North Korean harvests improving

North Korea made headlines a couple of years ago when it asked for food aid. The isolated country finally had to break out to prevent its population from starving.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recently returned from a trip from North Korea to give an assessment on the country’s food security. The F.A.O. finds that harvests have improved over the last couple of years but not enough to prevent malnutrition for many.

From Reuters Alert Net, we read the latest on food security in North Korea.  

The U.N. organisation forecast a 10 percent increase in the main 2012 harvests and 2013 early season crops compared with a year earlier, and said production was expected to hit 5.8 million metric tons.

The country faced a staple food deficit of 207,000 metric tons, the lowest in many years, but 2.8 million people remained vulnerable to undernutrition, the FAO added.

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"DPR Korea still needs international help," Kisan Gunjal, FAO economist and the mission's co-leader, said in a statement. "The new harvest figures are good news, but the lack of proteins and fats in the diet is alarming."

World food prices remain just below the crisis levels of 2008

The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization has issued their latest forecast of world food supply and prices. The good news is that food prices have dropped slightly, but that might not last long. The FAO's forecast points to a decrease in harvests worldwide that might bring the prices back up. Food prices are slightly below levels of 2008 when the high cost of food sparked riots around the world. The FAO says wheat production has dropped 5.5 percent from last year, while all grains have dropped 2.7 percent.

From Reuters Alert Net, writer James Mackenzie summarizes the report.

The FAO's November Food Outlook report pointed to continuing pressure on grains output in the current season following this year's droughts in key producer regions from the Black Sea to the U.S. cornbelt.

Wheat production, which has also suffered heavily in the droughts in eastern Europe and central Asia, was seen falling 5.5 percent to 661 million tonnes, the agency said.

World cereals production is expected to fall 2.7 percent to 2.284 billion tonnes in the 2012/13 season, it said, trimming slightly its previous output forecast of 2.286 billion tonnes.

"This season's world cereal supply and demand balance is proving much tighter than in 2011/12 with global production falling short of the projected demand and cereal stocks declining sharply," the FAO said.

The Black Sea drought is set to cut wheat output in Russia and Ukraine by some 30 percent, while Kazakhstan will see its crop down by more than half.

Wheat production is set to rise in the United States but U.S. maize output was decimated by a drought which caught farmers by surprise and slashed the corn crop.

On wheat, FAO noted that levels were close to the average of the past five years and it said plantings in major producing regions next year would match or even increase over levels seen in 2012, pointing to a rise in production next season.

Millennium Development Goal of cutting hunger in half within reach

A new report from the United Nations says the Millennium Development Goal to halve hunger by 2015 is within reach. The U. N. says that the percentage of hungry people in the world was at 23 percent in 1990. The percentage is now down to 15 percent, for a total of 870 million people. The figures come from the new State of Food Insecurity report from the U. N.s Food and Agriculture Organization.

Reporter Claire Provost of the Guardian breaks down more figures from the report. 

"The good news … is the hunger target of MDG one is achievable," said Jomo Kwame Sundaram, assistant director general for economic and social development at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). "There has been more progress than previously thought, and we're within striking distance."

Significantly, the figures do not show an increase in global hunger following the recent food price and economic crises. However, the report finds that from 2007 there has been "a significant slowdown" in progress, bringing hunger reduction "essentially to a halt for the developing countries as a whole". This will need to be reversed if the MDG is to be met, it says.

Tempering premature celebrations further, the report says the number of hungry people in the world "remains unacceptably high".

There are stark variations between regions. The figures put Asia and the Pacific, as well as Latin America and the Caribbean, almost on track for achieving their MDG hunger targets. Undernourishment in sub-Saharan Africa has improved less rapidly, and western Asia has seen an increase in the percentage of hungry people.

The report, launched by three UN food agencies ahead of the Committee on World Food Security meetings in Rome next week, calls for investment in smallholder farmers, "nutrition-sensitive" policies, and the creation of comprehensive social protection systems that target the poor.

The Food and Agriculture Organization elects a new chief

The Food and Agriculture Organization elected a new chief yesterday. The 191 member nations voted to select Brazilian Josè Graziano da Silva to succeed Jacques Diouf. Many food security advocates applaud the appointment because of his experience in leading agricultural reforms in the fast growing country of Brazil.

From the Inter Press Service, writer Sabina Zaccaro gives us some background on de Silva.

