Re-reporting and commentary by Carolyn Bennett

UN food agency reports a sixth of the world’s people are undernourished ¯1.02 billion people are hungry.

This pandemic does not come from eating pork or traveling cooped up on transcontinental flights. Nor does it come from lack of food.

“Many of the world’s poor and hungry are smallholder farmers in developing countries,” says Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

“[They] have the potential not only to meet their own needs but to boost food security and catalyze broader economic growth. [But] 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 fertilizers but to tailored technologies, infrastructure, rural finance, and markets.

“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.”

Most undernourished peoples [suffering chronic hunger] live in developing countries.

Asia and the Pacific—642 million (est.)
Sub-Saharan Africa¯265 million
Latin America and the Caribbean—53 million
Near East (Middle East) and North Africa¯42 million
Developed countries (total)¯15 million

This human crisis comes on the heels (having reached news headlines) of the 2006-2008 “food and fuel crises” but the rise in hunger didn’t start in those years. For the past decade or more, while people in “developed” countries gaily flipped properties and betted on food commodities and hedge funds and derivatives and played pyramid schemes and predator-debt games the world’s majorities were steeped in or barely staving off starvation.

Hunger has been slowly but steadily rising for the past decade, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says. The number of hungry people increased between 1995-97 and 2004-2006 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.

In releasing the new figures FAO’s Director-General Jacques Diouf said, “The present situation of world food insecurity [i.e., hunger, starvation, malnourishment] cannot leave us indifferent.”

This report on hunger (and by implication the systemic causation of chronic poverty including hunger) brings to mind something I often wonder — Why governments, religions, corporations, the super powers of the world, possess “values” that lead them to treat some lives as precious (and entitled) and other lives as worthless (and undeserving). When we the citizens of world nations address at length this underlying question we will be on the road seriously toward ending disparity and world hunger.

Sources
Deutsche Welle Reporting “Over one billion people to go hungry in 2009, says UN food agency,” June 19, 2009, http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4408267,00.html
http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/20568/icode/
Founded in 1945 the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations focuses special attention on developing rural areas¯home to 70 percent of the world’s poor and hungry.
Serving both developed and developing countries, FAO leads international efforts to defeat hunger. The agency is a source of knowledge and information acting as a neutral forum where all nations meet as equals to negotiate agreements and debate policy [http://www.fao.org/about/about-fao/en/].

RELATED:

The eight UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education¯all by the target date of 2015. The MDGs are drawn from actions and targets contained in the Millennium Declaration adopted by 189 nations and signed by 147 heads of state and governments during the UN Millennium Summit of September 2000[http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/bkgd.shtml].

The eight MDGs
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
Goal 5: Improve maternal health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development
http://www.undp.org/mdg/basics.shtml

Ending this scourge will require the combined efforts of all —governments, civil society organizations and the private sector¯in the context of a stronger and more effective global partnership for development. The Millennium Development Goals set time-bound targets by which progress in reducing income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter and exclusion — while promoting gender equality, health, education and environmental sustainability — can be measured.

They also embody basic human rights — the rights of each person on the planet to health, education, shelter and security.

The Goals are ambitious but feasible and, together with the comprehensive United Nations development agenda, set the course for the world’s efforts to alleviate extreme poverty by 2015.

¯United Nations Secretary-General BAN Ki-moon ¯

Labels: FAO, Food and Agriculture Organization, MDGs, UN millennium development goals, underdeveloped countries, variable country development, world disparity, world hunger, world poverty

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Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett -author, independent journalist Blog: Today's Insight News Blog: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/
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