When delegates to a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization general assembly gathered in Rome recently to assess progress in reducing world hunger, the news was mostly bad.
Instead of declining hunger statistics as FAO members pledged more than a decade ago, the number of starving or chronically undernourished people in the world is rising, the victims of higher commodity prices.
“Rising prices have plunged an additional 75 million people below the hunger threshold, bringing the estimated number of undernourished people worldwide to 923 million in 2007,” FAO said in a report.
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In 1996, FAO members pledged to cut the number of hungry in the world in half by 2015 to 424 million.
The UN agency, after insisting for years that progress was being made, now concedes that with seven years left, the promise is all but impossible.
“The achievement of the World Food Summit goal of halving the number of hungry people is even more remote,” it said.
The FAO blamed a 52 percent increase in food prices during the past year and an almost doubling of fertilizer prices for the worsening situation.
In June, when scores of government leaders and senior officials gathered in Rome to discuss the impact of higher commodity prices, they promised more investment in rural and agricultural areas to increase local production.
They blamed hunger on poverty and tight food supplies caused in part by competing demands for grain and oilseed supplies from biofuel plants.
But following the release of the latest report, a senior FAO official said the issue is not supply.
“The devastating effects of high food prices on the number of hungry people compound already worrisome long-term trends,” said Hafez Ghanem, FAO assistant director-general for economic and social development.
“Hunger increased as the world grew richer and produced more food than ever during the last decade.”
FAO economists argued that hunger is a result of poverty but also creates poverty by reducing the ability of the hungry to work productively.
The UN agency estimates that annual investments of at least $30 billion US will be needed if progress is to be made toward the hunger reduction goal.
It says the money is needed both to fund provision of emergency food supplies to the most vulnerable and to invest in inputs, infrastructure and credit that will allow small-scale farmers in developing countries to help feed their nations.
Despite pledges of action at the June 2008 food summit, pledges of help and investment remain far below the $30 billion threshold.