The new chief succeeds Senegalese Jacques Diouf, who was first elected in 1993. The new director-general takes over in January 2012 and will remain in charge until July 2015. Following a recently revised rule, he is only eligible for one additional four-year term, while Diouf has been elected to three consecutive six-year terms.

Economist Jose Graziano da Silva, who was FAO's regional representative for Latin America and the Caribbean, had served as food security minister under former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. In that position, he played a key role in the "Zero Hunger" government initiative that brought about a significant decrease in malnutrition in Brazil.

Working closely with civil society, and recognising the central role of women in agriculture, the programme contributed to lifting an estimated 24 million people out of extreme poverty, and to reducing malnutrition by 25 percent in the country, according to official figures.

Graziano's past success gives hope to civil society organisations, who largely expect an era of consultation and inclusion.

"By supporting smallholder agriculture, Brazil is tackling hunger successfully. We expect Graziano to bring the same approach to the FAO," Marco de Ponte, secretary general of ActionAid Italy, told IPS.

"In the Diouf era the common thinking was that transferring technical knowledge in agriculture was enough to fight hunger," de Ponte said. "But hunger is largely determined by political choices related to the food market, and hunger grows where you have unfair access to production."

FAO says high prices do not mean a bigger supply

A new study raises some doubts that the record high food prices could bring an increase in food production. From IRIN, this story takes a look at the Agricultural Outlook report published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

Contrary to popular perception, the current high food prices will not see more money flowing into agriculture in the long term, warned a new forecast released ahead of a critical meeting of agriculture ministers in Paris on 22 and 23 June.

“Input costs, including that of fuel and fertilizer, have risen significantly - we anticipate global agriculture production to slow down in the next decade,” said Meritt Cluff, a senior economist at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and one of the authors of the Agricultural Outlook 2011-2020.

The Outlook - produced jointly by FAO and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes all the major developed countries - has forecast in its last three editions that food prices will remain high for the next few decades.

Global agricultural production is projected to grow at 1.7 percent annually until 2020, compared to 2.6 percent during the previous decade. Slower growth is expected for most crops, especially oilseeds and coarse grains, which face higher production costs and slowing productivity.

FAO estimates that to meet projected demand over the next 40 years, farmers in developing countries need to double production.

The cost of nitrogen fertilizers and other farm chemicals is closely related to the crude oil price, which has jumped from about US$35 per barrel in 2000 to hovering around $100 per barrel today.

Besides the cost of agricultural inputs, pressure on resources such as water and land, and the higher risk of adverse weather are also contributing to the slow-down in food production.

“We need greater political will to make substantial investments into improving production of food grains to meet the rising demands in the future,” said Cluff.

An increase in the supply of major food grains such as wheat and rice could help bring food prices down somewhat. “We are not into a crisis of the proportions we faced in 2007/08. Yes, food prices are high, but the global supply of wheat and rice - the two major food grains - is not critical at the moment,” Cluff noted.

There is some concern over maize crops in US, which have been affected by floods. The US Department of Agriculture is expected to release final figures later in June. All food grain prices are now above those of 2010.

2010 ended with food prices at their highest since 2008, when the world was in the grip of a crisis sparked by very expensive staple grains. Cereal prices, especially of wheat, started climbing in the second half of 2010 as severe drought and fires slashed crop sizes in Russia and Ukraine, two of the world's largest producers. The price of wheat shot up by more than 70 percent. Economists said speculation and national policy responses were partly to blame for the for the price hikes.

Countries that do not produce enough to satisfy national demand and are net consumers have been hit not only by high food prices but by price volatility or fluctuations, said a new inter-agency report to the G20, Price Volatility in Food and Agriculture Markets: Policy Responses, coordinated by FAO and OECD on behalf of 10 international organizations.

The report proposes a list of policy responses to bring down food prices and tackle price shocks. It calls for the reduction or elimination of trade-distorting policies and the establishment of a new mechanism to improve information and transparency in agricultural production, consumption, stocks and trade.

Basic commodities like grains, sugar and oil experienced boom times between 2002 and 2008, attracting growing numbers of financial investors to the commodities futures exchange, a move dubbed the "financialization of commodity markets" by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), an intergovernmental body dealing with trade, investment and development issues.

The Intergovernmental Groups on Grain and Rice at FAO list the impact of financialization on the futures markets - along with poor market transparency, insufficient information about investors, unexpected changes triggered by national food security situations, panic buying and hoarding - among the root causes of harmful, rapid food price hikes. Russia announced a ban on exports in 2010, which also helped push up prices, economists said.

