Can Shifting Dietary Patterns Reduce Global Hunger?

[Khichdi lover]

Most of the world consumes non vegetarian food significantly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_water#Agricultural_products" compares the virtual water requirements of various food products :-

It is essential to recognize that virtual water is cumulative. To produce one kilogram of wheat about 1000 liters of water are needed, but for beef about 15 times as much is required. The majority of the water that we consume is embedded in food
the production of 1 kg wheat costs 1,300 L water
the production of 1 kg eggs costs 3,300 L water
the production of 1 kg broken rice costs 3,400 L water
the production of 1 kg beef costs 15,500 L water

I am showing the water requirements just as an example. But even land required to produce 1 kg of beef/red meat must be greater than land required to produce 1kg eggs.

So if human beings start shifting towards food products which require less resources for their production , but have similar nutritional value , maybe food shortage problems across the world could be lessened.

By this logic , soy-milk fortified with calcium could be a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soy_milk#Ecological_impact" for cow's milk.

Of course,changing habits of human beings especially food habits is a very tough job. Further, availability of food grains will also lead to increase in population. But still, the problem of hunger for the current world population remains unsolved. This could be one of the many solutions in a multi-pronged approach towards hunger reduction. There are also serious issues which need to be addressed such as black-marketing , in developing countries, which leads to hunger problems.

 

[Char. Limit]

There's no way I'll listen to anyone who tells me I shouldn't eat beef. I like beef.

Selfish? You bet it is. Do I care? Not enough to change my eating habits.

So yeah, there's your first big difficulty. A LOT of people think like me.

 

[Khichdi lover]

Wouldn't you rather have tofu ?
No just kidding.

Yes, you are right . I did mention it in my first post that changing food habits is not practical.

But what I meant was smart changes in dietary patterns. Not complete abstinence . That is way too extreme.
But if a person on average consumes 30 kg meat a year, he/she could cut it down to 24 kg per year. If you look at the water requirements , even that could produce admirable change.
Furthermore, reduction in amount of red meat consumption after a certain age is beneficial for the heart.
Or if a person doesn't want to give beef at all, maybe he could try opting for soy-milk instead of cow's milk , beef consumption being just the same as earlier.

P.S :- I wouldn't equate eating beef with selfishness or anything. I live in India, in our country most of the people are vegetarian and I wouldn't necessarily call them as the most selfless people in the world. Problems like over-population,corruption and black marketing are major contributors of hunger.


I read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_vegetarianism" and the criticisms of such an approach do seem valid.

 

[Evo]

They can raise cattle in areas not suitable to agriculture. Better to raise cattle than leave the land empty.

 

[Khichdi lover]

They can raise cattle in areas not suitable to agriculture. Better to raise cattle than leave the land empty.

But the cattle will still consume lots of fodder for it's entire lifespan , say 3-4 years on an average. And that fodder will need land. And in the end the cow will be eaten in a week or so. The farther our diet is from the solar energy in the food-chain , the more resources consumed.(A significant amount of meat is produced by feeding foodgrains to the animal instead of grass grazing on open pastures)

Of course, what I am saying seems logically simplistic, and hence perhaps impractical.

Changes in dietary patterns could be one of the approaches. We need to improve efficiency in our distribution systems. I repeat, in my country problems such as poor agricultural technology , corruption , over-population are major causes of hunger. There is no point in people laying off meats and in the end the surplus food produced being eaten away by corruption.

 

[Evo]

But the cattle will still consume lots of fodder for it's entire lifespan , say 3-4 years on an average. And that fodder will need land. And in the end the cow will be eaten in a week or so. The farther our diet is from the solar energy in the food-chain , the more resources consumed.(A significant amount of meat is produced by feeding foodgrains to the animal instead of grass grazing on open pastures)

They don't need much to live on.

Most cattle graze on grassland that is steep, hilly, dry or rocky and not suitable for building houses or growing crops. The main reason cattle are raised in different climates and settings all over the world is because they can thrive on low quality rangeland feed and grasses.

http://aitc.oregonstate.edu/commodities/beef.html

 

[Khichdi lover]

Yes , then that is good.
But I heard reports similar to the following that suggested that cattle feed is foodgrains :-
http://monthlyreview.org/2009/07/01/origins-of-the-food-crisis-in-india-and-developing-countries
Such practices seem wasteful.

