Wars and Food: The Investment Balance That Starves

In the world, both the number of people suffering from hunger and the expenditure for wars and armaments are increasing. And it is not a coincidence. Calling for peace does not only mean asking for the cannons to stop firing, but preaching a more equitable world in which to live.

How many more times can a man turn his head, pretending not to see? And how many more deaths will it take, before he understands that there have been too many? Questions that, more than sixty years after Bob Dylan put them to music, constantly arise again. Today, of course, because we are on the eve of the Peace March on September 21st in which Slow Food Italy is taking part. But not only today: those questions come back every time newspapers, television, and radio report on the conflicts that bloody the planet, every time our daily lives intersect with the stories of those who observe those wars closely, or have experienced them and try to forget them, every time we come to terms with a reality so far from our own, yet which affects hundreds of millions of people.

How long will cannonballs have to fly before they are abolished forever? From the way the wind is blowing, it would seem for a long time: according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, cited by Greenpeace in the report entitled ‘Economy at Arms 2024’, in 2022 global military spending exceeded 2,200 billion dollars. A huge number, which Oxfam tries to quantify: it is equivalent – ​​explains the confederation that brings together non-profit organizations around the world that are dedicated to reducing global poverty – to 42 times the money needed to deal with the most serious humanitarian crises that afflict the Earth.

How much do we spend on war?

Military spending is increasing everywhere, and certainly not because of inflation: European countries have come to invest 380 billion dollars in defense, 150 more than in 2014. Italy spends a lot, a lot: 35.5 billion dollars, of which almost 6 billion just on armaments…

If we look at the issue from a purely economic point of view, these are resources that, if invested in other sectors – education, health and the environment – ​​would produce returns (including employment) that are undoubtedly more favorable than the arms sector. But perhaps it is worth looking at the matter from a more complex point of view: that money, added to what the G7 countries spend on military spending (overall we are talking about 1,200 billion dollars, more than half of the total military spending in the world), could save millions of people if used in another way.

According to Oxfam estimates, if the seven main economies in the world cut their annual military spending by 2.9%, for a figure of 35.7 billion, there would be enough resources to eliminate hunger in the world and resolve the foreign debt crisis.

«The point is that the economic resources to deal with global emergencies exist – says Barbara Nappini, president of Slow Food Italy –. What is really missing is the will to change.

For this reason we join the procession in Assisi, we will be part of a multitude that asks for peace and bread. A world that spends hundreds of billions for the military economy, and at the same time tolerates 735 million people suffering from hunger, is a world that urgently needs to change”. Also because wars and suffering are directly proportional: the war industry enriches a few, but starves its increasingly numerous victims.