United Nations:
The number of undernourished people in the world decreased this year for the first time in 15 years, but the level remains higher than before the 2008 food crisis, and the volatile state of prices gives cause for unease, senior United Nations officials said Tuesday.
The number of hungry people fell to 925 million from the record high of 1.02 billion in 2009, with much of the improvement tied to income growth in the Asia-Pacific region and to a 40 percent drop in food prices from their 2008 peak.
Still, the hunger number remains "shockingly high," said Josette Sheeran, the executive director of the World Food Program, at a news conference in Rome, especially since success stories in African, Asian and Latin American countries that once suffered chronic malnourishment suggest that a permanent reversal should be possible.
The figures were compiled before the flooding crisis in Pakistan and the jolt in wheat prices in late August, the second in the month, after Russia announced that it would halt wheat exports because of drought and fires.
The numbers in the latest hunger report were released before a meeting next week at the United Nations in New York of more than 100 world leaders, who will consider the fate of eight development goals set in 2000 for 2015, with many of them well short of the targets.
The latest hunger data indicate that the very first goal, reducing the number of hungry people in the world to half of what it was in 1990, will be virtually impossible to meet, Jacques Diouf, the director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, said at the news conference, which was broadcast on the Web.
The report estimated that the number of undernourished people in the Asia-Pacific region would decline 12 percent from 2009, to 578 million, because of economic growth there. Seven countries account for two-thirds of the world's hungry people: China, India, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Ethiopia and Pakistan. India and China alone account for 40 percent of the world's hungry, the report said.
But sub-Saharan Africa has the highest proportion of undernourished people, 30 percent of its population, it said.
"The current dramatic situation is a result of the neglect of agriculture in development policies over the past three decades," Mr Diouf said. More than 70 percent of the extremely poor live in rural parts of developing countries, he said, and those areas need investment in seeds and fertilizer and better access to markets to reduce hunger.
The world's 20 most developed countries promised to invest $22 billion in aid to agriculture from 2009 to 2011, he noted, but so far only $425 million has been spent. While all the movement in terms of aid is in the right direction, he said, the pace needs to be accelerated.
Oxfam International, a group of antipoverty organizations, released a report on Tuesday saying that it estimated that an increase in investment of $75 billion a year was needed -- half in overseas aid and half from developing countries' national budgets -- to reach the target of halving the number of hungry people.
Oxfam's report said that the factors contributing to the 2008 food crisis, including biofuels investments, commodity speculation and stagnant productivity in sub-Saharan Africa, still exist and that another food crisis may happen.
The situation is very different in that the cereal harvest this year will be the third largest on record, Mr Diouf said. There has also been a bumper crop of rice. Still, the turbulence in prices over the past two years, which contributed to riots partly over food in Mozambique last month, is likely a sign that volatility will increase in the future. "If it persists, it will create an additional obstacle to reduce hunger," he said.