Register for More Than 13% of World Population Suffers from Hunger
MalnutritionOctober 2-9, 2000
(NewsRx.com) -- More than 800 million people - or 13% of the world's population - suffer from hunger and diseases linked to malnutrition, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said in a report.
The number of people who lack the food they need to survive is down from 30 years ago, when an estimated 930 million people suffered from malnutrition, the organization said in its annual report, which was presented in Paris, France. Undernourishment, particularly in Asian countries, has diminished, and famine occurs only in exceptional cases. But Africa remains a major area of concern, the report said.
It added that many developing countries suffered during the final years of the 1990s, when adverse weather conditions ruined crops and financial crises devastated many economies, forcing down the price of major commodity exports and, in several cases, sparking political and social instability.
"Food supply disruptions associated with these problems have led to the outbreak or persistence of serious food emergency situations," in more than 30 countries, the report said.
Armed conflict and civil strife, particularly in low-income countries without social safety nets, remained major causes of insufficient food supply and caused agricultural losses estimated at $121 billion from 1970 to 1997, or an average of $4.3 billion each year.
The report said, however, that global food production was more than sufficient to feed the world's six billion inhabitants. The world's agricultural production has increased by 1.6% since 1950 and, in that time, the amount of irrigated land has increased from 198 million acres (80 million hectares) to 667 million acres (270 million hectares).
These increases have enabled global grain production to rise to two billion tons (1.8 billion metric tons) a day, which by itself "covers easily the needs of the entire world's population, if only it could be evenly distributed," the report said.
This article was prepared by Health & Medicine Week editors from staff and other reports.
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