Glut & famine in Davos
Food, it appears, resembles London buses: you either have too little of the stuff or too much all at once.
The World Economic Forum has heard two paradoxical and alarming facts about food this week: two million children die every year from starvation while 2.8 million adults literally eat themselves to death.
The problem is not so much the overall quantity of food in the world but its uneven distribution. Developed countries have so much of the stuff that people throw half of it away, a British report revealed this month.
Food manufacturing practices, government regulation (ie sell by dates), climate change and agricultural advances are all either part of the problem or a potential solution, WEF delegates were told.
It all leads back to a central theme at Davos this year: the growing problem of social inequality.
Maybe it’s a sign of our complicated and muddled times that two WEF debates, entitled The Food Security Equation and the War Against Obesity, are followed by a world cuisine buffet for delegates in the congress hall.
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