The State of Food Insecurity in the World report, a collaborative report from Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization, World Food Program and International Fund for Agricultural Development, was released Tuesday. According to its topline data, there are now 805 million people around the world who are chronically malnourished; that is a steady decline of 100 million people over the last decade. Undernourishment has fallen from 23.4 percent to 13.5 percent in developing countries.
The good news is Millennium Development Goal 1.C (halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger) is within reach according to the report as 63 countries have already reached MDG 1.C. Latin America and the Caribbean have recorded the greatest progress said the report. In sub-Sahraran Africa, 1 in 4 people is chronically hungry. The most chronically malnourished live in developing countries.
Brazil is touted in the report as achieving not only MDG 1.C, but also the more difficult to achieve WFS (World Food Summit) target that calls for reducing by half the absolute number of hungry people in a country. Juxtapose that with Haiti where over half of its citizens is chronically hungry.
The stark disparity between developed and developing countries is shown in the numbers. Between 2012 – 2014, there were 14.6 million undernourished people. Compare that to 790.7 undernourished people in developing countries. In sub-Saharan Africa there are 214.1 million undernourished and 504.6 million in Asia and the Pacific. However, Asia and the Pacific reduced hunger by nearly 10 percent more than sub-Saharan Africa over the same time.
During the July 2014 African Union meeting in Malabo, African leaders pledged to fully end hunger on the continent by 2015. That will take significant increases in agricultural outputs, funding, and political will.
Africans, however, are speaking up and expressing that the agriculture techniques that have been successful in the west aren’t necessarily adaptable to Africa. Ruth Oniang’o, the founder of Rural Outreach Africa, for example, believes that creating better food yields in Africa means understanding the African context. Oniang’o also believes that Africans can best teach other Africans about best farming practices and techniques because the farmers know they aren’t going anywhere.
“The farmers know us and they know of us. We make them our friends, and they know we are not going anywhere,” she says. “It’s not just a question of money. It’s working with you to make better use of what you have at the ground level, and just being able to appreciate and maintain dignity.”
While significant progress has been made to reduce global hunger, there are still hundreds of millions of the poor who don’t eat enough each day. One in nine people in mainly low- and middle-income countries are chronically undernourished.
Read the State of Food Insecurity in the World.