On Monday, the world welcomed its 7 billionth person. The implications of population growth are similarly staggering in number, but here are five of the more important things to know about the growing world community.

There might not be 7 billion of us. Yet.

The October 31st date was chosen by the United Nations Population Fund, and it’s somewhat symbolic. "There is a window of uncertainty of at least six months before and six months after the 31 October date for the world population to reach seven billion," UN population estimates chief Gerhard Heilig told the BBC. However, the crux of the matter—the ever-increasing world population and the problems that come with it—stands.

Human being No. 7,000,000,000 is probably poor—and it's likely the parents didn't plan the pregnancy.

The developing world acted as the engine for most of the last decade's population growth. It’s home to the world’s seven fastest-growing cities, according to Foreign Policy. As such, it’s attracting the attention of policymakers and crystal-ball-gazers alike. Many, like the Worldwatch Institute’s Robert Engelman, propose extending access to contraceptives and encouraging smaller family size to curb population-related problems, though a recent Economist article says that this would only have a modest effect in the face of scarce world resources.

Sure, resource scarcity is a problem, but maybe it doesn’t have to be.

Not all commentators are equally pessimistic about continuing population growth. Some of the most basic problems, like access to food and water, might really be problems of efficiency rather than scarcity. Global Envision contributor Ben Osborn recently wrote about a study by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research that showed that given proper integration and storage of water resources, no one would have to go thirsty. On the food front, a scientific study published in Nature showed that proper agricultural reforms “could increase global food availability by 100–180%,” more than enough to meet the needs of our growing population.

The antidote to population could be migration.

Ensuring good quality of life for the earth’s inhabitants goes beyond just food and water. The UN’s State of the World Population 2011 report identifies migration as a trend that can be used to help aid in economic development. Wealthy countries with declining fertility rates could provide job opportunities for workers disenfranchised in their overpopulated home countries. At the same time, migration is a hot-button issue for developed nations that may not be so keen to open their borders. The report also cites increased access to education as a key factor in reducing population growth and providing better opportunities for youth in developing nations.

Maybe we should all just learn to stop worrying and love the population bomb.

Many fear rapid population growth in a world with limited resources, but given the proper policies it might not have to be so scary. Since there’s no “undo” button for world population, perhaps the best question to ask in light of the 7 billion marker is “How can we make the best of it?”

Want to know where you fit into the 7 billion? Check out The BBC’s “What’s Your Number” tool.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.

Much needed food aid being distributed in Sukkur, Pakistan. Photo: Rob Holden, UK Department for International Development (Flickr)

Malnutrition, which prevents children from reaching their physical and intellectual potential, is falling. The most significant cause? It's becoming a politically important issue in its own right.

Today, 925 million people do not have enough to eat. About 98 percent of those people live in developing countries and 60 percent are women. In sub-Saharan Africa, one third of all child deaths are caused by hunger.

But these rates are lower than they have been in the past. In Brazil and Peru, malnourishment in some regions has been nearly eradicated. A likely cause for these improvements is economic development: as economies grow, people should have more money for food.

But a recent study found no such correlation in many parts of the world. In Peru, a mining boom occurred that boosted the incomes of certain regions. But these regions were not those that saw the most dramatic drop in malnutrition rates. In Southeast Asia, where economies have been growing rapidly, hunger rates have not seen a corresponding drop. As the World Bank’s chief economist for South Asia describes it, "For a region that's clocked something like 6 percent growth on average over the past decade, the statistics on malnutrition are just truly astonishing and unacceptable.”

Growth hasn’t exactly led to glut for much of the developing world. But many regions have seen a sharp decline in hunger rates.

Children in Haiti waiting for food and school supplies to be distributed. Photo: UN Photo/Marco Dormino (flickr)

What caused the plummet? Proactive politicians. Increasingly, politicians are seeing tackling malnutrition as a means of getting elected. The humanitarian news and analysis service IRIN reports that malnutrition has been a neglected issue in the politics of many developing countries. One researcher from the Institute for Development Studies recalls being told by Indian journalists that hunger was a difficult issue to get past editors “because it’s not an election issue.” Looking at the figures for global poverty, it is easy to note that the world’s poorest tend to be the most politically neglected. This may be changing.