But , in case cattle can be supported on grassland that is otherwise unsuitable for agriculture(such as the Australian outbacks) then that is good.

 

[WhoWee]

Yes , then that is good.
But I heard reports similar to the following that suggested that cattle feed is foodgrains :-
http://monthlyreview.org/2009/07/01/origins-of-the-food-crisis-in-india-and-developing-countries
Such practices seem wasteful.

But , in case cattle can be supported on grassland that is otherwise unsuitable for agriculture(such as the Australian outbacks) then that is good.

Highway median strips?

Personally, I think cutting the grass is a huge waste of resources - everyone should have a cow and raise 2 calves per year (front yard and back yard). If you live in an apartment - you can rent space on a farm.

 

[russ_watters]

Haven't we discussed this in other threads? The world's hunger problems are not primarily due to lack of capacity to grow food, but rather due to political, social and economic problems limiting access to food and/or the technology and resources to produce food.

 

[Evo]

Haven't we discussed this in other threads? The world's hunger problems are not primarily due to lack of capacity to grow food, but rather due to political, social and economic problems limiting access to food and/or the technology and resources to produce food.

Only a thousand times.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

We could grow meat in vitro. That would reduce the resources we have to use to make it to 5-20% of what it is now. Furthermore the crossover for technologies that allow for controlled cell behaviour (migration, differentiation etc) would have fantastic benefits in regenerative medicine. The advantage of tapping the food industry is that currently the beef market in the US alone is ten times the value of regenerative medicine globally.

 

[Bobbywhy]

World hunger. The world needs to solve three food problems simultaneously: end hunger, double food production by 2050, and do both while drastically reducing agriculture’s damage to the environment. Scientists offer five solutions:

1. Stop agriculture from consuming more tropical land
2. Boost the productivity of farms that have the lowest yields
3. Raise the efficiency of water and fertilizer use worldwide
4. Reduce per capita meat consumption
5. Reduce waste in food production and distribution

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...al-damage-maps

 

[Khichdi lover]

World hunger. The world needs to solve three food problems simultaneously: end hunger, double food production by 2050, and do both while drastically reducing agriculture’s damage to the environment. Scientists offer five solutions:

1. Stop agriculture from consuming more tropical land
2. Boost the productivity of farms that have the lowest yields
3. Raise the efficiency of water and fertilizer use worldwide
4. Reduce per capita meat consumption
5. Reduce waste in food production and distribution

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...al-damage-maps

I quite agree with what you said, all or more than one of the above approaches should be applied.
Point number 5 seems to me to be a very good one. I can understand that people can't be persuaded to reduce meat consumption, for such a thing impinges upon freedom of choice. But wastage of food that too at consumer end seems to me unforgivable. Wastage of food at production level would depend on poor technology . But wastage at consumer level is simply because of bad habits.
Have a look at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_waste#Extent . If only people could be persuaded to use their refrigerators more often than their trash cans.

 

[256bits]

I quite agree with what you said, all or more than one of the above approaches should be applied.
Point number 5 seems to me to be a very good one. I can understand that people can't be persuaded to reduce meat consumption, for such a thing impinges upon freedom of choice. But wastage of food that too at consumer end seems to me unforgivable. Wastage of food at production level would depend on poor technology . But wastage at consumer level is simply because of bad habits.
Have a look at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_waste#Extent . If only people could be persuaded to use their refrigerators more often than their trash cans.

It is not all consumer bad habits. Some waste persists due to product packaging also.
There is alsways a drop of juice left over from a juice container - add up all those drops from all the litre (quart) containers sold - even more left in the containers with the screw on plastic spout thingy. Milk containers, same thing. Sugar packages - there is always some leaking out whenever I buy a pound bag of sugar. And those little single serving plastic packets of jam and peanut butter - it takes ages to get it all out.

 

[MarcoD]

Of course,changing habits of human beings especially food habits is a very tough job. Further, availability of food grains will also lead to increase in population. But still, the problem of hunger for the current world population remains unsolved. This could be one of the many solutions in a multi-pronged approach towards hunger reduction. There are also serious issues which need to be addressed such as black-marketing , in developing countries, which leads to hunger problems.

