Five ISU students will soon be venturing to Portugal to pitch their idea of how to feed 9 billion people. 

The group, called Gung-ho Globies, participated in the Thought for Food Challenge, an annual competition for teams of university students around the world to present innovative ideas for feeding the Earth’s growing population. 

Out of 336 entries from 51 countries, the Gung-ho Globies was one of 10 teams chosen to attend the challenge. 

• Every day, one billion people go to bed hungry, according to the Thought for Food website.
• Hunger kills more people each year than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined. – Stop Hunger Now.
• One out of six children — roughly 101 million — in developing countries is underweight. – UNICEF.
• Nearly 870 million people of the 7.1 billion people in the world, or one in eight, suffered from chronic undernourishment in 2010-2012. – United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization

The world produces enough food to feed everyone, according to worldhunger.org.

Worldwide agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, World Notes reports, despite a 70 percent population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day, according to the most recent estimate from World Notes.

“The principal problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, enough food,” the site says.