians ought not to intervene against hunger was increasingly challenged by campaigning journalists. There were also more frequent calls for large scale intervention against world hunger from academics and politicians, such as U.S. President [[Woodrow Wilson]]. Funded both by the government and private donations, the U.S. was able to dispatch millions of tons of food aid to European countries during and in the years immediately after WWI, organized by agencies such as the [[American Relief Administration]]. Hunger as an academic and social topic came to further prominence in the U.S. thanks to mass media coverage of the issue as a domestic problem during the [[Great Depression]].<ref>As many individuals struggled for food, the same agricultural industries were suddenly producing large surpluses as means of increased production to counter the drop in demand from the European markets. This increased output was meant to ease the growing debt levels, however domestic demand could not keep up with prices. Instead, what is often called "the paradox of want amid plenty," agricultural surpluses and large demand simply did not fit together, causing the Hoover administration to buy large amounts of product, such as grain, to stabilize prices. Initially refusing to further compromise the distressed price levels, political pressure from starving families across the country forced Congress to reconsider. With large deposits of grain already wasting away in government possession, the only political move left was to begin a process of donations to the hungry from the Farm Board, a federal oversight created in 1929 to promote the sale and stabilization of agricultural products. Instead of hunger being a reason for the allocation of large grain surpluses, waste became the eventual driving force.</ref><ref name = "HungerModHist">
{{cite book
|author = James Vernon
|title = Hunger: A Modern History
|chapter = Chpts. 1-3
|year = 2007
|isbn = 978-0-674-02678-0
|publisher = [[Harvard University Press]]
|chapter-url-access = registration
|chapter-url = https://archive.org/details/hungermodernhist00vern_0
|url-access = registration
|url = https://archive.org/details/hungermodernhist00vern_0
}}</ref><ref name="Grigg">
{{cite journal
|author = David Grigg
|title=The historiography of hunger: changing views on the world food problem 1945–1980
|journal=Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
|year= 1981
|volume= 6| issue = 3
|series= NS
|pages=279–292
|quote= Before 1945 very little academic or political notice was taken of the problem of world hunger, since 1945 there has been a vast literature on the subject.
|doi=10.2307/622288
|jstor=622288
|pmid=12265450
|bibcode=1981TrIBG...6..279G
}}</ref><ref name = "HistoryEpidemics">
{{cite book
|author = Charles Creighton
|title=History of Epidemics in Britain
|chapter = Chapt. 1
|orig-date= 1891
|year= 2010
|isbn=978-1-144-94760-4
|publisher= [[Cambridge University Press]]
|author-link=Charles Creighton (physician)
}}</ref><ref name = "foodAndFamine">{{cite book
|editor= William A Dando
|title=Food and Famine in the 21st Century: Vol 1, Topics and Issues
|chapter = ''passim'', see esp Introduction; Historiography of Food, Hunger and famine; Hunger and Starvation
|year=2012
|isbn=978-1-59884-730-7
|publisher = [[ABC-CLIO]]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book
 | author = Janet Poppendieck
 | title = Eating Agendas
 | year = 1995
 | isbn = 978-0-202-30508-0
 | publisher = Aldine Transaction
 | url-access = registration
 | url = https://archive.org/details/eatingagendasfoo0000unse
 }}</ref>