The absence of accurate reliable public information on food stocks, and the entry of unscrupulous commodities speculators have been cited among the major reasons for price swings. The US has already put in motion plans to curb speculation and “Other countries are also following suit,” said Cluff.

Price levels and volatility

Christopher Barrett, a food security expert who teaches development economics at Cornell University, New York, said there was a need to distinguish between high food prices and price volatility, because the way the food-price problem is cast affects policy response.

“Policies aimed at curbing food price volatility, such as export bans, price controls and price stabilization schemes, not only have a poor track record, they are misguided if policy-makers’ goal is to increase the welfare of the poor,” he said.

“Instead, policy-makers should consider policies that prevent sharp increases in food prices, such as removing barriers to international agricultural trade, and increased investment in scientific research on crop productivity improvement, on soil and water conservation, on reducing post-harvest losses that run to nearly 50 percent in many low-income countries, and on renewable energy sources that do not compete with food for land and harvests.’”

Barrett said the public discourse on food price volatility has been disappointing because political leaders, the media and popular commentators are commonly conflating rising food price levels with greater food price "volatility", which is best defined as variance around that level.

“The error is understandable because the two phenomena are indisputably correlated, but they are different things, and by conflating high food price levels and high price volatility, global leaders make some important errors,” he commented.

“First, while it is clear that food price levels are at historic highs, food price variability, although high these past few years, is not out of line with historical experience and is generally lower than in the 1970s. Although it is clear that the world faces historic food price highs, it is unclear that there is a similarly unprecedented food price volatility problem,” Barrett said.

“Second, the effects on the well-being of the poor of price levels, and of price volatility, differ. Rising food price levels hurt food consumers by reducing their purchasing power while benefiting food producers by increasing farm profits,” he pointed out.

“By contrast, food price volatility hurts food producers, who make irreversible investments in crop inputs at the start of the growing season, and routinely reduce such investments as food price risk increases” Barrett explained.

“But because food commodities are often substitutes for one another, and because changes in the prices of foodstuffs are not perfectly correlated, food consumers can adjust their food purchases so as to take advantage of relative price discounts. As a result, they commonly benefit from increased volatility around a price level,” he noted.

“Throughout the world, but especially in low-income countries, the poor are overwhelmingly net food buyers, so poverty increases as food price levels rise - but losses due to food price volatility fall mainly on relatively better-off large farmers, Barrett said.

“Perhaps not coincidentally, these same large farmers enjoy tremendous taxpayer-funded support programmes from G20 governments presently expressing concern about food price volatility.”

FAO warns of new food price crisis

Experts from the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization say that another global food crisis could come soon. Food prices have climbed to their highest levels in two years, yet are still not as high as the previous crisis in 2008. The FAO is also pointing to the many recent floods that have swept away crops that have kept food stockpiles low.

From the Guardian, writer John Vidal received more quotes from the FAO and there dire warnings.

Although food stocks are generally good despite much of this year's harvests being wiped out in Pakistan and Russia, sugar and rice remain at a record price.

Global wheat and maize prices recently jumped nearly 30% in a few weeks while meat prices are at 20-year highs, according to the key Reuters-Jefferies commodity price indicator. Last week, the US predicted that global wheat harvests would be 30m tonnes lower than last year, a 5.5% fall. Meanwhile, the price of tomatoes in Egypt, garlic in China and bread in Pakistan are at near-record levels.

"The situation has deteriorated since September," said Abdolreza Abbassian of the UN food and agriculture organisation. "In the last few weeks there have been signs we are heading the same way as in 2008.

"We may not get to the prices of 2008 but this time they could stay high much longer."

However, opinions are sharply divided over whether these prices signal a world food crisis like the one in 2008 that helped cause riots in 25 countries, or simply reflect volatility in global commodity markets as countries claw their way through recession.

"A food crisis on the scale of two or three years ago is not imminent, but the underlying causes [of what happened then] are still there," said Chris Leather, Oxfam's food policy adviser.

"Prices are volatile and there is a lot of nervousness in the market. There are big differences between now and 2008. Harvests are generally better, global food stocks are better."

FAO finally invite activists to talk

One good thing that has come from the dual crises of food price shocks and the global recession. The world's governments are looking to more people and different ways to prevent crises from repeating.

