Editing Hunger (section)

===Efforts after World War II===
While there had been increasing attention to hunger relief from the late 19th century, Dr David Grigg has summarised that prior to the end of [[World War II]], world hunger still received relatively little academic or political attention; whereas after 1945 there was an explosion of interest in the topic.<ref name="Grigg"/>

After [[World War II]], a new international politico-economic order came into being, which was later described as [[Embedded liberalism]]. For at least the first decade after the war, the United States, then by far the period's most dominant national actor, was strongly supportive of efforts to tackle world hunger and to promote international development. It heavily funded the United Nation's development programmes, and later the efforts of other multilateral organizations like the [[International Monetary Fund]] (IMF) and the [[World Bank]] (WB).<ref name="Grigg"/><ref name = "foodAndFamine"/><ref name = "Politics of hunger">
{{cite book
|author = John R. Butterly and Jack Shepherd
|title=Hunger: The Biology and Politics of Starvation
|year= 2006
|isbn=978-1-58465-926-6
|publisher= Dartmouth College
}}</ref>

The newly established United Nations became a leading player in co-ordinating the global fight against hunger. The [[United Nations|UN]] has three agencies that work to promote food security and agricultural development: the [[Food and Agriculture Organization]] (FAO), the [[World Food Programme]] (WFP) and the [[International Fund for Agricultural Development]] (IFAD). FAO is the world's agricultural knowledge agency, providing policy and technical assistance to developing countries to promote food security, [[nutrition]] and sustainable agricultural production, particularly in rural areas. [[World Food Programme|WFP]]'s key mission is to deliver food into the hands of the hungry poor. The agency steps in during [[emergencies]] and uses food to aid recovery after emergencies. Its longer term approaches to hunger helps the transition from recovery to development. [[International Fund for Agricultural Development|IFAD]], with its knowledge of rural poverty and exclusive focus on poor rural people, designs and implements programmes to help those people access the assets, services and opportunities they need to overcome poverty.<ref name="Grigg"/><ref name = "foodAndFamine"/><ref name = "Politics of hunger"/>

Following successful post [[World War II|WWII]] reconstruction of Germany and Japan, the [[International Monetary Fund|IMF]] and [[World Bank|WB]] began to turn their attention to the developing world. A great many [[NGO|civil society actors]] were also active in trying to combat hunger, especially after the late 1970s when global media began to bring the plight of starving people in places like [[Ethiopia]] to wider attention. Most significant of all, especially in the late 1960s and 70s, the [[Green revolution]] helped improved agricultural technology propagate throughout the world.<ref name="Grigg"/><ref name = "foodAndFamine"/><ref name = "Politics of hunger"/>

The United States began to change its approach to the problem of world hunger from about the mid 1950s. Influential members of the administration became less enthusiastic about methods they saw as promoting an over reliance on the state, as they feared that might assist the spread of [[communism]]. By the 1980s, the previous consensus in favour of moderate government intervention had been [[Post-war displacement of Keynesianism|displaced across the western world.]] The IMF and World Bank in particular began to promote market-based solutions. In cases where countries became dependent on the [[International Monetary Fund|IMF]], they sometimes forced national governments to prioritize debt repayments and sharply cut public services. This sometimes had a negative effect on efforts to combat hunger.<ref name="Ecologist-2014-04-03"/><ref name="MR-2013-11-Magdoff"/><ref name="MRzine-2012-12-Goswami"/>
[[File:Irrigation1.jpg|thumb|left|Increased use of irrigation played a major role in the [[Green Revolution]].]]
Organizations such as [[Food First]] raised the issue of [[food sovereignty]] and claimed that every country on earth (with the possible minor exceptions of some city-states) has sufficient agricultural capacity to feed its own people, but that the "[[free trade]]" economic order, which from the late 1970s to about 2008 had been associated with such institutions as the [[International Monetary Fund|IMF]] and [[World Bank]], had prevented this from happening. The World Bank itself claimed it was part of the solution to hunger, asserting that the best way for countries to break the cycle of poverty and hunger was to build export-led economies that provide the financial means to buy foodstuffs on the world market. However, in the early 21st century the World Bank and IMF became less dogmatic about promoting [[free market]] reforms. They increasingly returned to the view that government intervention does have a role to play, and that it can be advisable for governments to support food security with policies favourable to domestic agriculture, even for countries that do not have a [[comparative advantage]] in that area. As of 2012, the World Bank remains active in helping governments to intervene against hunger.<ref name="WB30Jul12">{{Cite web
|url=http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/2012/07/30/food-price-volatility-growing-concern-world-bank-stands-ready-respond
|title=Food Price Volatility a Growing Concern, World Bank Stands Ready to Respond
|publisher=[[World Bank]]
|date=30 March 2012
|access-date=31 July 2012
|archive-date=1 August 2012
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120801172733/http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/2012/07/30/food-price-volatility-growing-concern-world-bank-stands-ready-respond
|url-status=live
}}</ref><ref name="Grigg"/><ref name = "foodAndFamine"/><ref name = "Politics of hunger"/><ref>{{cite web
|url= http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/05/20115712428956842.html
|title= The IMF's change of heart
|publisher= [[Al Jazeera English|Aljazeera]]
|author= Joseph Stiglitz
|date= 7 May 2011
|access-date= 16 May 2011
|author-link= Joseph Stiglitz
|archive-date= 16 May 2011
|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110516104538/http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/05/20115712428956842.html
|url-status= live
}}</ref>

