World Food Day 2022

Photo: Holidays Calendar

 In class, we were assigned to research the activities held on World Food Day 2022 among different regions. My partner, Ruka, and I were assigned Japan and the rest of East Asia: China, South Korea, Taiwan, etc. We were given three main items to answer.

1. Identify some of the most serious problems related to food in these areas.

 Some of Japan's food problems are food waste and food loss. According to ELEMINIST (Enjoy Lifestyle Ethical & Minimal) Japan wastes about 25.3 million tons of food and has about 6 million tons of food loss every year. 

Looking at all of Asia and the Pacific, about 375.8 million people experienced hunger in 2020, approximately 54 million more than in 2019. 

In 2020, there were more than 1.1 billion individuals in this region alone who lacked access to enough food, an increase of about 150 million in only one year. 

For 1.8 billion people, a nutritious diet remains out of reach due to the high expense of balanced food, chronically high levels of poverty, and income inequality.

Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic made a huge impact across the area, worsening problems.

2. What is the UN doing (if anything) to help the regions/ countries? What are these countries or areas doing for themselves?

 The UN has a division for providing food assistance called the World Food Programme (WFP). Through the WFP, the Japanese government distributed 1.385 billion yen in food aid to nations and regions that have an impact on the peace and stability of the region or to hungry nations.

3. What are some of the specific activities related to World Food Day that are happening in these countries/ regions?

 One of World Food Day's campaigns, Onigiri Action, was held sequentially last year. Participants in this campaign take photos of their rice balls and post them to the website or their social media accounts with the hashtag #OnigiriAction. This year, there were photos from 37 countries, resulting in 1,560,260 school meals sent to children in need through TABLE FOR TWO. In Japan, this campaign had a collaboration with NISSUI (Nippon Suisan Kaisha, Ltd.), whose products are rice balls.

After my research on World Food Day, I found that many organizations participate in activities that support World Food Day. I learned about World Food Day in class recently, so even though I still do not know everything, I felt like I also wanted to join these supporting activities. I am especially interested in the Onigiri Action. I hope I can join next year.