Number of hungry people swells by 40 million

The number of hungry people in the world swelled by 40 million to touch the 923-million mark in 2008, chiefly due to higher food prices. More people could be pushed into hunger if the ongoing financial and economic crisis continues, a United Nations body has warned.

An overwhelming majority of the undernourished people, about 907 million, live in developing countries. And about 65 per cent of these live in seven countries — India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Ethiopia and Congo, according to the preliminary estimates on hunger released by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

“With a very large population and relatively slow progress in hunger reduction, nearly two-thirds (583 million) of the hungry live in Asia,” the report reveals. However, the unenviable distinction of having the highest proportion of undernourished people in the total population goes to sub-Saharan Africa where one in three people, or 236 million, are chronically hungry.

This is despite some progress achieved in recent years in alleviating hunger in that region. The proportion of people suffering from chronic hunger is estimated to have come down from 34 per cent in the late 1990s to 30 per cent by the middle of this decade.

The FAO has held high prices of food largely responsible for growing hunger. “Prices of major cereals have fallen by over 50 per cent from their peaks earlier in 2008, but they remain high compared to previous years,” the report says. Regardless of the sharp fall in prices, the FAO Food Price Index was still 28 per cent higher in October 2008 than in October 2006.

The 1996 World Food Summit had set the target of reducing the number of hungry by half by 2015. Some countries were well on track towards reaching the summit’s target, before food prices skyrocketed. But even these countries might have suffered setbacks because of high food prices, the report says.

Latin America and Caribbean had been most successful in reducing hunger before the surge in food prices. But high prices have increased the number of hungry people in this sub-group as well.

Referring to the current global economic slowdown, the report has warned that it would accentuate undernourishment, especially in the developing countries.

“The world hunger situation may further deteriorate as the financial crisis hits the real economies of more and more countries. Reduced demand in developed countries threatens incomes in developing countries via exports. Remittances, investments and other capital flows including development aid are also at risk. Emerging economies in particular are subject to lasting impacts from the credit crunch even if the crisis itself is short-lived,” the UN body has cautioned.