Number of hungry worldwide tops 1bn

By Javier Blas, Commodities Correspondent

Published: June 19 2009 13:52 | Last updated: June 19 2009 13:52

The number of chronically hungry people has passed 1bn for the first time – about one in six people – as the economic crisis compounds the impact of still high food prices, the United Nations said on Friday.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation said that its latest estimates put the number of hungry people at 1.02bn, up from a revised 915m in 2008. The estimate confirms data advanced by the Financial Times earlier this year.
The new UN assessment signals that the food and economic crisis of the last two years have reversed the past quarter-century’s slow but constant decline in the proportion of undernourished people as a percentage of the world’s population.

Before the food crisis started in mid-2007, there were fewer than 850m chronically hungry people in the world, a level that has been roughly constant since the early 1980s owing to the global fight against poverty and countries such as China, India or Brazil lifting their economic growth over the last two decades.

The most recent increase in hunger is not the consequence of poor global harvests but is caused by the world economic crisis that has resulted in lower incomes and increased unemployment, the UN said in a statement.

The Group of Eight leading nations acknowledged earlier this year that efforts to tackle hunger were lagging. G8 agriculture ministers, meeting in northern Italy in late April, said that the world was “very far from reaching” the UN’s goal of halving by 2015 the world’s proportion of malnourished people.

“A dangerous mix of the global economic slowdown combined with stubbornly high food prices in many countries has pushed some 100m more people than last year into chronic hunger and poverty,” said Jacques Diouf, FAO director-general.

“The silent hunger crisis, affecting one-sixth of all of humanity, poses a serious risk for world peace and security,” Mr Diouf added in a statement. “Today, increasing hunger is a global phenomenon. All world regions have been affected.”

The warning comes after the FAO and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said earlier this week that agricultural commodities prices would rise 10-30 per cent over the next 10 years compared with their average of 1997-2006, less than previously feared because of lower economic growth and oil prices.

Agriculture, long neglected in policy discussions, is now being examined more closely after the 2007-08 food crisis, which saw record prices for staples such as wheat and rice spark food riots from Haiti and Bangladesh to Egypt and Senegal. Wholesale agriculture commodities prices have declined since then, but retail food prices remain close to record highs in many developing countries.

The UN’s World Food Programme is cutting food aid rations and shutting down some operations as donor countries that face a fiscal crunch at home slash contributions to its funding. The agency, the world’s leading hunger fighter, had less than $1.5bn in mid-June, out of a required budget of $6.4bn. With almost half the year gone, officials in donor countries said, it was unlikely that the WFP would receive the money it says it needs to prevent hunger in many poor countries.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009