Leaders of poor countries are beginning to be invited to the big rich nation meetings like the G-8 and G-20. Now, activists are also being invited to meetings of international bodies. The activists and non-governmental organizations used to just protest outside the door, but now the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization is beginning to talk to them.

From the IPS, writer Marwaan Macan-Markar talks to a couple of activists who were finally heard by the FAO.

"It was very empowering. We had opportunities to intervene simultaneously since we were there as co-equals with the governments," said (Marlene) Ramirez, secretary-general of the Asian Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Areas, a Manila-based regional grassroots network. "It has made a major difference for civil society."

This week’s debates on finding solutions to food security were influenced by "the voices of many civil society sectors," she revealed during an interview from the meeting site. "Governments got to hear alternative solutions and the need to explore alternative ways."

(Sarojini) Rengam and Ramirez were among 150 civil society representatives from across the world that took part in this week’s groundbreaking meeting. These groups, of which 30 were from Asia, represented regional and international farmers’ organisations, herders associations and indigenous organisations.

This break from the format of conventional U.N. meetings – where civil society groups are accorded marginal, or at times only symbolic, space – is winning early praise from some government delegates, among them the representatives from the Philippines and Argentina.

"It is very important that finally, member governments have recognised that NGOs and CSOs (civil society organisations) have a role to play institutionally," said Noel de Luna, current head of the CFS, during an interview. "It serves as an assurance that the voices who we have excluded in the past are heard."

"CSO are directly in contact with the people going hungry and living in poverty and were able to bring that reality to the discussions," the delegate from the Philippines added. "In the past, all we heard were only statements by governments."

Analysis: FAO report says fewer hungry than in 2009

Yesterday, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization released the latest figures on the number of hungry people in the world. Even though the number of people who are hungry is back under a billion, it is still higher than before the global recession.

From IPS, writer Paul Virgo gives this analysis of the new FAO report. Experts say that even though the there is a small improvement in the number of hungry people, it is nothing to celebrate.

The recovery and lower food prices have alleviated the situation after the effects of the credit crunch and the 2008 spike in commodity prices pushed millions into the ranks of the hungry. But hunger levels remain above pre- crisis levels and the structural problems that mean almost one billion people -- around 16 percent -- do not have enough food to meet their energy needs remain.

"It's still an enormously high figure. The worst excesses of the crisis have gone away a little, but there's no celebration,'' Alex Rees, Save the Children UK's Head of Hunger Reduction, told IPS. "There must be a great sense of urgency as the number is so high. There are still a number of emergencies in many parts of the world."

So MDG1 is still far out of reach despite ample aggregate food supplies, and poor people all over the developing world remain vulnerable to the shocks that economic fluctuations and failed crops can swiftly bring.

A recent upsurge in commodity prices that prompted Russia to extend its ban on wheat exports till 2011 has sparked speculation that prices might be on the way back to the 2008 crisis levels. The FAO and authoritative institutes such as the International Food Policy Research Institution (IFPRI) say this is not the case pointing to, among other things, positive food stock levels, while admitting that the situation is volatile.

''The food crisis has not gone away - -925 million hungry people is still a scandal,'' said Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International. ''The dip in the number of hungry people has more to do with luck than judgement.

"Another global food crisis could explode at any time unless governments tackle the underlying causes of hunger, including food price volatility, decades of underinvestment in agriculture, and climate change.''

The challenge to provide after surviving war

A positive story that we found today talks about some strides that Uganda's war survivors are making to improve their lives. During the war many children were abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army to fight or be wives to the soldiers. Now that the former abductees are adults and the war is largely over, they struggle to provide for themselves or loved ones.

From this New Vision story that we found at All Africa, we learn of some initiatives led by the UN Food and Agriculture Orginization to help the war's survivors grow food and save money. Writer Joshua Kato introduces us to one female abductee named Eunice Odok.

"I want to be the first woman in the village to construct an iron roofed house," she says. Her fellow women ululate. She will also buy new clothes so that she is 'respected.'

Odok's dreams are not far fetched.

Very soon, she will be harvesting from her sunflower field, from which she will earn sh1.4m! Very soon too, she will be getting her share from the sale of two acres of onions that belong to the Field Farm School (FFS), to which she is a member. The school has about 30 members.

As a group, the women hope to earn about sh3m from the onions. This means that each of them would take home sh100,000.

According to FAO's Emmanuel Niyibigira, FFS are set up like adult education schools.

