A report of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), a body dependent on the United Nations (UN), revealed that currently in the world there are at least 828 million people who have suffered from a situation of hunger, which represents an increase of 46 million people compared to the same period of the previous year and 150 million more than in 2019, just before the pandemic.
“After remaining relatively unchanged since 2015, the percentage of people affected by hunger skyrocketed in 2020 and continued to rise in 2021, reaching 9.8% of the world’s population, up from 8% in 2019 and 9.3% in 2020″, they explain from FAO through a written communication sent to the voice of america.
Forecasts for 2030
Forecasts suggest that almost 670 million people -representing 8% of the world population- will continue to suffer from hunger in 2030, taking into account that by then the effects of inflation and the economic crisis will have minimized their impact.
“This is a figure similar to that of 2015, when the goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition was established by the end of this decade within the framework of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” they add in this regard. .
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), another UN agency that ensures the improvement of agricultural systems to, among other things, fight against the social and economic gap that affects famine data in the world, states that if something is not done about it “the numbers will probably be worse in the future.”
“We are talking about 150 million people now having returned to poverty or food insecurity, but we are also talking about 3 billion people in the world who do not have a healthy diet, in many cases they are our own little ones. farmers who cannot afford it”, explains Álvaro Lario, president of IFAD during an interview with the VOA.
The situation in Latin America
Lario warns that the situation is also worsening in Latin America, “where we know that in many cases food insecurity has gone from twenty-something percent depending on the country to 30-something percent.”
The countries with the highest hunger rate are Haiti (47.2%), Venezuela (22.9%), Nicaragua (18.6%), Guatemala (16%), Ecuador (15.4%) and Honduras (15.3%). %).
“The figures are very alarming and the reality is very harsh in the sense that the trend that we had seen for many years, that both poverty and food insecurity were decreasing, now I believe that since the last four or five years, the The trend has reverted to a much worse situation,” adds the head of the international agricultural organization.
The studies that are normally prepared by the main international agencies to assess the situation in Latin America and the Caribbean have not yet offered concrete data on the rate of food insecurity in the region for 2022, since the definitive data will be published in the middle of next year. .
The causes in the region
However, there are already some estimates of what the future trend will be in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), in addition to the FAO and the World Food Program (WFP), point out that the increase in inflation has caused an increase in the risk of food insecurity, despite that this region has one of the largest agricultural surpluses in the world.
These three organizations published the report at the beginning of the month Towards sustainable food and nutrition security in Latin America and the Caribbean in response to the world food crisis precisely to address this situation in the region.
“This behavior of food inflation exacerbates the risk of problems of access to a healthy diet, food insecurity and hunger because it affects lower-income households more,” declared José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, executive secretary of ECLAC.
In this context, Salazar-Xirinachs warns that “successive international crises have compromised regional access to food and agricultural inputs.”
Other factors exacerbating the crisis
In addition, there are other points to highlight that are also related to the worsening of the hunger rate in the region:
- Restrictions on food production and trade exacerbate the effects of the climate crisis because “this hot and dry climate reduced the yield of crops such as wheat and corn” and a 4% reduction in world corn production is expected and rice by 2%.
- Latin America and the Caribbean is a region highly dependent on the import of fertilizers, which are increasingly less affordable for farmers.
- Food inflation increases the risk of hunger since it affects lower-income households more.
- The fight against inflation must consider other instruments beyond monetary policy so as not to compromise economic recovery.
- Policies must respond to the emergency while promoting changes in the patterns of exposure to the crisis.
ECLAC’s spokesman on this matter also warns that food prices continue at “excessively high levels due to various geopolitical and climatic factors”, an issue that, in his opinion, should also be addressed much more vigorously by of governments and international organizations in order to reduce this impact.
The impact of the war in Ukraine
On the other hand, and according to the extensive report recently published, the three organizations point out that this conflict will continue to affect the global food supply in 2023 and that, if it is not remedied, it will continue over time. The reasons, according to the ECLAC spokesperson, that justify this statement are the following:
- Ukrainian agriculture is being strongly affected: “a drop of about a third of the planted area is estimated in the 2022/23 season.”
- Russia, under the trade embargo, “may lack some supplies such as “machinery, seeds and pesticides that it usually buys from the European Union and other countries.”
- “In the rest of the world, high fertilizer prices threaten to reduce yields in some producing areas and affect production for domestic markets.”
- Reductions in cereal harvests “also have an impact on livestock, with increases in costs and prices to consumers.”
Greater investment to alleviate the food crisis
For his part, President Lario, in conversation with the VOAinsists that investment plans in the region are key to addressing this food crisis.
“What is missing is investment, investment and investment. And it is not only an investment by the International Agricultural Fund, by the World Bank or the FAO, but it is also an investment by the countries themselves”, he says, clarifying that “if the investment does not occur even by the local governments nor for the development bank’s systems, and the platforms are not even put in place to attract the private sector” it will be very difficult to lay the foundations to appease this increasingly “worrying” scenario.
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