Service Learning Assignment Poverty and food insufficiency in the world. There are places in the world like Africa that have many food production and enough food to feed the poor. A lot of these places with enough food sources tend to be in the most need. More than one billion people--one-sixth of the world's population--live in extreme poverty on less than $1 a day. One billion of the seven billion in the world are in extreme poverty. That’s one in seven people of the world are living on less that $1 a day. The concept of food security is defined as including both physical and economic access to food that meets people's dietary needs as well as their food preferences. In many countries, health problems related to dietary excess are an ever increasing threat, In fact, malnutrition and foodborne diarrhea have become double burden. What we need to do, rather than looking at existing resources and asking what incremental improvements can be made, is to figure out what is needed to fix the problems, then organize efforts and dollars around those solutions.

The poverty Line Intersection Theory: Multiple Disadvantage Culture of poverty

The working poor The underclass Structural-Functional

News Articles on Poverty and Food Insufficiency http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/02/14/ending_extreme_poverty_in_our_time_obama Obama wants to join with our allies to end extreme poverty in the next two decades. The number of people in extreme poverty in the world between 2000-2010 has dropped by half but the numbers could have been affected not by people that have earned more than a dollar a day (extreme poverty level) but by china and India’s massive economic gains. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/who-is-poor/ This article is about how our lack of definition in our definition of poverty is part of the problem; S.P.M. and the official measure used by government agencies. The both measure and define poverty differently. If one was chosen as the official measure then there would either be problems for children or the elderly.

News Articles on Poverty and Food Insufficiency continued.. http://jn.nutrition.org/content/133/1/120.short The purpose of this article was to study and examine the relationship between food insufficiency and physical, mental and social health http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0040301 A New Study on Food Insecurity and HIV Risk Behaviour

What I Learned Working at a Food Bank Food banks are distribution facilities that warehouse, repackage and distribute contributed food to member organizations and charities. I worked at the food pantry at the Church of Christ in Ogden, Utah. There was a lot of food that we had to go through and put together in bags. Later a group of people went around and distributed all the food to people who were in need. There was a long list of names and addresses. I learned a lot while working at the food pantry. I realized that many of the people who were in need were normal everyday people. If you saw them, you would not know that they were in need. But many people who are lucky enough and have jobs and a home and a family still struggle with making ends meet and feeding their families. There were people that were gave food to that had two and three jobs and they were still struggling. I feel that the food insufficiency problem in the United States is at 16% in 2012 and that most people in poverty are children. I feel that our tax dollars could make it where no one would every have to be in poverty. If we were to focus on putting our tax dollars to more important things like food, health and education (I personally feel that these things are necessities) rather than spend our tax dollars (56%) on war, then we could

What I Learned Working at a Food Bank Not only have a healthier, happier and more productive society but also it would help us to live in a better world. Our priorities as a country are not where they should be. Something that I didn’t know about food banks: Every year the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service provides 1.9 billion pounds of food to stock part of the National School Lunch Program and provide food to the Summer Food Service Program, the Child and Adult Care Food Program, the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations and The Emergency Food Assistance Program that allocates food to state and local agencies for distributions through food banks or to feeding sites like soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Also, food banks solicit and rely on large donations from local and national businesses and nonprofit organizations. I personally was surprised by how many people walked in with food to donate. I was nice to see people happy to contribute to something that would help so many people.

What I Would Do to Solve The Problem of Food Insufficiency I would first revise the budget and I would change what we spend our tax dollars on. We would not be spending anywhere near the 56% that we do on war. I would try to help our country on more than just the poverty issue, but also the health and education issue. I think that in order to live a fulfilling, happy life that these basics need to be meet. There would be free higher education for all and free health care, I would make school lunch free to all children. Taxes would most likely have to be higher but hopefully not by a lot. I would change the way we produce meat. Since 40 pounds of grain goes to feed one pound of (cow) meat on the factory farms9thats 33 pounds of grain per day per cow), I would reduce the number of livestock on farms by more than half. Also, cows would have to go back to eating grass and hay rather than grain and chicken litter. Cows would go back to the natural way of being raised and not only would it be healthier but it will also taste better. I would also do this for dairy cows, pigs, and chickens. The grain that is used to feed life stock which is responsible for health issues in America and the world would be used to help feed the world. The profit that we make on meat production is nothing compared to what we could be doing for the world. By reducing the power of profit over the well being of others the world could be a much better place.