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Can we end poverty for $US175 billion per year?

I have come across this claim several times.

The Money required to eradicate hunger for everyone in the world has been estimated at 30 billion per year...about as much as the world spends on the military every eight days

Does it indeed take as little as thirty billion dollars a year to eradicate hunger in the world? Any studies to back up this claim?

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    This assumes that money is the solution to world hunger. I think the larger obstacle is usually political. But I have no sources for this...
    – Flimzy
    Commented May 13, 2012 at 18:22
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    Back of the envelope: In the United States, it's easy to cook a meal for 30 cents. In many countries, people live on more like 10 cents a meal. If we assume that 1 billion people cannot afford food, then .10 $/meal * 3 meals/day * 1 billion people * 365 days/year = 109.5 billion dollars/year. So $30 billion probably almost the right order of magnitude. Of course, additional infrastructure may be required, so costs could be higher. And a suitably nutritious diet may cost more like .20-.30 cents per meal, I'm not sure.
    – SigmaX
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 3:52
  • There is no World hunger. There is a pandemic of obesity.
    – vartec
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 12:42
  • @vartec: That seems a very First World view of the globe. I wonder if I have misunderstood your point. For example, the UN only declared the most recent Somalia famine to be over 3 months ago.
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 14:41
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    @Oddthinking: and my point is, as I've stated in skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/7596/3790, that there isn't a place in the world where average calorie intake would be below WHO recommendation. So it's not like there is not enough food there. There are people in Africa who suffer malnutrition, but it's all about wars, not lack of food.
    – vartec
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 15:05

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