Rising Prices Up Global Hunger Figures

An additional 75 million people are now below the hunger threshold resulting in an estimated 923 million undernourished people worldwide. The culprit is high food prices, thus making it difficult to achieve the Millennium Development Goals of reducing by half the proportion of people suffering from hunger worldwide by 2015. The Food and Agriculture Organization said that to break the hunger-poverty trap, food must be made accessible to the most vulnerable, and assistance be made to small producers to increase their output and income.

“The devastating effects of high food prices on the number of hungry people compound already worrisome long-term trends,” said Hafez Ghanem, FAO Assistant Director-General for Economic and Social Development. “Hunger increased as the world grew richer and produced more food than ever during the last decade.”

See FAO’s press release at http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2008/1000923/index.html

For the document on the "Assessment of the World Food Security and Nutrition Situation" prepared for the 34th Session of the Committee on World Food Security to be held in Rome, Italy on October 14-17, 2008, download ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/meeting/014/k3175e.pdf