Food security for all

Videos
Photos

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-10-17 07:51

Numbers are chilling. Challenges are constant. Similar reports come thick and fast. Causes are clear and solutions settled.

So, why aren't we doing more about global hunger?

Yesterday was World Food Day, a day commemorated to keep track of how the war against hunger is being won or lost.

The World Food Program found that 75 million more people have joined global hunger rolls, raising the total from 850 million to 925 million late last year.

The soaring food prices are the visible cause. And they are expected to keep going up in the next decade.

The scenario will jeopardize the United Nations' poverty reduction goal. The world organization is ambitious to reduce the proportion of people living on less than one dollar a day to half the 1990 level by 2015.

Stronger alarms rang. And time is running out.

The International Food Policy Research Institute and Welt Hunger Hilfe's Global Hunger Index report, "The Challenge of Hunger 2008," underlines the slow pace of progress in achieving food security.

The report, which was released this month, presents a lot to ponder on.

Experts have blamed a number of factors such as oil prices, growing use of biofuels, and increased consumption of high-calories food, particularly meat, in emerging economies.

Asia hosts 41 million out of the 75 million people living in acute poverty and suffering from malnutrition.

The UN agencies such as the WFP and Food and Agriculture Organization have been appealing to the international community and rich countries for immediate measures.

The rising number of people joining the hunger band is telling evidence that they have failed.

When the World Food Day was observed, the world should have looked beyond the availability of the needed food in stores and warehouses.

Rather, the world should have turned its eyes to the food on the table of the poorest.

This group of people should not be left in oblivion because they will matter to many poor countries in the future. The infants and children who are starving today will be the manpower pool to sustain their economic activities tomorrow.

(China Daily 10/17/2008 page8)