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Need to fix the concept of food subsidies to tackle world hunger crisis

Subsidizing food is largely not an activity that involves the world's poorest people who are most at risk of hunger, but its richest and most amply-fed

hunger, subsidies
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Photo: Bloomberg

David Fickling | Bloomberg
If you want an image of subsidized food in the world, you might think of Egypt, where the price of flatbread is fixed and more than half the population lives on loaves costing just 0.05 Egyptian pounds (0.25 cents) thanks to heavy government support.
 
Alms for the needy are one of the oldest forms of charity. The tradition persists to this day, in the form of food stamps in the US, food banks in the UK, free school meals in Japan, direct subsidy programs like Egypt’s, and India’s price controls on farm produce. On top of that are exemptions from