Number of hungry still 'unacceptably high', says UN food agency

The numbers of people suffering from chronic malnutrition are still "unacceptably high", said the United Nations’ food agency Tuesday.

As of this year, some 925 million people are undernourished, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation. Last year, the figure stood at 1.02 billion – a record high.

While the FAO welcomed the drop in the number of hungry people in the world, it emphasised that the latest figure is still far from the goal.

Halving the number of people in hunger by 2015 is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals agreed by the 189 UN member states in 2000.

Around 16 per cent of the world's population is still living in extreme hunger – slightly down from around 20 per cent in 1990 and 18 per cent in 2009.

An ActionAid report released Tuesday found that out of the 28 developing countries it studied, the majority were failing to halve hunger by 2015.

“The fact that nearly a billion people remain hungry even after the recent food and financial crises have largely passed indicates a deeper structural problem,” the FAO said in its report.

“Governments should encourage increased investment in agriculture, expand safety nets and social assistance programs, and enhance income-generating activities for the rural and urban poor,” the agency recommended.

David Beckmann of Bread for the World, meanwhile, directed his call at people in America, from whom he said the constituency power needs to come.

“What we need is a much stronger constituency for hungry and poor people. I think a lot of that surge from constituency power needs to come from people who are moved by their conscience or by our God,” said Beckmann on Monday.

“That is why I am asking you and other people to be more active on these issues,” he stated at a press conference in Washington.

Beckmann further explained how most people who are hungry are simply so because they are poor.

“Globally, we tend to focus on these disaster situation and they are important,” said Beckmann, who worked at the World Bank for 15 years. “But 95 per cent of the hungry people are just out in remote Mozambique [for example] and they’re just damn poor and kids just die and there are no TV cameras. That’s the way it’s always been.”

Beckmann, who is a 2010 World Food Prize laureate, is urging individuals and companies to not only donate, but to advocate on behalf of the hungry and poor with members of Congress.