The Core

U.N. and food organizations define famine as when more than 30 percent of children under age 5 suffer from acute malnutrition and mortality rates are two or more deaths per 10,000 people every day, among other criteria.

What, if anything, should be done?

feed them

Yep

This is SO not an easy question.

UN humanitarian chief says 20 million people in Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria face starvation and famine.

What about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest

and then there is CORRUPTION

TY Rupert

LM is correct.

We just have to get the food to the people who need it. [BIG ISSUE]

So WHO IS EATING MORE THAN THEY NEED?

I don't think it's a case of who's eating more than they need (albeit some waistlines will back that up), I think it's more to do with who's producing more than is needed.
I've seen mountains of food thrown away every day. Supermarkets throwing out an insane amount of bread, fast food chains cramming their bins with it. It goes on and on. It's crazy.

Then there are the farmers having to vet their produce because it won't look right on the shop shelves i.e. bananas not being curved enough, or tomatoes not being round.
Admittedly some of it is used in other industries like animal feed, but I'm sure the majority is thrown away.

>>feed them


The cost/benefit is minuscule (i.e. small numerator, huge denominator). Social justice aside, the follow-on effects of feeding people, and especially long-term food security are huge in terms of long-term productivity, demographics (populations ultimately tend to decline as they get wealthier), political stability and so on.

The costs are potentially small. The problem is logistics.

I didn't know if there was actually enough food in the world to feed everyone.

The HuffPost article mentions the main problem is people who live on less than $2/day and can't afford food

I don't want to sound facile, but bear with me a second for a mental exercise to get a grip on the scope of the problem. There are 2.7 billion people living on less than two dollars per day.
http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/resources/fastfacts_e.htm

If we just take the "old" developed world - US, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, Australia - there are about a billion "rich" people there. If you figure the average it would take to bring that 2.7b up to $2/day is $1, it means that for $2.70 each, we could eradicate the worst of that poverty.

I know that is ridiculously simplistic (and the page I linked to is mostly about how limited it is to look at it in the terms I just did), but I only say it that way to point out that we don't have 2.7b people living on less than $2/day because there isn't enough money in the world and they aren't starving because there isn't enough food in the world.

>>because it won't look right on the shop shelves

Food waste is a huge problem, but it is not just in rich countries. It is estimated that almost half of the food in the developing world is lost post-harvest and a large portion of that is due to the lack of cold storage. I've been seeing more and more buzz about solar-powered cold storage. Just had a good article cross my feed yesterday, but I can't find it, but these give an idea

http://www.christianpost.com/news/christian-ceo-of-aldelano-corporation-to-unveil-solar-coldbox-that-could-be-answer-to-global-food-and-water-crisis-145572/
http://www.coldhubs.com/
http://www.reviewjournal.com/business/entrepreneur-pitches-solar-powered-cold-storage-system