More than 800 million people in the world today are chronically undernourished and lack secure access to food. Why does hunger persist when world food supplies are more than adequate to feed everyone? What can be done to reduce hunger worldwide? This course addresses the conditions that enable or prevent people from having constant access to food. We examine who is hungry, where they are located, and how trends in hunger and extreme poverty have changed over time. The course pays particular attention to food security problems in Sub‐Saharan Africa and South Asia, the global regions where hunger is most prevalent. But hunger is not limited to the developing world, and we also study food insecurity in industrialized countries, such as the United States. Ending global hunger would require only a small fraction of world GDP, and in the latter half of the course, we examine the resources and altered priorities that would make it possible to end hunger in our lifetime.

Prerequisites: Ag Econ 2001 (200) or Econ 2001 (200), OR permission of instructor.