Hunger V.S. Money! Can You Solve This Crisis?

If you have been looking into world markets and ratings, you would probably know Elon Musk, presently the wealthiest person on Earth.

Elon Musk is CEO of Tesla, Inc., founder of SpaceX and The Boring Company, co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAi. The entrepreneur has a few days ago just left a big decision to Twitter users. And that is to sell 10% of his Tesla stock.

Almost 58% of people who took part in the polls voted yes, and Musk sold the stock in a series of transactions. So why did he do it? Why sell all that stock all of a sudden? Well, it all started with a tweet from the director of the World Food Programme, or WFP, David Beasley. He told Elon Musk that billionaires like him could help millions of people avoid hunger. Musk finally agreed that if the WFP could give him a reason, he would give the money. So Beasley gave Musk a calculation: $.43 * 42,000,000 * 365 ≈ $6.6 billion.

So why are millions of people undernourished? To answer that, we would need to look at a country facing this problem, the Democratic Republic of Congo. It’s facing troubles with about 70% of its population undernourished. The even troubling part is that about 58% of its people are farmers. So where did all that food go? That has to do with policies, the cause of this situation.

The first is trade policies. There are almost no borders, except for some tax, so agricultural goods circulate freely around the globe. Second, many farming businesses from the north use much fertilizers and machines to help with farming. However, southern farmers are poor and only have a watering can and some farming tools at best. So through free trade, there is no competition between them at all.

The last and probably most crucial problem is government. In many rich countries, a part of the budget is granted to agriculture, encouraging farmers. But in poorer countries, governments don’t focus on agriculture, with virtually no money given to the agricultural sector. And the small amounts granted are usually focused on export crops, coffee, cotton, cocoa, and such. So farmers aren’t encouraged to plant the crops they need for food.

So how do we solve this hunger paradox? Well, it looks like some billionaires are already taking action, donating money to help solve this problem. However, it’s not just that the farmers are poor. The funds should get given to the governments, turned into an agricultural budget to encourage farmers. Governments should put the citizens’ needs as their priority. And how could you act? Please share this article with everyone you know, and hopefully, we can solve world hunger completely. That is the end of this production from the New News Newsminute. Thank you, and tune in next time for more updates and analysis.