5 unremarkable things that stop people dying from hunger

We're all familiar with scenes of famine and crisis appeals. There are pictures of malnourished children on the news, and aid workers who are seen as Bear Grylls-esque heroes dropping food packages from a helicopter over the desert.

The thing we don't often think about is how it gets to that stage. There are large swathes of planet (about 805 million people, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa) where people live precariously without access to a reliable supply of nutritious food. All it takes is for something to go wrong – conflict, not enough rain, too much rain – and the balance is tipped the wrong way.

Climate change has exacerbated things. It affects weather patterns resulting in unpredictable harvests – one year the rains will be ok and people will be able to grow enough, the next year they can't and they don't have much spare.

So is it possible to hope for a world that has enough to eat before things get critical, before the distended bellies, before the food aid drops?

There has been significant progress in recent years. The number of people going hungry has decreased, and, as I discovered when I visited a number of Christian Aid projects in Burkina Faso, the things that make the difference are often surprisingly simple. In Burkina, one of a number of countries in the Sahel region that experienced an acute food crisis in 2012, things as mundane as compost, water and the way you dig holes to plant seeds can make a real difference to life in rural communities. Truly unglamorous though they may be, they are often the difference between being able and unable to feed their children. So here they are.... Keep reading

There are a surprising number of simple ways of increasing the crop yield from subsistence agriculture, making water safer to drink, preventing the spread of disease, and improving the lives of those who live in parts of the world where death by starvation and preventable disease are common occurrences. The Church can play an important role in introducing such methods and encouraging their use, both world-wide and locally. 

Photo credit: Christian Aid/Andrew Testa