The State of World Hunger in Graphs
This from the FAO’s ‘State of Food Insecurity in the World 2009′. Click on the graphs.
After decades of improvements, the number of undernourished people (in millions) in the world has been rising rapidly since the mid 1990s.
Even as a proportion of total population, hunger started rising in the middle of the last decade
This is partly because aid to agriculture has been collapsing for decades (% of total aid)
The global crisis of 2008/9 hit Asia particularly hard (percentage increase in malnutrition in 2009)
And food prices are continuing their rebound (this from the FAO’s World Food Prices Index - the orange line is the latest and shows that food prices are already back to late 2007 levels)
Tags: food prices, global economic crisis, hunger, malnutrition March 3rd, 2010 Posted in Aid, General, Global Financial and Economic Crisis, Poverty
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:10 am
This is a damning set of data and I hope it triggers a suitable response from those with power or influence in countries which have the money and resources to respond.
However, for me it is missing a graph of population growth. I guess populations haven’t grown abnormally in the last 5 years (the period when you show food prices having risen), but I am always shocked when I hear how much they have changed in many countries in the last 50 or 100 years.
March 3rd, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Thanks for an interesting blog post. Some questions:
Does this mean that all in all, the world can not produce enough food to feed the growing world population?
And that the production linked subsidies in rich countries (used to lead to overproduction and dumping) are no longer a problem?
Or are African leaders still asking for market access in rich countries?
If the production costs for food becomes almost the same as the prices on the world market: may this lead to increased income for poor countries, which may lead to increased investment in the agricultural sector in poor countries, and increased production capacity for food?
March 4th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
I think your narrative underplays the primary importance of food prices for rising undernourishment in recent years. Falling ag aid (and research funding) may be one price driver, but there are many others. Luckily this is an area which is getting more attention these days…