I think the problem is rather moot. In my lifetime the world's population doubled, and it will double again by the time I die. Since there is no chance in hell that agriculture can keep up with exponential growth, food will become more expensive. You don't need to change anything, at some point, the majority of people will just not be able to buy meat, and a large part of the world's population will just starve. End of problem...

(Actually, if I apply logic to the problem, then to put an end to the population's growth that either must go voluntarily through birth control -which doesn't seem to happen,- or involuntarily through starvation. If you eat meat, the hard brick wall where people will need to die off will be hit earlier, which means that less people will need to die to stop the growth curve. So the solution to massive world starvation is to eat as much as you can now.)

(For those mathematically challenged, it is a bit akin to whether you are going to hit a brick wall with a fiat panda, or a titanic going at double speed. The number of casualties in the first example is just smaller.)

 

[DoggerDan]

I think the problem is rather moot. In my lifetime the world's population doubled, and it will double again...

Along with my waistline. In response, I've switched to a near vegetarian diet, have tripled my caloric exercise output, and have lost about 20lbs since.

 

[MarcoD]

Along with my waistline. In response, I've switched to a near vegetarian diet, have tripled my caloric exercise output, and have lost about 20lbs since.

Yah, well, I do the same. I don't live out of my means. But I personally believe that there are just too many people to sustain on earth, and in this case, I believe the worst trend prediction of the UN, which says exponential growth at least continuing during my lifetime.

If it were up to me, free birth control measures to the total world's population should be one of the solutions.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Yah, well, I do the same. I don't live out of my means. But I personally believe that there are just too many people to sustain on earth, and in this case, I believe the worst trend prediction of the UN, which says exponential growth at least continuing during my lifetime.

If it were up to me, free birth control measures to the total world's population should be one of the solutions.

I doubt the population will grow that fast. Bear in mind that the developed world has stagnated and in many places is decreasing, in no small part due to; widespread contraceptive use, a lack of need for so many offspring, the increase cost of raising a child in a developed society and an increase in equality and rights for women. In reality an ever growing population is unlikely in my opinion, as the world develops and the third world shrinks we'll start to see population growth decline.

With improvements to technology and decreasing population growth I doubt we'll see the malthusian nightmare some predict.

 

[feathermoon]

You don't need a constantly increasing population to cause a Malthusian disaster if you have increasing constantly per capita pollution to supplant it. ;]

 

[ThomasT]

Most of the world consumes non vegetarian food significantly. This wikipedia article compares the virtual water requirements of various food products :-


I am showing the water requirements just as an example. But even land required to produce 1 kg of beef/red meat must be greater than land required to produce 1kg eggs.

So if human beings start shifting towards food products which require less resources for their production , but have similar nutritional value , maybe food shortage problems across the world could be lessened.

By this logic , soy-milk fortified with calcium could be a substitute for cow's milk.

Of course,changing habits of human beings especially food habits is a very tough job. Further, availability of food grains will also lead to increase in population. But still, the problem of hunger for the current world population remains unsolved. This could be one of the many solutions in a multi-pronged approach towards hunger reduction. There are also serious issues which need to be addressed such as black-marketing , in developing countries, which leads to hunger problems.

There's plenty of food in the world. The problem is getting it to the people who need it.

 

[widereader]

Most of the world consumes non vegetarian food significantly. This wikipedia article compares the virtual water requirements of various food products :-

Of course,changing habits of human beings especially food habits is a very tough job. Further, availability of food grains will also lead to increase in population. But still, the problem of hunger for the current world population remains unsolved. This could be one of the many solutions in a multi-pronged approach towards hunger reduction. There are also serious issues which need to be addressed such as black-marketing , in developing countries, which leads to hunger problems.

Hunger problems will never be solved in this inequitable world. While the first world countries have excess of food, third world countries are trying to live on a day to day basis yet their governments cannot provide them even a meal to be eaten once a day. Truly,the political stability of a country is one factor. Another is the ideologies that its leaders have.

 

[feathermoon]

Unfortunately its a self correcting problem.

Its not really a global problem, honestly, but a local problem. Populations exceed their carrying capacity (or in some cases go too far under it) and starvation occurs. Even well fed countries have exceeded their carrying capacities in many cases (though the ensuing deaths aren't typically human).

Anyway, how is eating beef in large amounts a personal liberty? Sounds like entitlement to me. Maybe that's the real issue.

