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UN: Number of hungry people to top 1 billion in 2009
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 19 - 06 - 2009

Some 1.02 billion people are set to go hungry in 2009, a United Nations agency said today, blaming the "historic"
high figure on the global economic crisis, dpa reported.
In 2008, the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization revised
its estimate of hungry people from 963 down to 915 million, due
primarily to a better-than-expected global food supply.
But since then, the lower incomes and increased unemployment that
have resulted from the world economic crisis have reduced the poor's
access to food, FAO said in a statement.
"A dangerous mix of the global economic slowdown combined with
stubbornly high food prices in many countries has pushed some 100
million more people than last year into chronic hunger and poverty,"
FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said.
"The silent hunger crisis - affecting one sixth of all of humanity
- poses a serious risk for world peace and security. We urgently need
to forge a broad consensus on the total and rapid eradication of
hunger in the world and to take the necessary actions," he added.
Poor countries, must be given the development, economic and policy
tools required to boost their agricultural production and
productivity, according to Diouf.
"Many of the world's poor and hungry are smallholder farmers in
developing countries. Yet they have the potential not only to meet
their own needs but to boost food security and catalyse broader
economic growth," Diouf said
Governments, supported by the international community, need to
protect core investments in agriculture so that smallholder farmers
have access not only to seeds and fertilizers but to tailored
technologies, infrastructure, rural finance, and markets, according
to Kanayo Nwanze, who heads another Rome-based UN agency, the
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
FAO noted that whereas "good progress" was made in reducing
chronic hunger in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, hunger
has been slowly but steadily on the rise for the past decade.
The number of hungry people increased between 1995-97 and 2004-06
in all regions except Latin America and the Caribbean. But even in
this region, gains in hunger reduction have been reversed as a result
of high food prices and the current global economic downturn.
This year, mainly due to the shocks of the economic crisis
combined with often high national food prices, the number of hungry
people is expected to grow overall by about 11 per cent, according to
estimated buy FAO, draw on analysis by the US Department of
Agriculture
Almost all of the world's undernourished live in developing
countries, FAO noted.
In Asia and the Pacific, an estimated 642 million people are
suffering from chronic hunger; in Sub-Saharan Africa 265 million; in
Latin America and the Caribbean 53 million; in the Near East and
North Africa 42 million; and in the developed countries 15 million in
total.


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