Higher international grain prices, conflict, government policy and bad weather are the usual Four Horsemen that will bring hunger to hundreds of millions of poor people around the world in 2007, according to the United Nations.
Among them will be tens of millions of people in 28 countries suffering food crises this year because of prices, availability or supply.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported July 17 that despite bumper cereal crops in China, India and Pakistan, which are robust economies still considered part of the developing world, harvest prospects in many of the world’s poorest and most food-deficient countries are worse than normal.
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Higher market prices will limit their ability to import and reduce the ability of food aid agencies to provide help.
“An anticipated slowdown in growth of cereal production in low-income food-deficit countries coupled with prospects for continued high international prices could result in a tighter food supply situation for these countries in the coming year,” the FAO said in its annual food situation report.
War-torn Iraq and Afghanistan make the at-risk list, as does the perennial economic and food basket case North Korea, which recently received 400,000 tonnes of food aid from South Korea.
Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia are at risk on the Horn of Africa. War and violence contribute to the crisis in Somalia while poor crops and high prices are the main problem in neigh-bouring countries.
A severe drought in southern Africa has caused a food crisis in Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Lesotho, the FAO reported.
Zimbabwe, once one of the main sources of southern African grain exports, has seen production decline and farms abandoned for more than a decade as the government of Robert Mugabe imposed a land redistribution policy that favoured so-called veterans of the 1970s battle for independence and displaced traditional white farm owners and operators.
This year, exacerbated by drought, the corn harvest that is Zimbabwe’s staple crop declined by 44 percent, according to the FAO. In May, inflation was 4,500 percent and the government imposed price controls, leading many retailers to close and increasing the shortage of food.
The FAO said cereal import requirements for the world’s low-income, food-deficient countries in 2007 is more than 90 million tonnes, more than three million tonnes above last year’s imports.
Food aid will be required to cover 4.6 million tonnes of the required food.
The FAO said food aid pledges already have accounted for two-thirds or more of what’s needed.