 

[ThomasT]

Most of the world consumes non vegetarian food significantly. This wikipedia article compares the virtual water requirements of various food products :-I am showing the water requirements just as an example. But even land required to produce 1 kg of beef/red meat must be greater than land required to produce 1kg eggs.

So if human beings start shifting towards food products which require less resources for their production , but have similar nutritional value , maybe food shortage problems across the world could be lessened.

By this logic , soy-milk fortified with calcium could be a substitute for cow's milk.

Of course,changing habits of human beings especially food habits is a very tough job. Further, availability of food grains will also lead to increase in population. But still, the problem of hunger for the current world population remains unsolved. This could be one of the many solutions in a multi-pronged approach towards hunger reduction. There are also serious issues which need to be addressed such as black-marketing , in developing countries, which leads to hunger problems.

There's no shortage of food or any other resources. The amount of food is not the problem. It simply is not a priority to actually get it to the people who need it. There you have it. The US gives billions of dollars to people in the governments of various impoverished countries. That 'aid' is not intended to diminish the suffering of or to alleviate the hunger of the impoverished. It's payments to the people with guns who run things and couldn't care less how many of their fellow human beings die of hunger.

The only way to solve the problems of the truly impoverished countries of the world, mostly in Africa, is to invade, occupy, and technologically build them. But nobody has the resources, or is willing to commit the resources, to do that. So there you have it. No matter what happens wrt to scientific advancements in food production or whatever. It doesn't matter.

The people in our world who are starving are starving because NO governments care to help them. It has nothing to do with resources or the amount of food available. There's PLENTY of food!

 

[Ryan_m_b]

The only way to solve the problems of the truly impoverished countries of the world, mostly in Africa, is to invade, occupy, and technologically build them. But nobody has the resources, or is willing to commit the resources, to do that. So there you have it. No matter what happens wrt to scientific advancements in food production or whatever. It doesn't matter.

That's obviously not the only way, you can also make sure that your aid is spent well (not just given to dictators) and given under specific conditions (i.e use this aid to by tractors from my country) so as to encourage infrastructure development.

 

[Bobbywhy]

Oh, ThomasT! Your post above nearly makes me cry, and I am a 68 year-old man! You say that the "lowest billion" people are simply going to die of starvation because no governments care to help them. And it gets worse: in around 40 more years there may be TWO OR THREE BILLION more mouths to feed. Unless the current production/distribution system is drastically modified then hunger and death will become the great stabilizer of world population growth.

I tried diligently here in post #5 above to publicize how scientists had 5 ways to greatly reduce the world hunger problem, now and in 40 years. Am I terribly naïve to think we might actually diminish world hunger? Are those scientists wasting their time and energy? If your assessment is correct, then why should scientists bother searching for solutions? What about NGOs? Can they make any difference?
Can you propose any ways to diminish the problem (besides invading, occupying, and building the necessary technology)?

The referenced article is here:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-we-feed-the-world

 

[klimatos]

Of course,changing habits of human beings especially food habits is a very tough job. .

I seem to recall that during the Partition of India, mass starvation was common. The U.S. sent tremendous quantities of wheat which rotted at the distribution points. The people insisted on rice and would not touch the wheat.

 

[russ_watters]

That's obviously not the only way, you can also make sure that your aid is spent well (not just given to dictators) and given under specific conditions (i.e use this aid to by tractors from my country) so as to encourage infrastructure development.

How do you avoid the dictator taking the tractor without protecting it with military force?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

How do you avoid the dictator taking the tractor without protecting it with military force?

Where's this implicit assumption coming that all aid goes to countries with dictators who just pocket it? To deal with the question though there are many ways to convince a leader to develop his country, feed his people etc all without military force.

 

[russ_watters]

Lets examine the issue of world hunger with a little more detail before circling back around to that...

There is a new scale for measuring "food security" that classifies such problems according to severity for a finer/better categorization of a problem than just saying "famine"*:

(1) Generally Food Secure
(2) Moderately/Borderline Food Insecure
(3) Acute Food and Livelihood Crisis
(4) Humanitarian Emergency
(5) Famine/Humanitarian Catastrophe

http://www.ipcinfo.org/overview.php
http://www.ipcinfo.org/attachments/ReferenceTableEN.pdf

*Commentary: IMO, the very existence of such a scale is evidence to me of how small of a problem hunger has become in the world. We take a proactive stance and address risk today rather than waiting for famines to happen in most cases. The wiki listing famines cites the 1984-85 Ethiopia famine as a major motivator that has caused the Western world to choose to stop/prevent later famines when food aid (money) alone (as opposed to military force) is capable of doing it.

