Year Of The Hungry: 1,000,000,000 Afflicted
Despite the West's pledge to halve world hunger, the number of people who are short of food will soon reach a shocking landmark
By Geoffrey Lean
The Independent
28 December 2008
One billion people will go hungry around the globe next
year for the first time in human history, as the
international financial crisis deepens, the United
Nations has told The Independent on Sunday.
The shocking landmark will be passed - despite a second
record worldwide harvest in a row - because people are
becoming too destitute to buy the food that is produced.
Decades of progress in reducing hunger are being
abruptly reversed, dealing a devastating blow to a
pledge by world leaders eight years ago to cut it in
half by 2015.
Rich countries have failed to provide promised money to
boost agriculture in the
crisis is starving developing countries of credit and
driving their people into greater poverty, and food aid
to the starving is expected to begin drying up next month.
Development charities recently called on
elect Barack Obama to put the escalating food crisis
"front and centre" of his priorities.
Some 963 million people are now undernourished
worldwide, according to the most recent survey of the
crisis by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO),
and the UN body expects the situation to worsen with the
recession. "The number will rise steadily next year," an
FAO spokesman told the IoS last week. "We are looking at
a billion people. That is clear." The FAO fears the
tally will go on increasing for years to come.
This directly contradicts an undertaking by the world's
leaders at a special summit in September 2000 to "reduce
by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger"
from 1990 levels by 2015, as part of an ambitious set of
Millennium Development Goals.
At the time, and for several years afterwards, the goal
looked achievable, if challenging. Between 1990 and 2005
the number of undernourished people stayed more or less
the same at between 800 and 850 million, even though
world population grew by 1.2 billion, meaning that the
proportion of a rapidly increasing humanity that went
hungry was steadily falling.
Several countries - including
target years ahead of time, while others such as
achieve it. Twenty-five developing nations looked as if
they would be able to halve the absolute number of their
hungry - not just the proportion of them in their rising
populations - by the target date.
But over the past three years that progress has been
thrown abruptly into reverse, with the first steep and
sustained rise in hunger in decades leaving another 115
million people short of food. The increase began when
prosperity was still increasing and has continued
despite bumper harvests; a new FAO report shows that
this year's grain crop is set to grow by 5.4 per cent to
2,241 million tons, following a 6 per cent rise last
year - ahead of population growth.
So the growth in hunger is not occurring, as in the
past, because of shortage of food - but because people
cannot afford to buy it even when it is plentiful. The
main reason has been that high food prices have priced
the poor out of the market.
Over the 12 months until last summer, wheat and maize
prices more than doubled and rice prices more than
tripled. This was due partly to the growth in biofuels
which, the FAO reports, has taken over 100 million tons
of cereals out of food supplies over the past year to
fuel cars instead. One fill of a 4x4's tank uses enough
grain to feed one poor person for a year.
The organisation also blames speculation, population
growth, the shrinking of food stocks to record lows and
the increasing consumption of meat in developing
countries such as
supplies because they are used to feed livestock.
International prices have fallen sharply since the
summer, as this year's good harvest has further swelled
supplies and the growing financial crisis has cut
demand. But the FAO reports that the lower prices have
failed to ease the crisis, while the increasing
financial turmoil has made it worse.
Developing countries have not benefited from the falling
worldwide cost of food, it says, because their
currencies have depreciated against the dollar in which
international prices are set and their domestic supplies
remain scarce, keeping prices in local markets at record levels.
Virtually none of the increased production of the past
two years has taken place in the
because its farmers have been unable to afford expensive
fertilisers and seeds while the profits of giant
agrochemical and biotech companies have soared. Now as
rich countries' economies slump, they are importing
fewer commodities and goods from developing ones,
driving national incomes down and increasing
unemployment and poverty. As employment falls in the
West,
are no longer able to send back the money they save from
their wages in remittances to their families, a
financial boost that is often crucial in keeping them
out of dire poverty.
Just as serious, the FAO adds, the credit that Third
World farmers need to buy seeds, energy and agricultural
chemicals - and to improve production - is drying up.
Aid, too, is falling precipitously. Earlier this month,
the World Food Programme - the UN agency that provides
food to the hungry - announced that it was running out
of supplies. Unless it receives more soon it expects to
have to start rationing aid next month, and to run out
of food altogether for needy countries such as
At a special summit in June last year, rich governments
pledged $12.3bn (£8.4bn) to tackle the food crisis, but
have so far handed over only $1bn of it, as they have
scrambled to provide trillions to bail out failing banks.
