Technology Won't Feed the Worlds Hungry

Erik Johnson
English 250 FD
Mr. Perez
April 5, 2005
Technology is touted as the miracle cure for world hunger when in reality it is hurting third world countries battling hunger. Anuradha Mittal writes in his article titled “Technology Won’t Feed the World’s Hungry” that technological fixes are not the cure for hunger.
Mittal states that the people using the modified seeds and eating the modified food often do not want anything to do with them. Technology has never been the answer. He tells us to look at the past. For example: As part of the 1960’s Green Revolution, Western technology created pesticides and sent them to developing countries for agricultural use. They may have worked to increase food production but at the cost of poisoning the earth, air and water. Mittal says that its not that they can produce enough food, its that they cannot get that food to the people. For example: the International Monetary Fund had to slash its public service and social-safty nets so now the food will not get to the needy. More than 60 million tons of excess, unsold food grain rotted in India last year because the hungry were to poor to buy the food. A higher genetic crop yield would not help the people in India when people are unable to buy two meals a day all ready.
The focus should be on the root causes of the problem not the symptoms. We must help the economic problems in these countries in order install change. It has shown in both America and Europe that when the economy of the country flourishes the threat of malaria and other diseases disappear. The hungry do not need a technological quick fix. They need a social change.