The study attributes this attitude shift to civil society networks that are getting better at lobbying governments, and to governments that are themselves becoming more responsive amid democratization of the developing world. According to the World Health Organization, “disparities in health outcomes between the poor and the rich are increasingly attracting attention from researchers and policy-makers, thereby fostering a substantial growth in the literature on health equity.” More attention has led to more action in many parts of the world.

Former Peruvian president Alan Garcia was elected on his “5x5x5” campaign, which pledged to reduce malnutrition for children under age 5 by 5 percent in 5 years. After his election proved it to be a popular issue, he raised the figure to 9 percent.

Some leaders learn the hard way that hunger is something to be taken seriously. In Niger, former president Mamadou Tandja all but banned the subject of hunger from the press. A growing hunger crisis led to his ouster in a military coup. Knowing that its power rested on a promise to provide food, the interim government acted quickly to coordinate relief efforts.

For most countries that have reduced malnutrition, success came after national governments began coordinating and implementing broad anti-poverty campaigns. In Malawi, the federal government began coordinating its own programs with those of non-profits operating in the country to increase efficiency and monitor what worked and what didn’t. Cash transfer programs that were established to incentivize behavior in the community best pulled people out of poverty. While international groups have been doing good work in Malawi for quite some time, it was the government’s engagement of the issue that proved crucial to increasing efficiency and providing real results. “The government’s remarkable engagement and leadership on fighting hunger and undernutrition cannot be overstated,” according to reports from Tripode Proyectos, the research group that conducted the study.

So malnutrition is being elevated in importance around the world. But it is still a huge problem. In Asia, Latin America, and Africa, despite recent improvements, malnutrition remains a leading cause of death for children. As many developing countries head for economic growth, this study should remind us that bigger GDP does not always mean healthier people. But prosperity should mean more money and resources to fight hunger, and politicians are learning that healthy voters are more likely to be happy voters.

According to one Peruvian governor, “In the past, politicians didn’t care about issues like nutrition, because children don’t vote. But now they have realized that their mothers do.”

Ben Osborn is a 2011 graduate of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.

Over one billion people live on less than one dollar a day, according to the U.N. But what can you actually buy with a dollar?

It seems like something that would vary across countries. Luckily, the World Food Programme recently released a series of videos in which it seeks to answer that question. Country specialists in Nepal, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Guatemala, Somalia, Kenya, and the Philippines each went to their local markets with the equivalent of about one U.S. dollar and attempted to put together a meal. Watch as Reem Nada visits a market in Alexandria, Egypt.

The shorts are entertaining, but present a rather bleak reality. Almost all of the investigators come up short nutritionally. In Nepal, Deepesh Das Shresta leaves the market holding a few small bananas and a loaf of white bread. Meat is categorically too expensive, and staying within budget means many investigators can’t purchase all of the components necessary to create the meals that are considered cultural staples. It appears that those living on less than a dollar a day are also living far below their daily caloric and nutrient requirements.

Feeding oneself on less than a dollar is tricky business under the best of circumstances. Even worse, the recent volatility of the price of staple foods such as rice has jumped three times since 2008, says the New York Times — meaning that dollar must now be stretched even further.

The rest of the videos can be found on the World Food Programme website. The videos for Ethiopia, Kenya, and the Philippines are listed separately.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.

Could the meat you eat one day be born in this? Photo:chesbayprogram (flickr)

Historically, meat has been for the world’s rich. Lab-grown meat could change that forever—while helping solve the environmental and resource dilemmas of the future.

Amid widespread speculation that the current market for food production won’t be able to provide for the world’s population by 2050, a recent innovation cooked up in a Dutch lab has been getting attention for its in vitro meat – also known as cultured or fake meat. A concept which is "becoming a holy grail for anyone concerned about the environmental and ethical impacts of rearing millions of animals around the world each year for human consumption," says The Guardian.

