Is there a food shortage in the world?

Thanks to Alan for the following from the WSM_Forum This is question which we are asked often,sometimes as a genuine question, at other times to suggest that capitalism, if not the best of systems, is one of the least worse.Our reply that capitalism had to be developed into a form which we could then use to satisfy human needs worldwide.

So what we now have is a system, which is capable of producing on a massive scale everything we need and require to live a useful and healthy life, but the nature of capitalist distribution ,it is restriced to produce only when it is profitable to do so,means that access is rationed to those who can buy the goods and services produced.If demand, expressed in paying customers,falls,then production is choked off.

Only Socialism, as the next stage of historical development, as its organising tenet describes, "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs", can then satisfy needs adequately, as production would not be switched off. or over. until "needs",the socialist "demand" is met.

A society without restrictions upon access to wealth produced, is then placed to harmonise production and distribution, into a steady state economy, with no winners and losers, such as we have today in capitalism or their state capitalist equivelent.

- Is there a food shortage in the world?
There is enough food in the world today for everyone to have the nourishment necessary for a healthy and productive life
http://www.wfp.org/hunger/faqs


The American Association for the Advancement of Science has noted that 78 per cent of the world’s malnourished children live in countries with food surpluses... There is enough food to go around now and for at least the next half-century. The world is not going to run out of food for all.
http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2001/issue3/0103p24.html

Ending hunger and food insecurity is not simply a matter of growing more food. Recent studies have shown that four out of five malnourished children in the developing world live in countries that boast food surpluses.... The key elements of a strategy for building a hunger-free world exist. What has been lacking until now is the political will to put them into practice.
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2000/20001009.sgsm7581.doc.html

Scientific and technical advances in agriculture have yielded an era in which harvests are now outpacing population growth, resulting in unprecedented food abundance.... Inefficient distribution of food and inequities in income leave many without enough to eat. But today hunger is less the result of absolute food shortages than of political situations and policy decisions.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9A0DE2D8113DF93AA3575AC0A960948260


Myanmar, once known as the rice bowl of Asia, still boasts a surplus of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rice and maize. Yet a tenth of the population is going hungry,
http://www.wfp.org/content/one-tenth-burmese-go-hungry-despite-food-surplus

That is from a 10 min google search , you could have done the same and answered your question yourself . But do you see what the common thread is in all those links ...its not the technical side of food production , we can produce enough ...it's the distribution ...thats the real problem and thats the problem that free access socialism is equipped to address .