Hehe, I think I meant that the small amounts bring it down to the personal scale.
There's somewhere between 7,000 & 8,000 grains of rice in a cup. I've done the maths a couple of different ways, using a couple of different approaches, including using the average weight of a cup of rice, and both times the outcome is approx the same. There are in the region of 2.5 million grains of long grained white rice per 50Kg sack.
Choose your figures from where you will, one report states that in 2007, nearly 854 million people are starving. That’s 17 per cent of the world’s population. The figure includes 11 million in the industrialised countries, 30 million in countries in transition and 799 million in the developing world.
Another report says more than 852 million people -- about 13 percent of the world population -- do not have enough food each day to sustain a healthy life, according to the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation. Of this, about 815 million people live in developing countries, 28 million in "transition" countries of the former Eastern Europe and ex-Soviet republics, and about nine million in the industrialised world.
That's why I said it was hard to come away feeling good when faced with the larger scale.
On the other hand, when faced with the personal scale as expressed below, once at the site, not to contribute isn't an option:-
Give me three grains of corn, Mother,
Only three grains of corn;
It will keep the little life I have
Till the coming of the morn.
I am dying of hunger and cold, Mother,
Dying of hunger and cold;
And half the agony of such a death
My lips have never told.
I dreamed of bread in my sleep, Mother,
And the sight was heaven to see;
I awoke with an eager, famishing lip,
But you had no bread for me.
Amelia Blanford Edwards
Edit: additional, to put the 50kg bag in some sort of context. Taken from Lao in 2006 where rice farmers had lost their crops. It was costing them approx $20.00 for a 50kg bag which along with whatever else they had, was expected to last 15 days with 8 people in the family.