What I think is most important today
(Original in Japanese)

Akio Harigaya
(Age 14, Japan)
Honjo Higashi Senior High School Affiliated Junior High School, Saitama

In order to make this world a better place, I think it is important to make a system to distribute food to every person, because we all need food and no one can live without it.

The present state of the global food problem is serious. The price of Thai rice has gone up sharply, and consequently, riots and looting are breaking out especially in developing countries, causing death in places like Egypt. Vietnam and other rice exporting countries have decided to give priority to domestic supply, and they are taking action to implement export restrictions one after another. Furthermore, rice and other grain prices are taking a jump, as a result of rapid increase in grain consumption in countries like China and India. In addition to this fact, it is projected that rice crop will decrease by 80% in China within the next 100 years. Global warming is believed to be one of the factors that are contributing to food shortages. However, it is said that there is enough food to feed the entire population of the world at least for the present. And yet, about 800 million people are currently suffering from food shortages. If nothing is done, there will be even more people who suffer from food shortages and many people will die. What then should we do?

First of all, we should make a system to distribute food to every person. We cannot achieve this goal without the cooperation of the United Nations. As for funds required by the UN, each nation should reduce its military-related national budget and allocate that amount to the service provided by the UN. I think the United Nations should be the only organization to possess military forces. Then, if a country is found to have military forces, the international confidence in that country would drop, and should the international community decide to impose restrictions on food exports to that country, fears and anger among the people of that country would grow, and the military forces of that country would be demobilized by natural consequences. We can achieve peace by demobilizing military forces in this way, and furthermore, we can solve the problem of food shortages. So, it serves a dual purpose.

Secondly, if things stay the way they are now, we will end up having not enough food to feed all the people on the earth. In order to prevent that, governments should offer more support.

To be more specific, once military forces in all the countries are demobilized, ex-soldiers can engage in agriculture. Some of them may join private-sector businesses, but since the number of employees in private-sector businesses is fixed, I think there will be some overflow of personnel who will naturally turn to agriculture supported by governments.

Thirdly, we should store food little by little every year in case we suffer from mass famine due to natural disasters such as heavy rains.

For example, in the past few years, milk is being dumped due to overproduction. Instead, if they had been preserved as cheese or butter, it would have become very useful in an emergency. Also, in Japan and in other industrial countries, food that would pay little when sold in large quantity due to downslide of prices, should be turned into a storable form and kept for emergency. There is a lot of food like this in the world, and the time will surely come when stored food will become useful. In preparation for such occasion, I think it is important to store food and keep it.