Hunger - Martin Caparros

 It's not easy to read, but ...
  Read to understand and change ... 

This book is great in size and information. I bow before the author's work, before his involvement and effort in collecting materials and transfer them to paper.It is also a work that, despite its volume, drew in. The content they read does not forget about themselves, they "tink" thoughts, arouse emotions, do not leave indifferent. The author writes understandable language, pictures, quotes facts and figures that draw as much as descriptions. The content of "Famine" moved, aroused emotions, stimulated thoughts and gave birth to ideas and ideas.

Hunger: can unite, neutralize, cause aggression, anesthetize, wake up the worst behavior.
Hunger: is a challenge, aggression and revolutions, passivity, misery, death and humiliation, modern slavery.
Hungry and exploited can take revenge in the rich world.

Martin Caparos analyzes hunger in many respects, on many levels, watching from different parts of the world. It brings together various forms of hunger, from extreme poverty in Niger, India, Bangladesh and South Sudan, where people do not eat every day, and often do not have access to drinking water. Through malnutrition, due to insufficient intake of food or monotonous food (only small amounts of rice), eg Madagascar. Eating food too cluttered, junk because it is cheap, and education, lack of awareness and money does not allow or limit the possibility of buying healthier and more varied food: USA, Argentina. 
Caparos seeks to cure hunger in the world, writes that one of them, perhaps even the greatest, is rich with his greed and selfishness, the need to gather, collect and surround himself with more and more goods, money and power. The rich appropriated the land, used cheap labor, flooded with cheap products. This is true in Asia, Africa and South America, where there is a lot of poverty, dependency and ambiguity in the legal documentation of land ownership. Often where there was once destructive colonialism. 
Another cause of hunger is the displacement of individual farmers from their small plots, which allowed them to feed the whole family. The lands "take", "buy", or appropriating wealthy domestic or foreign to invest their cash surpluses (another problem arises - excess money in the rich, who do not know what else to invest their growing finances). 
The next big problem is the large, homogenous agricultural enterprise that often destroys the soil. Focusing on large areas of land and forcing large subsidies from their governments. Not caring about small farms and their owners.Crops for the production of biofuels are another step to land grabbing for the rich and the most unrelated to human consumption, while manipulating prices for products such as maize.Like the cultivation of animals eaten by the rich of this world. 
The problem with big players in the agricultural market, for example, is that Monsanto, which produces modified seeds for sowing that yields higher yields but is sterile, needs large areas, operates only in one cycle and entails a long-term contract with a monopoly producer. And usurper. Small farmers do not have the means to follow the Monsanto guidelines, so they go bankrupt and run off into the city, fueling the ranks of the unemployed. This plus-plus company has become a widespread tyrant for its benefit, decides who, when and where he will breed, whether he or she will have what to eat. 
Yet another reason is the speculation of big financial institutions that want to make money on everything, and food is a great motive as a constant need. Man can refuse other things and food will buy, he will end up with strength (unless they run out). A toy or a razor to create more money for some, destroys the real lives of others. 
Another is the "gracious" or "just hand" of international institutions of the IMF and the World Bank, which act selectively and have an irresistible impression that they are very interesting. 
Overproduction of food in rich countries and its waste at various levels of the process. It is terrible to read that 50% of food is thrown into trash at the awareness that 1 billion people have nothing to eat. 
The other among others globalization of food prices, millions of cheap labor, used to the limits of endurance. Emerging pathologies that accompany misery. Absurdities of life of people from rich countries. No idea to provide work and place for living for people who are deprived of land and displaced by machines. 
There is no great gender inequality. Mother can not work, because she has to take care of children, husband can not take care of children because it is not his job. Dependence on a man allows a peaceful life without aggression and one mouth (the most greedy) less to feed.
It is really worth to read Capaross's book in order to be aware of the basic things that happen around us in which we participate, more or less rationally and physically.It is worth noting that about one billion workers (1/3 of the world's workforce) is unnecessary.It is worth remembering that 20% of the population lives in extreme poverty, for less than $ 1.25 a day.
I could write about this book and the information contained in it, but I decided this time to quote the author's writings that seemed to me most important or impressed me the most:

- page 117 "Meat is a great metaphor for inequality."- p 129 "In this other world there are no solidly built homes, no toilets, running water, hospitals, ... schools, decent work, no caring state, no security, no future. There is no food for everyone. "- p. 187 "Hunger is also, very often, a gender issue."- p. 219 "... for the first time as the world of the world, more people live in cities than in the countryside."- p. 275 "... it seems as if the hunger was primarily a matter for women: they are closer to him, they feel him when they are preparing food, they suffer hunger in their children, ... 60% of the world's starving women."- p. 287 "One of the least known qualities of hunger is the monotony of food: always the same food."- p. 299 "at $ 60, the price for selling jeans in NY, the cost of the Bangladeshi workforce ...- is 25 to 30 centimeters." !- p. 309 "There are many causes of hunger. No food is no longer there."- page 321 "... the degree of affluence of society is measured by the share of the goods they are consuming unnecessarily."- p. 390 "Obese are poorly fed people - the poorest - in a rather rich world." Manufacturers to multiply their profits feed cheap, junk food, pay junk for raw materials and junk pay for work.- p. 401 "Obese and starving are the victims - the different - the same."- page 462 "Part of the population is an absolute surplus in this model and development." They do not need the model, they are superfluous, they cost, they have to deal with it. "- page 469 "The rule of the rule has always been to provide the lowest possible level of vegetation. ... When the government gives alms to its subjects, it hopes that it will be enough to keep them under submission and obedience: the helpless, the silent." Hunger is an element of strong blackmail. "- p. 486 "There are five or six million unnecessary people in Argentina today."
- p. 493 "... people bother you like garbage that you do not know where to throw away."- p. 590 "Hunger is poverty that can not be discussed, relativized."- page 679 "The defeat of a certain civilization."- p. 698 "... hunger is the most shameless, ultimate, screaming deaf, metaphor for those who do not listen."In rich countries people eat so much that they lose weight, go to the gym, apply diets,
In poor countries people have nothing to eat! - such a curiosity.

In my opinion, selfishness and disrespect for other fellow humans (humans, animals and nature) are the foundations of humanity's problems. Hunger is one of the side effects, very serious, but not the only one.It's a good idea to start with yourself and your immediate surroundings: make a conscious shopping, do not waste your food, respect your earnings and do not spend on unnecessary things (assuming garbage), do not be fooled by ads, waste and segregate, care for green, do not burn Trash, etc. Really do not need a lot of things, it's just the manipulation and illusion that people succumb to. Everyone has limited capacity and is based on the basic things, the rest is the "humor". Unfortunately, I observe the behavior of many civilized people on a daily basis and it turns out that they have a very big trouble with consciousness. They run, are still rushing not looking around, passing other, similar, uninterested, absorbed in their affairs, nose tip, conquering, grasping, needs, etc ....

Fortunately, not everyone and hope in them. Surprisingly for me, the example is the head of TNT, who is trying to help effectively or not creating a mechanism that does not interfere with the mechanisms and is trying to repair the world.