In another article from The Guardian, a group of Oxford researchers said that lab-grown meat could help feed the growing world population while reducing the impact on the environment.

The product may seem distasteful, but the statistics are compelling. This more sustainable method of producing protein promises to increase the chances of food security for the world’s poor while simultaneously protecting the environment. The projected resource savings from artificial meat are remarkable–an Oxford study estimated it could be engineered to use only 1 percent of the land and 4 percent of the water required for conventional meat.

For decades, environmentalists have been lamenting meat production, acccording to The Guardian:

Links between meat consumption and climate change have been widely known for many years, partly due to deforestation in the Amazon rainforest to make room for the livestock. Clearing these forests is estimated to produce a staggering 17% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than the entire transport sector.

Many scientists are adamant that changes will have to be made. But will it be possible to strike a balance between preserving the environment and providing for the world’s rapidly increasing population? As it is, the statistics on global hunger are alarming. According to the UN’s World Food Programme, there are 925 million chronically hungry people, 98 percent of whom live in the developing world. More than one in seven people do not have enough protein and energy in their diet.

The UN estimates that to feed a global population of 9 billion by 2050, food production will have to increase by 70 percent. Table: Farming First

Increased meat-eating usually correlates with a country’s rising affluence, but this could soon change. Many scientists insist that with further research, man-made meat will someday be on the menu of solutions to the global resource dilemmas of the future.

A group of men plant crops in Kenya. Photo: World Bank Photo Collection (flickr)

Earlier this week, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack reiterated the United States' commitment to reduce Africa's dependence on food aid and promote agricultural sustainability while in Nairobi, Kenya. Vilsack said the U.S. will focus efforts on providing "affordable credit to farmers, support to women farmers and providing new technology to encourage irrigation."

The United States understands that it has to be more than providing periodic emergency food aid. It has to focus on sustainable solutions to hunger, food security and poverty. This is not something where we come in and say this is the way you need to do it, it is where we come in and say how are you doing it and how can we help you do it better.

His comments come almost a month after G-8 members pledged $20 billion dollars to fight hunger in poor nations.

A Mercy Corps beneficiaries show off their garden in Niger. Photo: Jeremy Barnicle/Mercy Corps

Last week the UN announced that the number of people suffering from hunger now totals one billion worldwide.

Not too surprisingly, a BBC article points out that the vast majority of the world's hungry live in developing countries. Only 15 million are in the developed world. In contrast, 265 million live in sub-Saharan Africa and more than two times as many — 642 million to be exact — live in the Asia-Pacific region.

Since the economic crisis hit, there are about 100 million more people that are hungry. The UN attributes this rise in world hunger to unemployment and low wages. This is turn hurts people's ability to buy and grow food.

Jacques Diouf, the director general of the UNFAO, focused on agricultural investment as one of the solutions to help developing countries address hunger issues. Diouf is quoted by the BBC as saying, "Investment in agriculture must be increased because for the majority of poor countries a healthy agricultural sector is essential to overcome poverty and hunger and is a pre-requisite for overall economic growth."

At a time when need has never been greater, Mercy Corps has been able to expand our capacity to address hunger in the communities where we work.

By the summer of 2008, the price of rice had increased five times from the average price in 2005. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

The following post is from One Table, a Mercy Corps campaign to fight world hunger by investing in the world's women.

Today almost a billion people worldwide are unable to buy or grow enough food to avoid malnutrition. That's 120 million more than were hungry in 2006.