Until at least the 1980s—and, to an extent, the 1990s—the dominant academic view concerning world hunger was that it was a problem of demand exceeding supply. Proposed solutions often focused on boosting food production, and sometimes on birth control. There were exceptions to this, even as early as the 1940s, [[John Boyd Orr, 1st Baron Boyd-Orr|Lord Boyd-Orr]], the first head of the [[United Nations|UN]]'s [[Food and Agriculture Organization|FAO]], had perceived hunger as largely a problem of distribution, and drew up comprehensive plans to correct this. Few agreed with him at the time, however, and he resigned after failing to secure support for his plans from the [[United States|US]] and [[Great Britain]]. In 1998, [[Amartya Sen]] won a [[Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences|Nobel Prize]] in part for demonstrating that hunger in modern times is not typically the product of a lack of food. Rather, hunger usually arises from food distribution problems, or from governmental policies in the developed and developing world. It has since been broadly accepted that world hunger results from issues with the distribution as well as the production of food.<ref name="Ecologist-2014-04-03"/><ref name="MR-2013-11-Magdoff">[[Harry Magdoff#Death|Fred Magdoff]], [https://monthlyreview.org/2013/11/01/twenty-first-century-land-grabs Twenty-First-Century Land Grabs - Accumulation by Agricultural Dispossession] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220911173657/https://monthlyreview.org/2013/11/01/twenty-first-century-land-grabs/ |date=11 September 2022 }}, ''[[Monthly Review]]'', 2013, Volume 65, Issue 06 (November)</ref><ref name="MRzine-2012-12-Goswami">Rahul Goswami, [http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/goswami041212.html For Whom Do the FAO and Its Director-General Work?] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304052724/http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/goswami041212.html |date=4 March 2016 }}, ''[[Monthly Review|Monthly Review Magazine]]'', 2012.12.04</ref> Sen's 1981 essay ''Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation'' played a prominent part in forging the new consensus.<ref name="foodAndFamine" /><ref>{{cite book
|editor= John Baylis, Steve Smith and Patricia Owens
|author = Caroline Thomas and Tony Evans
|title=The Globalization of World Politics
|chapter = "Poverty, development and hunger"
|year= 2010
|isbn=978-0-19-956909-0
|publisher= [[Oxford University Press]]
}}</ref>

In 2007 and 2008, rapidly increasing [[food prices]] caused a [[2007–08 world food price crisis|global food crisis]]. [[Food riot]]s erupted in several dozen countries; in at least two cases, [[Haiti]] and [[Madagascar]], this led to the toppling of governments. A second ''global food crisis'' unfolded due to the spike in food prices of late 2010 and early 2011. Fewer food riots occurred, due in part to greater availability of food stock piles for relief. However, several analysts argue the food crisis was one of the causes of the [[Arab Spring]].<ref name="Politics of hunger" /><ref name="G202012" /><ref name="Brics">{{cite news
|url= http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2012/07/27/food-crisis-how-do-the-brics-fare/
|title= Food crisis: how do the Brics fare?
|work= [[Financial Times]]
|author= Andrew Bowman
|date= 27 July 2012
|access-date= 31 July 2012
|url-access= registration
|archive-date= 31 July 2012
|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120731020155/http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2012/07/27/food-crisis-how-do-the-brics-fare/
|url-status= live
}}</ref>