A year ago, multibillionaire Elon Musk took to Twitter — before he owned it — to challenge the numbers on world hunger.
Musk was responding to a statement from David Beasley, chief of the World Food Programme, who said in a CNN interview that $6 billion is needed to address the needs of 42 million people in danger of starvation, and that this was just a fraction of the wealth of the world’s richest people. CNN reported the story under the headline “2% of Elon Musk’s wealth could solve world hunger.”
Musk never made that donation, but the exchange did highlight the confusing and often contradictory statistics and terms surrounding the problem of how to feed the world; a problem which is only getting worse as the war in Ukraine and the last effects of the COVID-19 pandemic put increasing pressure on global food security.