Food, economic crises cause spike in world hunger: UN

The food crisis in poor countries coupled with the global economic crisis have caused a spike in world hunger, with more than one billion people undernourished this year, the UN food agencies said today.

"No nation is immune and, as usual, it is the poorest countries -- and the poorest people -- that are suffering the most," said FAO head Jacques Diouf and WFP chief Josette Sheeran in this year's annual report on global food security.

"Even before the food crisis and the economic crisis, the number of hungry people had been increasing slowly but steadily," says the report compiled jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Food Programme.

"With the onset of these crises, however, the number of hungry people in the world increased sharply," said the Rome-based agencies.

"FAO estimates that 1.02 billion people are undernourished worldwide in 2009," it said. "This represents more hungry people than at any time since 1970 and a worsening of the unsatisfactory trends that were present even before the economic crisis."

The number of hungry has topped the one billion mark for the first time since 1970, but is a smaller proportion of the world total, which is now nearing seven billion compared with less than four billion four decades ago.