Abstract
One of the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals is to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition by 2030. This goal will be missed. Global hunger is still highly prevalent. In 2021, about 821 million people experience undernourishment every day and more are at risk. Is this necessary? This article calculates the investments needed for both acute and sustainable systems to alleviate food insecurity and decrease global caloric deficits. These economic values are then contextualized by comparing funds spent by individuals and governments on unnecessary or counterproductive products. The results show that divergence of even small fractions of these funds from food waste, tobacco, alcohol, or weapons within the U.S. alone could supplement the caloric needs of those in areas with high levels of food insecurity. America’s net-negative industries whose advertisements and sales could be taxed to improve America’s life expectancy could fund the yearly cost to feed anywhere from 17.1% to 1,467.9% of malnourished people directly, or contribute more than 100% of the estimated cost to sustainably end global hunger. It is concluded that reallocating funds that are detrimental to the U.S. population is a path to achieving food security and sustainable food production for the entire globe.
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Conceptualization, J.M.P.; methodology, J.M.P and T.K.M.; software, T.K.M.; validation, T.K.M., and J.M.P.; formal analysis, T.K.M.; investigation, T.K.M.; data curation, T.K.M.; writing—original draft preparation, T.K.M. and J.M.P.; writing—review and editing, T.K.M., and J.M.P.; visualization, T.K.M.; supervision, J.M.P.; funding acquisition, J.M.P. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Meyer, T.K., Pearce, J.M. How Easy is it to Feed Everyone? Economic Alternatives to Eliminate Human Nutrition Deficits. Food ethics 8, 3 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41055-022-00113-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41055-022-00113-3