Economic crisis is devastating for the world''s hungry by AP, FAO, WFP 8:13am 15th Oct, 2009   Oct 15, 2009    Record 1 billion go hungry. (AP)    Parents in some of Africa''s poorest countries are cutting back on school, clothes and basic medical care just to give their children a meal once a day, experts say. Still, it is not enough.    A record 1 billion people worldwide are hungry and a new report says the number will increase if governments do not spend more on agriculture. According to the U.N. food agency, which issued the report, 30 countries now require emergency aid, including 20 in Africa.    The trend continues despite a goal set by world leaders nine years ago to cut the number of hungry people in half by 2015.    "It''s actually a world emergency that calls for action from both developing and developed countries," said Otive Igbuzor, the head of international campaigns for ActionAid International. "We know a child dies every six seconds of malnutrition," he said.    Spiraling food prices have added to hardships, especially in the world''s most desperate countries where the poor could barely afford a single daily meal to begin with. The inflated prices — which caused riots across the globe last year — have stabilized but remain comparatively high, especially in the developing world, Jacques Diouf, director general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, told AP Television News.    In Somalia, ravaged by violence and anarchy for almost two decades, the monthly expenditure for food and other basic needs for a family of six has risen 85 percent in the past two years, said Grainne Moloney of the Somalia Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit.    On average, such a family spent $171 in September this year, compared with $92 for the same amount of food and other needs in March 2007, said Moloney, a nutrition expert for the Horn of Africa nation.    "Families are cutting out the school, cutting out the clothes. A lot of them are going for cheaper cereals," said Moloney, adding that despite those desperate measures, one in five children in Somalia is acutely malnourished.    Igbuzor said the trend can be seen in impoverished countries across Africa.    In Kenya, herders have seen scores of their animals die and crops have withered because of drought. Today, 3.8 million people in Kenya need food aid, up from 2.5 million earlier in the year.    After worldwide gains in the fight against hunger in the 1980s and early 1990s, the number of undernourished people started climbing in 1995, reaching 1.02 billion this year amid escalating food prices and the global financial meltdown, the FAO said in its Wednesday report.    The long-term trend is due largely to reduced aid and private investments earmarked for agriculture since the mid 1980s, the Rome-based agency said in its State of Food Insecurity report for 2009.    In 1980, 17 percent of aid contributed by donor countries went to agriculture. That share was down to 3.8 percent in 2006 and only slightly improved in the last three years, Diouf said.    "In the fight against hunger the focus should be on increasing food production," Diouf said. "It''s common sense ... that agriculture would be given the priority, but the opposite has happened."    The decline may have been caused by low food prices that discouraged private investment in agriculture and competition for public funds from other aid fields, including emergency relief, said FAO economist David Dawe.    Governments and investors may also have chosen to put their money into other economic sectors because agriculture''s share of the economy in some developing countries dropped as people moved to cities and found work in industry. But agriculture still needs sustained investment to feed people in developing countries, Dawe said.    Diouf said world leaders are starting to understand that investment in agriculture must be increased. He cited the goal set by the Group of Eight summit in L''Aquila, Italy, in July to raise $20 billion to help farmers in poor countries produce more — a shift from previous emphasis on delivering food aid.    However, more investments will be needed to fulfill pledges like the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, which aim to halve the number of those living in hunger and poverty by 2015, the report said.    The FAO says global food output will have to increase by 70 percent to feed a projected population of 9.1 billion in 2050.    To achieve that, poor countries will need $44 billion in annual agricultural aid, compared with the current $7.9 billion, to increase access to irrigation systems and modern machinery as well as build roads and train farmers.    14 Oct 2009    Economic crisis is devastating for the world''s hungry. (FAO)    The sharp spike in hunger triggered by the global economic crisis has hit the poorest people in developing countries hardest, revealing a fragile world food system in urgent need of reform, according to a report released today by FAO and the World Food Programme (WFP).    The combination of food and economic crises have pushed the number of hungry people worldwide to historic levels — more than one billion people are undernourished, according to FAO estimates.    Nearly all the world''s undernourished live in developing countries. In Asia and the Pacific, an estimated 642 million people are suffering from chronic hunger; in Sub-Saharan Africa 265 million; in Latin America and the Caribbean 53 million; in the Near East and North Africa 42 million; and in developed countries 15 million, according FAO''s annual hunger report, The State of Food Insecurity, produced this year in collaboration with WFP. The report was published before World Food Day, to be celebrated on 16 October 2009.    