スクリプトは事前提出されたものですので、ビデオの音声とは異なる場合があります。

Somewhere in the World

AKINO Kazuki (Tokyo Metropolitan College of Industrial Technology, Arakawa)

What are your favorite foods? You may have different types of food in your mind. Today, I'd like to talk about the "source of life," that is, "foods." You sometimes feel hungry in the class before lunch time, don't you? If we don't have a meal, we can get angry easily. If we eat something good, we feel nice. Food influences our feelings, but it can also be a matter of life or death.

One day, I heard some very shocking news, which said that 25 thousand people die of hunger every day somewhere in the world. Can you imagine how large that number is? A big baseball stadium can be filled up with that number of people. This is a true story. How do you feel hearing this story?

Today, 80% of the people in the world live in developing countries. And hunger usually occurs in these countries. It is especially serious in the African countries. Now, 924 million people in the world are hungry. However, surprisingly enough, over one billion people in the world are overweight. Then, what causes hunger? There are many causes; a sudden rise in food prices because of the increased production bio-ethanol which is made from food, inflows of investment money into the grain market, and so on. Moreover, developed countries import foods as fertilizer from developing countries. They need good food for their livestock to produce high-quality meat.

All right, what can we do to overcome this serious situation? First of all, every person living in Japan, which is one of the developed countries, should realize our corrupt eating habits. We think too little of precious food. If we go out somewhere, we can easily find restaurants. We can eat anything, anytime, anywhere. This isn't natural, rather, it is ridiculous. Now, if you think that I'm talking nonsense, you have already been influenced by the wrong sense of value of food.

In some developing countries, some children are taking cacaos for making chocolate in order to feed their families. But they don't know what chocolate is, and they die of hunger without even knowing it. We, the people of the developed countries, have a responsibility for these children.

Then, what can we do directly about the problem of hunger? I'll show you two ways to fight against hunger. The first one is "Fair Trade." This depends on dialogue, transparency, and respect, and requires greater equity in international trade. Through these things, we can contribute to helping hungry people and making economic growth possible. We can buy Fair-Trade coffee, tea, chocolate, bags, and clothes in places like Starbucks, Tully's, Kaldi, Tokyu-Hands, and Aeon.

The second one is, we can donate money to Unicef's "Hand in Hand" campaign, or JIFH, which stands for the International Food for the Hungry, and so on. If you search the words "Featoreido Shohin" or "Nihon Kokusai Kigataisaku Kiko" on the net, you can find huge amounts of information about them. And the United Nations holds a "World Food Day." Would you do these activities on that day, just as a beginning?

We must change ourselves, our family members, the people in our communities, and our country. Each individual cannot do a lot, but people in groups can do more, and each country can do even more. We must think of something to improve the food self-sufficiency ratio in those countries, and help them to help themselves. If we all step forward, hunger will disappear. Let's love each other and take action for the hungry people of the world.