What happened? Basically, the world saw dramatic spikes in food prices. But there were many underlying causes of what's known as the global food crisis:

• Drought and other climate-related problems that resulted in smaller harvests
• Changing diets — rise of the middle class in India and China and an increased demand for food, especially meat, which requires large amounts of grain to raise
• Diversion of crops from food production to the production of biofuels
• High fuel prices during 2008 — if it costs more to transport food, prices go up
• Declining investments in agricultural productivity — total agriculture development aid to poor countries plunged from $8 billion in 1984 to $3.4 billion in 2004. At the same time, the developing world's cities have been ballooning with people who do not grow any of their food
• Export bans and restrictions last year in several major grain-producing countries like China as governments sought to lower food prices for their own citizens, with the result of reducing the global supply on hand.

While food prices have come down from their highs of 2008, they remain substantially above historic levels. Many economists feel this trend, which most severely affects those who can least afford it, is likely to continue for some time.

The economic, health and societal costs of the global food crisis have been severe. One of the first things Mercy Corps did to figure out how and where to direct our efforts was to survey the communities where we work. We discovered that within communities Mercy Corps serves, roughly 70 percent of income is spent on food, and 80 percent of the population had been affected by rising food prices over the past year. The survey also confirmed something we already suspected: that families were coping with higher prices by eating fewer meals, selling off household belongings, going into debt and removing children from school so that they can work.

In addition to being a record year for food prices, it's also been a record year for our food security team, allowing Mercy Corps to aggressively respond to this crisis. We now have 17 programs in 13 countries designed specifically to respond to this on-going problem. Through support from donors including USAID, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Gap Foundation, the Hunger Site, and private individuals, our Food Crisis Response employs a strategy designed to ensure that the groundwork for increased prosperity in the future is laid — even while addressing the immediate problem of accessing sufficient food.

Food distributions, much of which are specifically targeted to improve child nutrition, are taking place in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, in the Central African Republic, India, Indonesia, Liberia, Nepal, Niger, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Uganda and again Zimbabwe, Mercy Corps is helping hungry households to access food by providing employment opportunities, agricultural training and inputs (such as seeds and tools), and helping people establish and grow small businesses.

Combined, these programs are reaching almost 1.5 million individuals who have been directly impacted by higher food prices. Overall, Mercy Corps’ Crisis Response will lead to a sustainable increase in income for these people, leading in turn to greater food security over the long-term.

Organic tea leaves in Darjeeling, India. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps.

Over the past few years, hundreds of thousands of farmers in rural India have transitioned organic farming. But can these families grow enough to compete with conventional agriculture?

India’s agricultural history, especially in the 20th century, has been haunted by the Bengal famine of 1943, in which food scarcity led to the deaths of 4 million people. In order to combat a future national hunger crisis, the American plant breeder Norman Borlaug worked with Indian scientists, farmers, and politicians to promote the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 70s. New seeds, fertilizers and agricultural technology were introduced and, for a while, dramatically improved crop yields to feed India’s hungry and growing population.

After its initial success, however, the accumulation of chemicals in the ground damaged the soil and crop yields declined. Over time, more and more fertilizer had to be used to achieve the same yields as before, and for some farmers, the benefit of fertilizers and pesticides eventually outweighed by the costs it incurred.

But according to recent report from NPR, some farmers are making the switch to more varied crops instead of a single-crop farms to improve the nutrients in the soil.

Despite its growing popularity in India as well as around the world, some agribusiness companies like Monsanto worry that organic techniques just aren't as efficient as those developed during the green revolution, and will leave those immediately affected by the switch to organic without enough food to survive.

Worries about food distribution are justified. Approximately 2.1 million children under five die each year in India, with over half of those deaths directly related to malnutrition — of those who survive, another half will suffer from malnutrition-related stunted growth. Still, organic farmers around the world argue that given time, government support, and technological advances, the sustainability of organic farming will in fact increase the productivity and the safety of food given to those at greatest risk.

According to international organizations like the World Bank and the farmers themselves, it is not just agriculture itself that needs a face-lift in India, but also the bureaucracy and policy that surrounds it. A recent study by the Punjab State Farmers Commission cited by NPR found that 70 percent of India's farms could go organic and maintain appropriate food production. It also suggests that India redirect some of it's government funding to organic farming infrastructure and research, thus recognizing its future place in India's food production.