Here's Wikipedia list of famines in chronological order:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines

The first thing one notices is that in the past 10 years, there have only been two "famines", but a number of "food crises".

For example, the 2006 Horn of Africa Food Crisis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Horn_of_Africa_food_crisis
The details are sparse, but the wiki says that several million people were affected, requiring food aid, and 30 (yes, thirty) died. That this event was severe enough to get on the list and have a wiki page associated with it is, to me, a testament to how far we've come in eliminating starvation in the world. Let's look at some actual famines, though:

2011 Horn of Africa Famine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Horn_of_Africa_drought
This one is ongoing, so the numbers aren't final, but it has killed something like 29,000 children in Somalia. Somalia. Somalia. Looking at the map in the wiki, what separates the "famine" regions from those in "crisis" and "emergency" situations is a line on the map, ie the border between Somalia and Kenya. Somalia has no functioning government, only local warlords (small-time dictators). So quite literally, what separates a food crisis/emergency from a famine in this case is a [or several] dictator.

Other recent famines:
2003 Sudan/Darfur
1998-2004 Congo
1998-2000 Etheopia
1998 Sudan
1996 North Korea
1991-2 Somalia

Now looking through this list, I find that I need to qualify my statement about dictators somewhat. Only one (North Korea) was specifically caused by a traditional dictator. The rest involve war or anarchy type situations. The effect, however, is similar and the point really hasn't changed in a substantive way: violent political problems cause or worsen food production/distribution problems and thwart aid efforts. But as I said, functionally there isn't much difference between a local warlord and a dictator.

Looking through the list further back, it appears to me that the last famine to occur without a war or indifferent dictator being a large contributer to the cause or worsening of it was Ethiopia in 1973.

So:

There are many countries in Africa and a small handful outside of Africa that live perpetually on the edge of a food crisis. A cyclical drought of the type that one sees every few years in a great many countries is enough to tip the food supply from barely adequate to woefully inadequate, risking famine in poor countries. But in today's world, actual famines only happen when bad/violent political situations thwart aid efforts to stop/prevent them.

Circling back to the OP, as I and others have said, there is no global food shortage requiring a change in diet to deal with. But expanding, there are many countries "at risk". I would say that like an illness, there are two timeframes of food security problems: acute and chronic.

Acute hunger problems in the world today are all caused by natural disasters or wars and all are stopped/prevented by the West unless thwarted by dictators of some flavor. And that's the way it needs to be: when a drought or flood happens, some countries become physically unable to produce their own food and thus the only way to stop/prevent a famine is for us to go do it. And we do because we choose to.

Chronic hunger problems aren't about not having enough food in the world either, but rather are about having the stability and uniformity of wealth to get everyone the food they need. Every country in the world has such problems to one degree or another (though I suspect it might anger an African if you tell him that 14.5% of Americans have food insecurity problems). IMO, shipping tractors to Ethiopia isn't the answer. A tractor does nothing for you if there is a drought so it doesn't help prevent famines, nor does it provide uniform distribution to poor villagers who can't buy the food produced by the tractor. Now I realize that the tractor is just a simplistic exmple like my dictator example was simplistic, but what I'm getting at is that there are really only two ways to deal with long-term food insecurity:

1. Long term aid. By this I mean we in the West continuously pour tons of money, food, seed, equipment, etc into poor countries as a sort of long-term welfare relationship.

2. Develop poor countries politically and economically so they can deal with their own emergencies and long term poverty issues.

Currently, we do #1. It won't/can't ever be enough. There are just too many people and it costs too much money for us to prop them all up and as others have said, a lot of that money will always be wasted/stolen due to bad political situations in countries we are trying to help. But as I said, we do stop/prevent actual famines and put some money into the chronic needy and IMO, that's good enough: that's as far as I think our moral duty extends. #2 has to happen largely on its own (more on that later).

