Food insecurity

Nearly a billion go hungry, says UN

Article published on the 2008-12-09 Latest update 2008-12-10 12:35 TU

A DRCongo woman carries relief food
(Credit: Reuters)

There are some 963 million undernourished people around the world, and more than half live in only seven countries, according to a United Nations report released Tuesday on the state of food insecurity. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Director-General Jacques Diouf said that food accessibility worsened in 2008.

Halving the number of the world's poor by 2015, a UN Millennium Development Goal, is "becoming increasingly difficult to achieve," said Diouf.

He has called on wealthy countries to invest 23 billion euros a year in agriculture. "I don't think that is asking too much," he said in a press conference on Tuesday.

The FAO, reports that 907 out of the 963 of the global undernourished live in just seven countries around the world: India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia.

World leaders should "revisit the whole system for governance, of the world food system to ensure security for everbody and develop the capacity to allow farmers to gain access to feed, fertiliser, seed" and other agricultural imputs, added Diouf.

Farmers in places like Ethiopia and South Africa are trying to adapt, especially in the face of climate change, according to Claudia Ringler, asenior researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC.

"The farmers we talked to and they said they are .. planting trees, they are adopting soil and water conservation techniques, they are trying to institute rainwater harvesting schemes, that they are changing crop varieties, those are technologies and techniques that farmers are adopting if they are prepared to change and they have the capacity to change," said Ringler, who released a report on Ethiopian and South African farmers this week.

In Ethiopia, where some of the largest numbers of undernourished people live, climate-related shocks such as droughts and flood are not uncommon. 

"Farmers need the resources to adapt, they need the resources to be resilient, to be flexible, to be able to make the changes in their farming system. To not just say sorry we can't do anything and lose their crop," said Ringler.