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On June 11, 2007, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute released the SIPRI Yearbook 2007. Chapter 8 of the Yearbook states that in 2006 worldwide military expenditures have reached an incredible USD$1,200 billion (yes, there is no extra zero there, it really is $1,200,000,000,000).

Meanwhile, in June 2006, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimated the number of undernourished persons worldwide to around 860 millions.

I was wondering how much it costs to feed one person for one day. I was able to estimate it by using the data provided by the World Food Programme. They say that an individual needs at least 500 grams of food daily, or 182.5 kilograms per year. I took a look at their figures for the year 2004. They delivered a total of 4 millions tons of food. The total cost of their operations, including buying the food and the other supplies needed, transporting it and managing everything, was $2.9 billion.

Let’s do some maths. $2.9 billion divided by 4 millions tons equals $725 per ton of food. $725 divided by 1000 kilograms and multiplied by 182.5 kilograms needed to feed one person for a whole year makes $132.31 per year to feed one person. This is what the World Food Programme is able to achieve. Now let’s multiply this by the 860 millions undernourished persons in the world and that means we need $113.8 billions to feed all of them. This is 9.5% of worldwide military expenditures.

There is not much more to say about this. The figures say it all. If only a small amount of the money spent on weapons and war was used to help undernourished people, it would be easy to help them. I have not done the maths for the other world issues but I am sure all this money spent on useless armed forces would be much better spent trying to make this world a better place.