Decade-long trend    Even before the recent crises, the number of undernourished people in the world had been increasing slowly but steadily for the past decade, the report says.    Good progress had been made in the 1980s and early 1990s in reducing chronic hunger, largely due to increased investment in agriculture following the global food crisis of the early 1970s.    But between 1995-97 and 2004-06, as official development assistance (ODA) devoted to agriculture declined substantially, the number of hungry people increased in all regions except Latin America and the Caribbean. Gains in hunger reduction were later reversed in this region as well, as a result of the food and economic crises    The rise in the number of hungry people during both periods of low prices and economic prosperity and the very sharp rises in periods of price spikes and economic downturns shows the weakness of the global food security governance system, FAO said.    "World leaders have reacted to the financial and economic crisis and succeeded in mobilizing billions of dollars in a short time period. The same strong action is needed now to combat hunger and poverty," said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf.    "The rising number of hungry people is intolerable. We have the economic and technical means to make hunger disappear, what is missing is a stronger political will to eradicate hunger forever. Investing in agriculture in developing countries is key as a healthy agricultural sector is essential not only to overcome hunger and poverty but also to ensure overall economic growth and peace and stability in the world," he said.    "We welcome the new commitment to tackle food security, but we must act quickly. It is unacceptable in the 21st century that almost one in six of the world''s population is now going hungry," added Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of WFP.    "At a time when there are more hungry people in the world than ever before, there is less food aid than we have seen in living memory. We know what is needed to meet urgent hunger needs — we just need the resources and the international commitment to do the job."    Another blow for poor households    Several factors have conspired to make the current crisis particularly devastating for poor households in developing countries.    First, the crisis is affecting large parts of the world simultaneously, reducing the scope for traditional coping mechanisms such as currency devaluation, borrowing or increased use of official development assistance or migrant remittances.    Second, the economic crisis comes on top of a food crisis that has already strained the coping strategies of the poor, hitting those most vulnerable to food insecurity when they are down. Faced with high domestic food prices, reduced incomes and employment and having already sold off assets, reduced food consumption and cut spending on essential items such as health care and education, these families risk falling deeper into destitution and the hunger-poverty trap.    The third factor that differentiates this crisis from those of the past is that developing countries have become more integrated, both financially and commercially, into the world economy than they were 20 years ago, making them more vulnerable to changes in international markets.    Many countries have experienced across-the-board drops in their trade and financial inflows, and have seen their export earnings, foreign investment, development aid and remittances falling. This not only reduces employment opportunities, but also reduces the money available to governments for programmes promoting growth and supporting those in need.    The 17 largest Latin American economies, for example, received $184 billion in financial inflows in 2007, which was roughly halved in 2008 to $89 billion and is expected to be halved again to $43 billion in 2009, the report said. This means that that consumption must be reduced, and for some low-income food-deficit countries, adjusting consumption may mean reducing badly needed food imports and other imported items such as health-care equipment and medicines.    The report includes case studies compiled by WFP in five countries — Armenia, Bangladesh, Ghana, Nicaragua and Zambia — showing how households are affected by the fall in remittances and other impacts of the economic downturn and how governments are responding to the crisis by investing in agriculture and infrastructure and expanding safety nets.    These interventions will help to save lives and families, the report says, but given the severity of the crisis, much more needs to be done.    FAO and WFP continue to advocate a twin-track approach to address both the short-term acute hunger spurred by sudden food shortages and the longer-term chronic hunger that is symptomatic of extreme poverty as a way for durable solutions.    "Small-scale farmers need access to high-quality seeds, fertilizers, feed and technologies to be able to boost productivity and production," Diouf said. "And their governments need economic and policy tools to ensure that their countries'' agriculture sectors are both more productive and more resilient in the face of crises."    - The State of Food Security in the World 2009 is available at: www.fao.org/docrep/012/i0876e/i0876e00.htm    - FAO has also launched a new website on world hunger that includes an interactive map showing trends in the percentage of the world''s population experiencing hunger in recent decades and providing country-specific data: www.fao.org/hunger/en/ Visit the related web page
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