With the increase and hike in the price of various commodities due to inflation of the currency, the increase in the cost of food is no surprise. Inflation is simply explained as the rate at which a particular currency’s value consistently drops and consequently the prices of goods and services like foodstuffs keep rising.
- What causes inflation.
Inflation of a currency has many causes including factors like pressure on the demand side or pressure on the supply side of the economy or even different expectations from consumers across the world.
- How does inflation affect food prices?
Inflation in a layman’s words is the decrease in the value of a currency that leads to an increase in the cost of commodities, like food, fuel, clothes, and even shoes. These causes anxiety among citizens as the poor in the society keep getting poorer and the more inflation the more they go hungry because they would have to cut down on meals, three square meals a day could turn to just two square meals or one square meal a day, leading to hunger and starvation among the citizens of a country. This would bring up the topic of management and how to effectively take care of yourself no matter the inflation rate.
- The average cost of food per 1 person.
With the hike in food prices, a person has to effectively manage but still eat as healthy as possible. After estimated research, it’s been found that the average person spends over two thousand dollars annually on food. This is due to an increase in the price of these foods and food items.
Conclusion
The average cost of food per person in a year is roughly estimated to be around two thousand dollars,
- Frequently Asked Questions.
1. What causes food scarcity?
Food scarcity can be due to a lot of reasons which include, crop failure due to unforeseen circumstances like pests, drought, too much moisture content in the soil, bad government, unfair and unequal distribution of natural resources, unfavorable weather conditions that are bad for the soil that leads to a bad crop harvest year Certain natural factors cause the shortage of food, these factors include:
-Climate change: every year, farmers plant during certain seasons to enable proper growth of crops, these seasons are based on predictions, and they stand to lose a lot of crops if these predictions do not come through. For example, if a farmer should predict that rain should fall around a particular time of the year, and plants his crops in anticipation of rain, but no rain falls he stands to lose almost all if not all of the planted crops.
– Pests and diseases: various pests and diseases affect crops, ranging from pests like beetles, aphids, grasshoppers, caterpillars, thrips, weevils, whiteflies, ants, stemborer, and rodents like rats.
Diseases that affect plants include basal rot, canker, bacterial wilt, aster yellows, and so many others.
6. How can we reduce food shortages?
We can all contribute to the reduction in food shortages by avoiding the wastage of available food.
2. What role does the government play in food scarcity?
Human institutions like the government also constitute the problem of food scarcity, in third world countries like Nigeria, farmers go to their farms and get killed while going about their farm activities, with the high rate of insecurity in such countries, farming and cultivation have become a thing of fear and as such farmers are scared to go out, the negligence displayed by the government towards this issue has played a huge role in food scarcity as farmers no longer go to their farm, this insecurity is high in the northern part of Nigeria where most of the food distributed around the country is grown. When farmers aren’t encouraged and their plight is not taken seriously by officials of the government then the production of food is reduced and that would lead to food scarcity.
3. What is the solution to food scarcity?
Dealing with food scarcity in today’s economy has become a major concern for leaders across the world, with known terms like “world hunger” it has become a major concern to sweep hunger off various countries. Ways or methods to deal with world hunger aren’t far-fetched, these ways could include: providing farmers with adequate life security, providing farmers with good seeds and fertilizers to grow crops, providing landmass to serve as farmland, providing farmers with up to date equipment like tractors, and rewarding farmers dutifully for their work and contribution to the economy.
4. Does world population growth affect food scarcity?
After carrying out research, economists have found that world population growth is one of the major threats to food security, they fear that the more people being born, the less food we would have to go around. Although many people do not believe this as some people think that there is enough land and food for everyone, they blame it on the greed of the government instead, and the lack of infrastructure.