Gurcharan Kalkat, a member of the commission, told NPR he believes in the organic movement. "Only one thing can save Punjab: India has to launch a brand new Green Revolution. But … this one has to be sustainable."

With a population of 1.15 billion, the population of India is three times that of the United States. It also has 30 times the number of organic farmers. Some, like Grist food editor Tom Philpott, think the rest of the world could learn a thing or two from an Indian organic farmer, rethinking the ways to feed a massive population on healthy, sustainable crops.

The worldwide hunger epidemic is real. Rising costs of fuel and food, persistent conflicts, disease and global warming mean that the crisis will get worse before it gets better.

That's why Mercy Corps is opening a new Action Center to End World Hunger — to get ordinary U.S. citizens like you motivated, equipped and mobilized to end hunger. The new Center opens October 16 in New York City.

All of us, working together, can end the world hunger epidemic. How? Become a hunger activist. Get your children, neighbors, family and friends to become hunger activists. Visit the ActionCenter.org website, and if you're in New York, stop by the Center and get in the action, right now.

Your Action Center visit puts you up close and personal with our field work around the world — in a fascinating, dynamic setting abuzz with smart conversations, high-tech media and hundreds of ways to get involved right now.

For starters, watch this Tina Fey video about the hunger epidemic and how you can take action with Mercy Corps' to end hunger worldwide. Then visit Mercy Corps' ActionCenter.org website to learn more.

Photo: Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters

For months we have been following increasingly urgent reports about food scarcity, rising prices and vulnerable populations. Last week, the World Food Program said the crisis is a silent tsunami that is "threatening to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger."

The World Food Program says it has never seen a crisis of this proportion. Analysts expect it will be difficult to reverse in the short term. The Financial Times says humanitarian aid at levels comparable to Indonesia's 2004 tsunami response will be needed to prevent the starvation of millions.

For Mercy Corps the increase in food prices is hurting the very people our program staff around the world are working to support.

Reports from those working most closely with affected communities confirm that the situation is dire — and has the potential to grow much worse.

Penny Anderson, Mercy Corps' food security program officer, told OPB radio: "I've been working with Mercy Corps for over eight years now and I have never seen anything like it."

In Niger, prices of bread, powdered milk and wheat flour have spiked, exacerbating the West African nation's precarious food situation. Currently about two-thirds of the population is at serious risk, with shortages pushing the country closer to famine.

In Syria, spiraling food prices have forced Mercy Corps to cut back on the amount of food we can buy and distribute to hundreds of Iraqi refugee families.

In Tajikistan, where Mercy Corps recently distributed blankets and generators to help residents keep warm during an unusually harsh winter, about 40 percent of households in the Rasht Valley are down to no more than one warm meal a day. Neighboring Kazakhstan has suspended wheat exports — shutting off Tajikistan's primary supply of the grain.

Like several other humanitarian aid agencies, Mercy Corps has established a Global Food Crisis fund to help its field teams respond to needs arising from the worst global food crisis in recent memory.

Food distribution line. Photo: L. Boscardi/UNHCR

The UN is preparing plans to ration its food aid to people in need if new donations don't provide more money soon, according to an article in the Financial Times this week. Rising global food prices are putting serious pressures on the World Food Program (WFP)'s budget, to the tune of several million dollars each week.

"The WFP crisis talks come as the body sees the emergence of a "new area of hunger" in developing countries where even middle-class, urban people are being "priced out of the food market" because of rising food prices.

The warning suggests that the price jump in agricultural commodities - such as wheat, corn, rice and soyabeans - is having a wider impact than thought, hitting countries that have previously largely escaped hunger."

It is not just the UN that will have to ration its food aid. Countries like Egypt and Pakistan are reinstating or strengthening rationing systems for the first time in decades. Unfortunately, the crisis will be getting worse in the short term. According to the US Department of Agriculture "high agricultural commodities prices [will] continue for at least the next two to three years."