For war/dictator-caused famines, we can either do nothing about them or we can impose short term aid or long term political change by military force. In 1991 we tried a halfhearted combination of both in Somalia and ultimately decided that 300,000 dead Somalis were not worth 19 dead Americans, so we quit and left - and have done virtually nothing since in similar situations (See: Darfur, 2003). The amount we care about starving and oppressed people in the world has increased to the point where now we're willing to give money and prevent famines when people want our help, but we're not yet willing to give [many] lives to force people to accept our help. Is that the right thing to do? [shrug] Dunno.

So to answer your question more directly, Ryan: When there's a famine, in today's world, there's always a dictator/warlord/tribal chieftain behind it. That's a historical fact of the last 38 years. But expanding the scope of the issue to general food security problems, I agree with ThomasT's two points that aid does not truly fix long term problems and even as a long-term prop-up, much is wasted/stolen by such local dictators. Because major food security problems go hand in hand with political problems, the only way to "make sure that your aid is well spent" in most cases is to have an army follow it around. And we do that in a lot of cases, which is fine, but it's not a solution to the underlying problem. And sure, you can apply political pressure and put conditions on your aid, but that tends to take the form of simply pulling the aid if the conditions aren't met (North Korea) or if the military cost required to ensure it gets where it needs to go is too high (Somalia). Our ability to actually ensure that it goes where it needs to via political pressure is highly limited and most of the famine deaths in the world in the past 20 years happened because political pressure couldn't get it where it needed to go and we declined to use the military force required.

Beyond that, my personal opinion is that because political/economic change is required to truly fix the food security problems rather than just temporarily abating them with aid over and over again, we shouldn't be giving aid except in cases of true acute need. By repeatedly temporarily relieving the problems, we create a dependency: Since a country that is receiving aid doesn't have a food security problem because it has been temporarily abated, there is no incentive to fix the underlying cause. This is the basis of my moral and logical objection to welfare, as it is currently practiced in the West, in general.

If anyone finds this cold, consider the other side of the coin: utilizing/witholding food aid to coerce political change both morally wrong and practically pointless, in my opinion. Because cancelling aid is a negative act whereas a bomb is a positive act, withdrawing aid as a form of coercion is slightly less morally wrong than purposely dropping a bomb on a civilian population, but it is equally as futile. Both acts use a weapon to harm civilians in the hope that the fallout coerces political change from the government. That's dangerously close to the definition of terrorism. From a practical point of view, if the local warlord is the one handing out the food and you pull the food aid to try to coerce the warlord to have an election, who will the peasant get more mad at? Is it the guy that just handed out the bag of rice or the guy who now won't give him another bag to hand out? By using the aid as a coercive force, we're using dictator tactics without the ability to reach the people directly to convince them of who is the worse dictator.

War is morally superior to using food aid as a coercive weapon because instead of aiming the weapon at the suffering civilians, we're aiming the weapon at the person oppressing them.

So I am against food aid with conditions attached. I think when we give aid it should be unconditional, but due to the moral and practical problems associated with long-term, coercive aid (even if it is only moderately coercive), we shouldn't do give it. Perhaps that's beyond what you meant by "make sure that your aid is spent well", but I think the issue is far bigger/more complicated than that anyway.

 

[Evo]

The conditions in impoverished African countries are not improving. Government troops are stealing the food.

The already mostly lawless capital has been made even more chaotic with the arrival of thousands of refugees fleeing drought in the south, the famine's epicentre. International groups face huge challenges in distributing food inside Somalia.

The worst-hit part of the country is a no-go area for many aid groups because it is controlled by al-Qaeda-linked insurgents, who deny there is a famine and who have allowed only some groups to enter.

More than 12 million people in the Horn of Africa are in need of immediate food aid. The UN says 640,000 children in Somalia alone are acutely malnourished. The UN has declared five famine zones in Somalia, including the refugee camps of Mogadishu.

Witnesses said two WFP trucks were delivering aid when the chaos broke out. The food program often tries to do what it calls "wet feedings" in Somalia — giving out already made food like porridge — to limit the chances that it will be looted.

"They fired on us as if we were their enemy," famine refugee Abidyo Geddi said. "When people started to take the food then the gunfire started and everyone was being shot. We cannot stay here much longer. We don't get much food and the rare food they bring causes death and torture."

Private militias — most of them politically connected — are competing to guard or steal food. At least four competing militias have the run of government-controlled areas of Mogadishu.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/08/05/somalia-food-distribution-shooting.html