"Overcoming the financial crisis is critical," concludes
the FAO in a recent report, "but continuing the fight
against hunger by realising those pledged billions is no
less important." Jacques Diouf, the FAO's director
general, warns: "Unless the political will and donor
pledges are turned into urgent and real actions,
millions more will fall into deep poverty."
Josette Sheeran, the executive director of the World
Food Programme, added: "While we worry about Wall Street
and the high street, we are also paying attention to the
needs of those who live in places with no street." She
has called on governments to devote just 1 per cent of
their bailout and stimulus packages to fighting hunger.
The worst is yet to come, taking the number of hungry
beyond the one billion mark. As food prices fall, the
FAO is reporting signs that farmers in
harvest - and the same thing is likely to happen in the
being able to buy the food and agricultural chemicals
they need. So next year's harvest, it is feared, will be
smaller, even if the weather remains good.
The run of good seasons is unlikely to continue for
long, even in the short run. And in the medium to long
term, climate change is expected to make harvests
dramatically worse. Mr Diouf predicts that, if the world
fails to take urgent action to keep global warming
beneath 2C, the emerging international target, "the
global food production potential can be expected to
contract severely" - with harvests dropping by up to 40
per cent in Africa, Asia and
Global targets: a progress report
Goal one Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger between 1990 and 2015.
Progress 1.4 billion people live in extreme poverty,
down from 42 per cent of the world population in 1990 to
26 per cent in 2005. Up to 75 per cent of the population
is employed except in parts of Africa and
Undernourished under-fives dropped from 33 per cent in
1990 to 26 per cent in 2006.
Success or failure? Still possible by 2015 but lack of
progress in sub-Saharan
than $1 a day.
Goal two Universal primary education by 2015.
Progress 570 million children worldwide enrolled in
school. Those not enrolled fell from 103 million in 1999
to 73 million in 2006. Primary school enrolment reached
88 per cent in 2006, up 5 per cent per cent from 2000.
Success or failure? 38 million children in sub-Saharan
Africa are not enrolled, while in southern
million do not go to school. This goal may not be
achieved by 2015, and there are barriers on girls going
to school.
Goal three Promote gender equality in education by 2015
and empower women.
Progress 55 per cent of children not in school are
girls. Women occupy about 30 per cent of parliamentary
seats in 20 countries. Women occupy 40 per cent of all
paid jobs, up 5 per cent on 1990.
Success or failure? 113 countries failed to achieve
equality of enrolment; only 18 will meet the target.
Since 2000, the proportion of women in parliaments rose
from 13.5 to 17.9 per cent.
Goal four Reduce child mortality of under-fives by two-
thirds between 1990 and 2015.
Progress Deaths of under-fives declined from 93 to 72
deaths per 1,000 live births between 1990 and 2006, and
child deaths dropped below 10 million a year in 2006.
Success or failure? Children born in developing
countries still 13 times more likely to die under five.
Between 1990 and 2006, 26 countries made no progress in
reducing childhood deaths, while in 27 others the
mortality rate is flat or getting worse.
Goal five Improve maternal health and reduce mortality
by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015.
Progress Maternal mortality decreased by less than 1 per
cent per year between 1990 and 2005; 60 per cent of
births were attended by health professionals in 2006, up
10 per cent since 1990.
Success or failure? 500,000 women a year in developing
countries die during pregnancy. Worst progress of all goals.
Goal six Universal access to treatment for Aids/HIV by
2010 and reverse spread of HIV/Aids and malaria by 2015.
Progress New HIV cases declined from three million a
year in 2001 to 2.7 million in 2007. Funding increased
tenfold within a decade. Mosquito net production rose
from 30 million in 2004 to 95 million in 2007.
Success or failure? 7,500 people a day infected with
HIV; 5,500 die of Aids-related illness; 500 million new
cases of malaria a year.
Goal seven Reduce loss of biodiversity by 2010 and halve
number of people without access to safe water or
sanitation by 2015.
Progress Deforestation declined to 7.3 million hectares
a year; 1.6 billion people have access to drinking water
since 1990.
Success or failure? 40 per cent of the world lives with
water scarcity, and fish stocks are overexploited. One
billion people still have no access to safe drinking
water and 2.5 billion have no access to basic
sanitation, yet target may still be achieved.
Goal eight Develop a global partnership for development.
Progress The
of giving 0.15 per cent of gross national Income in aid.
The burden of debt in developing countries fell from 13
per cent of exports in 2000 to 7 per cent in 2006.
Success or failure? Aid dropped from £67bn in 2005 to
£64bn in 2007 but needs to increase by £18bn a year. A
third of essential medicines are available in 30
developing countries.
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