Critics say small farmers and local markets are ill-served by the prevailing economic model. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Sabina Zaccaro
ROME, Oct 1 2013 (IPS)

Some 842 million people still suffer from chronic hunger, according to the State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI 2013), published Tuesday by the three Rome-based U.N. food agencies.

As high as this number seems, it should still be considered progress, since it is is down from 868 million last year.

Among the reasons behind this progress are economic growth in developing countries, which is improving incomes and access to food; pick-up in agricultural productivity; and increased public and private investments in agriculture.

Remittances from migrants are also playing a role in reducing poverty, according to the U.N. report.

The vast majority of hungry people live in developing regions, while 15.7 million live in developed countries. But despite the progress detected worldwide, strong inequalities in hunger reduction remain.

Sub-Saharan Africa has made only modest progress in recent years and remains the region with the highest prevalence of undernourishment, with one in four people (24.8 percent) estimated to be hungry.

No progress is observed in Western Asia, while Southern Asia and Northern Africa showed “slow progress”. More substantial reductions in both the number of hungry and prevalence of undernourishment have occurred in most countries of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and in Latin America.

Since 1990-92, the total number of undernourished in developing countries has fallen by 17 percent from 995.5 million to 826.6 million. The ambitious target set at the 1996 World Food Summit (WFS), to halve the number of hungry people by 2015, remains out of reach at the global level, even though 22 countries had already met it by the end of 2012.

The heads of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) called for nutrition-sensitive interventions in agriculture and food systems as a whole, as well as in public health and education, especially for women.

Last year’s U.N. report received a detailed critique by a group of hunger researchers led by author Frances Moore Lappe. The publication offered specific recommendations mainly in relation to the presentation of hunger estimates and on the report’s methodology.

Researchers found that estimates represent the low end of the scale because they are based on food availability and the caloric requirements required only to lead a “sedentary lifestyle.” A less restrictive FAO threshold leads to an estimate of 1.33 billion hungry in the world rather than SOFI 2012’s 868 million, according to the group.

Another factor of concern was the focus on global hunger, which masks wide regional variation. In fact, progress in China and Vietnam alone account for more than 90 percent of the estimated reductions in the number of hungry people in the world. National success stories, like in Ghana and Brazil, “are lost in the global estimates, as are countries and regions in crisis.”

“This year’s report introduces important innovations, we go beyond the traditional FAO prevalence of undernourishment indicator to measure the various dimensions of food insecurity, in particular the nutritional outcomes of food insecurity,” said Pietro Gennari, director of the Statistics Division at the FAO.

“These can be measured by different indicators. In most cases, these indicators are consistent with the trends of prevalence of undernourishment, but this is not always the case, and we have studied specific countries to understand why we have these divergences and the policy measures that can address them.”

The report underlines that economic growth is key for progress in hunger reduction. “But that is not enough; targeted policies and social programmes are needed to achieve the goal of eradicating hunger worldwide,” Gennari said.

Some contest this emphasis on economic growth.

“The report offers some useful elements, like some of the new index, and more systematic information on food insecurity,” Antonio Onorati from IPC, the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty, told IPS. “But when it comes to solutions, it proposes old and ineffective recipes.”

“Like the idea that 600 million small producers who are food insecure simply need to increase their productivity in order to put their surplus into the market. As if the local market were functional to small-scale agriculture and to food security. It is not so.”

According to Onorati, local markets are only a reproduction of the global market, “that same market that generates crisis and even death of small farms, and which is finally a key component of food insecurity.”

“We would expect a deeper analysis of the role of local markets,” he said.

Findings of SOFI 2013 will be discussed by governments, civil society and private sector at the Oct. 7-11 meeting of the Committee on World Food Security in Rome.

Rice is a staple for much of humanity. Credit: Bigstock

By Claudia Ciobanu
ROME, Jun 15 2013 (IPS)

“If there was enough political will to defeat hunger, we would defeat it right now – immediately,” says Enrique Yeves, chief of corporate communications at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

“It is a scandal that in the 21^st century there are still people that suffer from hunger in a world in which we produce more food than we need,” adds Yeves, speaking on the sidelines of the Jun. 15-21 FAO biannual conference opening Saturday in Rome."The crisis of the food system is not only an issue for poor countries in the Global South but for the global elites too.” -- IPC's Antonio Onorati

Almost one billion people do not have enough to eat, yet we throw away one-third to one-half of the food we produce, according to U.N. estimates.

This is one of the paradoxes at the core of the global food system.

The world made progress over the last decade in combating hunger. But a widespread and lingering economic crisis has reversed this trend, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, according to FAO’s own assessments. High and volatile global food prices are putting additional strains on the world’s poor, as is the rapid depletion of natural resources caused by our unsustainable way of life.

This year, FAO’s membership will hit 195, once South Sudan, Brunei and Singapore join next week.

The sense of urgency in addressing hunger in the midst of the multiple global crises is reflected in the current attempt to reform FAO in order to make it more efficient and results-oriented.

“In the 2000s, there was even talk of shutting down FAO altogether, as the mantra of liberalisation of markets as a solution for food security became dominant and the World Trade Organisation became the locus for most food talks,” says Antonio Onorati from IPC, the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty, a platform bringing together around 300 million small food producers from all over the world in order to dialogue with FAO.

“But then we had the economic crisis and the food crises and the governments understood there was a need for a multilateral space for dealing with food issues,” he tells IPS. “They also understood that the crisis of the food system is not only an issue for poor countries in the Global South but for the global elites too.”

FAO’s Brazilian Director General José Graziano da Silva has come up with a set of proposals, including concentrating the organisation’s work around five strategic objectives: contributing to the eradication of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition; increasing and improving the provision of goods and services from agriculture, forestry and fisheries in a sustainable manner; reducing rural poverty; enabling more inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems at local, national and international levels; increasing the resilience of livelihoods to threats and crises.

Another important change will be the mainstreaming of gender issues across FAO programmes, a move that is very much welcomed by civil society.

“Women are the majority of farmers yet they have always been discriminated in agricultural policies,” says Alberta Guerra from Action Aid International. “If women are given the resources they need, many will be taken out of poverty. We are happy to see the progress made by FAO on gender mainstreaming.”

Da Silva, who came to FAO after being responsible for implementing the Fome Zero programme in Brazil, said to have lifted 28 million people out of poverty, may indeed have the needed stamina and good reputation to carry the reform package through.

Yet there will likely be resistance from governments gathering in Rome. One contentious issue is a minor budget increase put up for discussion: FAO’s budget was 1.005 billion dollars in the 2012-13 period, and the organisation is now asking for an increase of one percent from its member states for 2014-15.

Some member states may resist this budget hike and these may be precisely the rich countries, as larger developing ones (most notably the BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are already committed to increasing their financial contributions to FAO apart from the one percent: China by an additional 21.3 million dollars, Brazil by 15.3 million and Russia by 9.2 million dollars.

According to Onorati, the changes proposed by the FAO staff entail a “system view” of food issues – that is, looking at all factors together and interlinked – which is welcome. He also welcomes the organisation’s increased openness to civil society.

At the same time, Onorati warns that some of the national delegations coming to Rome may be less open than FAO itself to such changes.