World Hunger Notes--The World Food Summit 5 Years Later by Lane Vanderslice

The World Food Summit 5 Years Later: Meeting in Rome, World Leaders Can Demonstrate Little Progress in Reducing Malnutrition

(March 21 2002) As nations of the world are set to meet in Rome in June for the World Food Summit--Five Years Later, no progress has been made in accelerating the reduction of the number of malnourished people in the world.

The goal established at the first World Food Summit (WFS) in 1996 was to halve the number of malnourished people in the world by 2015. Unfortunately, current data indicate that the number of undernourished is falling at an average rate of only 6 million each year, far below the rate of 22 million per year needed to reach the WFS target. This is shown in the table below.

Table 1. The Decline in Malnourished People and the Needed Decline to Meet the World Food Summit Target

The annual reduction rate of 6 million is a positive accomplishment, which is being achieved as the world's population grows. Nonetheless, this annual reduction rate of 6 million was being accomplished before the WFS, which ostensibly began a substantially heightened effort to reduce the number of malnourished people in the world, a number which the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates at 777 million for the 1997-99 period.

The FAO's 2001 "State of Food Insecurity in the World," analyzed country progress between 1990-92 and 1997-99. Dividing countries into two groups--those which reduced the number of malnourished and those where the number increased, China was a key country. It reduced the number of malnourished by 76 million, or 66 percent of the total reduction of 116 million by countries in the first group. Other countries in this group included Peru, Indonesia, Nigeria, Thailand, Viet Nam, Brazil, Ghana, and Sudan. Those countries where the number increased include the Congo, India, Tanzania, North Korea, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Uganda, Kenya, and Iraq. If it were not for China, world malnutrition would have increased.

A malnourished North Korean child in 1999

Photo: CNN

North Korean child in 1999. Drought and an oppressive political system have led to vast numbers of malnourished children, and deaths due to malnutrition, in North Korea.

The FAO analyzed the situation as follows. Countries which performed best in terms of reducing undernourishment realized significantly higher investment and productivity in agriculture than others. Even though they depended on agriculture as the principal source of livelihood of the poor, the worst performers even failed to prevent a decline in the capital stock per agricultural worker during the 1990s. This was compounded by a steep decline in the flow of external assistance to their agricultural sector. Hunger Notes also notes that conflict, as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, drought and poor weather, as in Afghanistan, and poor governance, as in North Korea, were also important factors in increasing malnutrition in countries.

A Peruvian farmer. Farmers are often very poor and need programs such as the provision of improved seeds and credit to progress

Photo: Catholic Relief Services

A Peruvian farmer. Farmers are often among the poorest people in a country and in order to progress, and produce more food for themselves and others, farmers need access to markets, credit, and inputs such as fertilizer and seeds.

Nonetheless, the bottom line appears to be that countries do not appear to have made significant efforts to reduce malnutrition. An FAO spokesman said, "It would in fact be very appropriate if all countries were to set their own national targets for halving undernourishment by 2015," establishing by indirection that such goals have not been established to this point, much less increased financial and human resources to reach such targets.

It is not clear what the June conference in Rome will bring. The previous conference was notable for a lack of developing and developed country commitments to reducing hunger, in spite of a lot of verbiage and some action plans. Whether or not the United States, especially, can focus not only on its security concerns after September 11, but also on the security concerns of 800 million malnourished people, and hundreds of millions more who suffer the threat of hunger most days, remains to be seen.