Introduction
Famine occurs when numbers of people die rapidly as they have not had enough food to eat. Some people die from ‘actual starvation – acute wasting – and others die from diseases that attack them in their wasted state’ (Paarlberg 2010: 46). Contrastingly, it is ‘not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat’ (Sen 1981: 1). One way that famine occurs is by the ‘structure of ownership’ (ibid.). This relates to access and supply of food, because, evidence states that current agricultural land use only represents thirty-six percent of the land estimated to be suitable for crop production (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 2003). This means there is the opportunity for an increased …show more content…
Virtual water is the ‘water needed to produce agricultural commodities’, such as, cereal (Allan 2003: 107). One thousand cubic metres of water is required to produce one tonne of grain. Virtual water is beneficial, because, instead of trading freshwater, countries can trade food sources. This provides water, albeit, the water is provided in a non-conventional form of ‘water’. This is useful to the countries involved because, they are ‘spared the economic, and more importantly, the political stress of mobilizing about 1,000 cubic meters of water’ (ibid.). In most cases, mobilising the flow of rivers and bodies of water is near impossible, however, trading in virtual water is a practical option. Therefore, virtual water is a concept that links water, food and trade. Virtual water alleviates some of the issues of water scarcity because it allows the quick and flexible mobilisation of food commodities to ‘remedy the ever-changing demands of those enduring water and staple food deficits’ (Allan 2003: