Natural Disasters As A Cause Of World Food Crisis

Food crisis occurs when the statistics of hunger and malnutrition increases quickly. This can also be global. This definition recognises a food crisis from chronic hunger, although food crises are far more likely among populations already suffering from pre-existing hunger and malnutrition. This can be due to politic conflict, war, natural disasters and cost. The food crisis that most sticks out though, is natural disasters.

I decided to focus on this because there are a lot of different types of disasters that have affected many parts of the world which essentially are causing a food crisis.

A cause of food insecurity is natural disasters. A natural disaster is a natural occurrence that can create a significant amount of destruction or even the loss of lives. Natural disasters can consist of earthquakes, floods, tsunamis wildfires and more. Livestock and fisheries can be severely damaged by droughts, tsunamis, cyclones and hurricanes. It is an estimated 85% of the damage caused to livestock is due to drought.

Every year natural disasters continue and will continue to challenge agricultural production. Agriculture depends on the weather, climate, and water availability, this causes it to be easily impacted by natural events and disasters. Natural disasters can cause areas to be completely destroyed especially in this case, farmland. It can also cause cities to disintegrate

As a result of climate-related disasters, by 2050 the hunger and malnutrition statistics could increase by up to 20%.

One of the most recent earthquakes that struck in Nepal during April 2015, occurred at possible the worse time for farmers. They were about to plant the staple crop of rice, which must be in the ground before the monsoon arrives. Many farmers were also harvesting wheat or planting maize for the summer. Half of all farming households in key rural districts lost nearly all of their stored crops of rice, maize, wheat and millet, according to a report by the Nepal Food Security Cluster.The report found almost all households were storing rice and maize from previous years, and half had lost nearly all their stored crops and seed beneath collapsed buildings. Most households said they could no longer source seeds on the market, which may lead to shortages of harvested crops during the summer and winter seasons.According to FAO.ORG, the earthquakes also killed more than 180,000 large animals, 38,000 sheep and goats and more than one million poultry in the six districts. Just over two-thirds of Nepal relies on agriculture to live and more than half of the people surveyed said they could and were no longer eating meat and eggs and many were no longer drinking milk. The earthquake also destroyed farming tools, kitchen gardens and supplies of fertilizer, and caused significant damage to small-scale irrigation. But many organisations have come together to distributed rice and vegetable seeds for some of those people to still have the opportunity to grow more food. Since the earthquake food insecurity has decreased but could increase at any time. Natural Disasters are hard to prepare for.

Natural disasters are a natural occurrence that cannot be stopped, but they can be reduced. Climate change is one of the reasons why natural disasters happen so frequently. Climate change is the process of our planet heating up. Whether you refuse to believe it or not climate change can be caused by human activity. Greenhouse gasses and pollution also contribute to it.

Climate change can be decreased if we alternatively use renewable resources. A renewable resource is a resource which can be used repeatedly and replaced naturally. We can do this by getting rid of possible medicine and water bottles and replace them with something called an edible water bottle or the blop. Scientist has come up with an edible water bottle. It is a transparent sachet made from chloride and seaweed that contains one portion of water inside. It is biodegradable and can actually be eaten. As well as it being able to hold water, instead of pre-packaged medicine we can put the medicine in the blobs because most medicine would not react to it. Every little bit counts and adds up, anything can make a difference.

Sustainable and Renewable resources are our only hope of decreasing climate change which decreases the number of natural disasters.