There are some records that are both dubious and depressing. This may be one of them. Reuters is reporting out of Rome that roughly 100 million additional people became undernourished this year. This brings the world total of undernourished people, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program, to 1.02 billion. This is rouhgly 1/6 of the world population and the highest the number of undernourished in four decades.There are a couple of reasons why the number of people going hungry in the world has increased. First, the whole world is suffering from the global economic downturn, and second is the current food crisis-including the cost of food. FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said, ‘“The rising number of hungry people is intolerable [.]”
For their part, both the United Nations and the United States is well aware of the problem, but they want to address the issue from a different angle than in years past. As this blog has previously reported, while many international food aid dollars will continue to be used in emergency response to food crisis, both the UN and US would like to see a push towards sustainable agricultural growth in the third world so that each country can be more self-reliant in feeding its population.
By sustainable, the UN and US mean that production must increase on land currently in use and additional lands must be brought into use in a manner that doesn’t leave the resources depleted so that they would be usable for future generations. Basically, what is needed is what the late Dr. Norman Borlaug helped create—another Green Revolution, where high-yield production can lead to more food self-sustaining production without gutting the land.
The Associated Press quotes Diouf as stating ‘“In the fight against hunger the focus should be on increasing food production . . . It’s common sense . . . that agriculture would be given the priority, but the opposite has happened.”’ In 2006 the percentage of contributions dedicated to agriculture was down to 3.8 percent, and this number has barely improved in recent years.
Undernourished people in the world dropped in 1980s and 1990s, but since the number has been steadily on the rise for this past decade. In recognition of this fact, the Group of Eight countries “in July pledged $20 billion over three years to help poor nations feed themselves, signaling a new focus on longer-term agriculture development.”
There is some concern that the switch in emphasis will result in a reduction of direct food aid, but last year the World Food Program (WFP) brought in a record $5 billion to feed the poor, and this year it has received $2.9 billion. To address the global hunger problem, the FAO and WFP “urge a twin-track approach, saying longer-term investment in agriculture development should not come at the expense of short-term initiatives to fight acute hunger spurred by sudden food shortages.”
Regardless, as the Associated Press is reporting, unless the current hunger trends are reversed, then “the international goal of slashing the number of hungry people in half by 2015 will not be met,” warns the FAO. Currently, thirty countries, including twenty in Africa require emergency food assistance. Asia and the Pacific have 642 million hungry people, and that region is followed by Sub-Saharan Africa with 265 million hungry people.
To meet the international goal of reducing hunger by half by 2015 would require, according to the AP, $44 billion yearly in agriculture aid (currently only $7.9 billion is allocated for this purpose) to improve infrastructure and train farmers in higher yielding agricultural techniques. We shall see if this need is met, or if the number of hungry in the world continues to rise.
To read the Associated Press story click here.
To read the Reuters story click here.
Posted: 10/14/09
