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Economic recession combined with persistently high food prices is dramatically increasing the number of hungry people globally. Hunger is now a reality for a sixth of the world's population, with both rural and urban communities in developing countries most severely affected, says the FAO. 

One Sixth of Humanity Undernourished - More Than Ever Before - Food and Agriculture Organisation

Number of Hungry Worldwide Tops One Billion - Javier Blas, Financial Times

More People Than Ever are Victims of Hunger - FAO Backgrounder

19th June 09 ~ STWR

One Sixth of Humanity Undernourished - More Than Ever Before

19th June 09 - Food and Agriculture Organization

 World hunger is projected to reach a historic high in 2009 with 1,020 million people going hungry every day, according to new estimates published by FAO today.

The most recent increase in hunger is not the consequence of poor global harvests but is caused by the world economic crisis that has resulted in lower incomes and increased unemployment. This has reduced access to food by the poor, the UN agency said.

"A dangerous mix of the global economic slowdown combined with stubbornly high food prices in many countries has pushed some 100 million more people than last year into chronic hunger and poverty," said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf. "The silent hunger crisis — affecting one sixth of all of humanity — poses a serious risk for world peace and security. We urgently need to forge a broad consensus on the total and rapid eradication of hunger in the world and to take the necessary actions."

"The present situation of world food insecurity cannot leave us indifferent," he added.

"Many of the world's poor and hungry are smallholder farmers in developing countries. Yet they have the potential not only to meet their own needs but to boost food security and catalyse broader economic growth.

To unleash this potential and reduce the number of hungry people in the world, governments, supported by the international community, need to protect core investments in agriculture so that smallholder farmers have access not only to seeds and fertilisers but to tailored technologies, infrastructure, rural finance, and markets," said Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

"For most developing countries there is little doubt that investing in smallholder agriculture is the most sustainable safety net, particularly during a time of global economic crisis," Nwanze added.

"The rapid march of urgent hunger continues to unleash an enormous humanitarian crisis. The world must pull together to ensure emergency needs are met as long term solutions are advanced," said Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme.

Hunger on the Rise

Whereas good progress was made in reducing chronic hunger in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, hunger has been slowly but steadily on the rise for the past decade, FAO said. The number of hungry people increased between 1995-97 and 2004-06 in all regions except Latin America and the Caribbean. But even in this region, gains in hunger reduction have been reversed as a result of high food prices and the current global economic downturn.

This year, mainly due to the shocks of the economic crisis combined with often high national food prices, the number of hungry people is expected to grow overall by about 11 percent, FAO projects, drawing on analysis by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Almost all of the world's undernourished live in developing countries. In Asia and the Pacific, an estimated 642 million people are suffering from chronic hunger; in Sub-Saharan Africa 265 million; in Latin America and the Caribbean 53 million; in the Near East and North Africa 42 million; and in developed countries 15 million in total.

In the Grip of the Crisis

The urban poor will probably face the most severe problems in coping with the global recession, because lower export demand and reduced foreign direct investment are more likely to hit urban jobs harder. But rural areas will not be spared. Millions of urban migrants will have to return to the countryside, forcing the rural poor to share the burden in many cases.

Some developing countries are also struggling with the fact that money transfers (remittances) sent from migrants back home have declined substantially this year, causing the loss of foreign exchange and household income. Reduced remittances and a projected decline in official development assistance will further limit the ability of countries to access capital for sustaining production and creating safety nets and social protection schemes for the poor.

Unlike previous crises, developing countries have less room to adjust to the deteriorating economic conditions, because the turmoil is affecting practically all parts of the world more or less simultaneously. The scope for remedial mechanisms, including exchange-rate depreciation and borrowing from international capital markets for example, to adjust to macroeconomic shocks, is more limited in a global crisis.

The economic crisis also comes on the heel of the food and fuel crisis of 2006-08. While food prices in world markets declined over the past months, domestic prices in developing countries came down more slowly. They remained on average 24 percent higher in real terms by the end of 2008 compared to 2006. For poor consumers, who spend up to 60 percent of their incomes on staple foods, this means a strong reduction in their effective purchasing power. It should also be noted that while they declined, international food commodity prices are still 24 percent higher than in 2006 and 33 percent higher than in 2005.

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Number of Hungry Worldwide Tops One Billion

19th June 09 - Javier Blas, Financial Times

The number of chronically hungry people has passed 1bn for the first time – about one in six people – as the economic crisis compounds the impact of still high food prices, the United Nations said on Friday.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation said that its latest estimates put the number of hungry people at 1.02bn, up from a revised 915m in 2008. The estimate confirms data advanced by the Financial Times earlier this year.

The new UN assessment signals that the food and economic crisis of the last two years have reversed the past quarter-century’s slow but constant decline in the proportion of undernourished people as a percentage of the world’s population.

Before the food crisis started in mid-2007, there were fewer than 850m chronically hungry people in the world, a level that has been roughly constant since the early 1980s owing to the global fight against poverty and countries such as China, India or Brazil lifting their economic growth over the last two decades.

The most recent increase in hunger is not the consequence of poor global harvests but is caused by the world economic crisis that has resulted in lower incomes and increased unemployment, the UN said in a statement.

The Group of Eight leading nations acknowledged earlier this year that efforts to tackle hunger were lagging. G8 agriculture ministers, meeting in northern Italy in late April, said that the world was “very far from reaching” the UN’s goal of halving by 2015 the world’s proportion of malnourished people.

“A dangerous mix of the global economic slowdown combined with stubbornly high food prices in many countries has pushed some 100m more people than last year into chronic hunger and poverty,” said Jacques Diouf, FAO director-general.

“The silent hunger crisis, affecting one-sixth of all of humanity, poses a serious risk for world peace and security,” Mr Diouf added in a statement. “Today, increasing hunger is a global phenomenon. All world regions have been affected.”

The warning comes after the FAO and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said earlier this week that agricultural commodities prices would rise 10-30 per cent over the next 10 years compared with their average of 1997-2006, less than previously feared because of lower economic growth and oil prices.

Agriculture, long neglected in policy discussions, is now being examined more closely after the 2007-08 food crisis, which saw record prices for staples such as wheat and rice spark food riots from Haiti and Bangladesh to Egypt and Senegal. Wholesale agriculture commodities prices have declined since then, but retail food prices remain close to record highs in many developing countries.

The UN’s World Food Programme is cutting food aid rations and shutting down some operations as donor countries that face a fiscal crunch at home slash contributions to its funding. The agency, the world’s leading hunger fighter, had less than $1.5bn in mid-June, out of a required budget of $6.4bn. With almost half the year gone, officials in donor countries said, it was unlikely that the WFP would receive the money it says it needs to prevent hunger in many poor countries.

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