Year of publication 2004

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Pages 41

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Product type Book (stand-alone)

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Edition 1

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Synopsis (short abstract) World agriculture has been highly successful in increasing average food availability per person by about 20% while the population has more than doubled in less than 50 years to over 6 billion people. Global food supplies are ample to meet everyone’s essential needs, yet over 800 million people are chronically undernourished. At the other end of the spectrum, over-consumption of food, reflected in a rapidly rising incidence of obesity, is now regarded as a major cause of ill health. Much o f the increased food output has been from small farmers in developing countries, especially in Asia. Even, however, in those countries which have been most successful in raising smallholder output, such as India and China, many millions of people, both rural and urban, continue to be chronically undernourished. The failure to make significant progress towards hunger eradication since 1996, when governments attending the World Food Summit (WFS) committed themselves to halve the number of undernou rished persons by 2015, suggests that either the wrong measures are being used or that the size of interventions is simply too small. The fact that some countries have been successful in making rapid cuts in hunger implies that the Summit goal remains attainable. However, this will require changes in tactics and in the sequencing and scale of actions by countries which continue to be faced with widespread food insecurity.

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Language English

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