When Poster Offensive asked me to design a poster on any political issue, I thought about a sad and simple fact: one out of six people in the world don’t know when they’re going to eat again. Forget about learning or playing or loving. One out of six people aren’t sure there will be enough food for the week. Food insecurity now affects a record 1.02 billion people, or one sixth of the world, and the rate has spiked over the past two years because of the economic crisis and high food prices. One in seven American households have been without food, and 65 percent of all chronically hungry people in the world live in just seven countries: India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia.

There are a lot of causes: poverty, unemployment, inadequate minimum wage, unexpected expenses, lack of financial security options, bad governance, lack of democracy, war, climate change, natural disasters, personal disasters, land degradation, lack of agricultural infrastructure… which reminds me of TED Fellow Alex Petroff who founded Working Villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo and made a lasting impression at TED Global 2009 with his rapid slideshow of bursting harvests. In 2006, thousands of people in the Ruzizi Valley region were starving. Today, residents grow a whopping 90 different crops and are the largest food producers in South Kivu province. Learn more about their Swadeshi (“localized economics”) approach here.

This poster will be exhibited in the Poster Offensive show Oct 28 – Nov 7, 2010 at Frank Stone Gallery in Minneapolis. If you want to print it out you can use this pdf or purchase a fine print at various larger sizes. Learn more and take action here: UN World Food Programme, Share the World’s Resources, Feeding America, Stop the Hunger, Working Villages