"Food shortages in Developing (less developed) countries are due at least as much to social and economic factors as they are to physical disasters" Discuss this view using a range of examples.

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Mark Johnston                01/05/2007

Agriculture Essay

“Food shortages in Developing (less developed) countries are due at least as much to social and economic factors as they are to physical disasters”

Discuss this view using a range of examples.

Food shortages in developing countries are due at least to social and economic factors as they are to physical factors is a fair comment to make as many of the physical disasters which occur in developing countries can also occur in developed countries. However it is rare to find a case of a developed country having food shortages due to a physical disaster. Therefore there must be a reason that the developing countries suffer in positions which developed countries do not.

Simply, the developing countries do not have the infrastructure or the resources to cope with a physical disaster in the same way that a developed country does. This therefore leads to further problems, one of the most obvious and well publicised is food shortages. The reason for this is partly due to the fact that the governments in developing countries is not very efficient or is corrupt which causes problems to the economy of the country.

An example of where the government has not helped with the problem of food shortages is in Bangladesh. Although the initial cause of a food shortage there was because much of Bangladesh is low lying (some even below sea level) and makes up the deltas of the Ganges, Brahmaptra and Meghna. Also a seasonal problem which occurs is tropical cyclones which funnel up the Bay of Bengal, this causes the level of water to rise due to low pressure. All together this results in flooding of much land.

In 1974 this was a problem which followed a poor harvest. This lead to the belief that the following years harvest would also be bad, this therefore caused a rise in the price of rice. The government could have prevented this by setting up some agricultural policies such as guaranteed prices, this would not have lead to a high market value as during low market prices the government would buy the crop. This means the prices would not dramatically fluctuate and the agricultural economy would become more stable.

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At the same time inflation across the country increased causing greater strain on the population, and also there was a decline in rural employment opportunities. This altogether caused the price of rice to be too high for most people across the country. During this period things across Bangladesh became so desperate that social contacts amongst people disintegrated and family connections were lost. This was even so dramatic as parents abandoning their children, and husbands leaving there wives as the strain for food was too great amongst them. Some people decided to sell, or mortgage their homes and land as ...

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