However, they are practically oriented to give an array of knowledge to farmers, with emphasis on 'how' and 'why' questions.

The system was adapted to the way of life in the north, including internally displaced persons (IDPs) and returning populations. Odok is a former IDP.

To think that these achievements are happening in an area that was under war a few years ago is impressive. In the Lango sub-region, many women have taken the hunger and poverty bull by the horns.

Not far from Odok's home is Aboke sub-county, where school girls were abducted by the Lords Resistance Army in 1996. By then, Odok was 12 years old.

Report says food prices to rise by 40 percent

A new joint report from the OECD and the United Nations says that food prices will continue to rise in the next decade. The report warns that prices will rise over 40 percent making investment into small farms even more important. The rising prices are attributed to bio-fuel production and the growing demand from developing countries.

From the Guardian, writer Katie Allen details what is in the report.

Farm commodity prices have fallen from their record peaks of two years ago but are set to pick up again and are unlikely to drop back to their average levels of the past decade, according to the annual joint report from Paris-based thinktank the OECD and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

The forecasts are for wheat and coarse grain prices over the next 10 years to be between 15% and 40% higher in real terms, once adjusted for inflation, than their average levels during the 1997-2006 period, the decade before the price spike of 2007-08. Real prices for vegetable oils are expected to be more than 40% higher and dairy prices are projected to be between 16-45% higher. But rises in livestock prices are expected to be less marked, although world demand for meat is climbing faster than for other farm commodities on the back of rising wealth for some sections of the population in emerging economies.

Although the report sees production increasing to meet demand, it warns that recent price spikes and the economic crisis have contributed to a rise in hunger and food insecurity. About 1 billion people are now estimated to be undernourished, it said.

Fairtrade campaigners said the predictions of sharply rising prices provided a "stark warning" to international policymakers.
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Another factor driving up food prices is the controversial biofuels industry. The report predicts that continued expansion of biofuel output – often to meet government targets – will create additional demand for wheat, coarse grains, vegetable oils and sugar.

1 billion hungry, only tells part of the story

We are told that there are over a billion hungry people in the world, but that may not tell the whole story.

The figures compiled by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization are conservative so they don't get accused of overstating the problem. The 1.02 billion people only tells us how many are undernourished, it says nothing about the millions of people who are "malnourished;" those who do eat, but not have a full diet.

From the IPS, writer Paul Virgo tells us more about how the FAO compiles their statistics.

The first major problem is that the estimates for the food needed for minimum energy needs are based on the requirements for a 'sedentary lifestyle'. This suggests that many people are not counted as undernourished even though they are not getting enough calories to sustain a healthy, active working lifestyle.

"FAO's estimates are conservative in the sense that if we used higher energy requirements, more people would be counted as undernourished," David Dawe, a senior economist at the FAO told IPS.

Perhaps an even bigger issue is that, even if one accepts that the FAO's figure tells us how many people are 'undernourished', it still does not say how many poor people are 'malnourished' because they cannot afford an adequate diet.

The saying 'man cannot live by bread alone' is literally, as well as figuratively, true. A person might be able to meet their energy needs by filling up on staples such as rice or potatoes, but if they cannot afford to have any variety in their diet, they will not get key micronutrients such as iron, iodine, vitamin A and zinc, with dramatic effects for their health and ability to function.

The reference here is specifically to poverty-induced malnutrition. People in developing countries who eat so many calories that they are obese are also considered malnourished, as are people with illnesses that stop their bodies obtaining adequate nutrition from food, even if their food intake is satisfactory -- but these groups are not part of this analysis.

Figures released by UNICEF last year suggest that poverty-induced malnutrition, which is sometimes called 'hidden hunger' and can have irremediable consequences, especially for under-twos and the unborn children of pregnant sufferers, is an enormous problem. The U.N. children's agency says 129 million under-fives in developing countries are underweight and therefore undernourished. But the number of under-fives who are stunted because of inadequate diets, and therefore malnourished, is over 50 percent higher at 195 million.

"The estimated numbers of people who are iron or iodine deficient are actually much larger than the number of 'undernourished' in the sense of dietary energy deficiency," food security and nutrition specialist Doris Wiesmann told IPS.

The failure of the World Food Summit

The three day World Food Summit has now concluded in Rome. According to all anti-hunger advocates it was a failure.

A couple of reasons are given for why the summit failed to come up with funding goals or a deadline for ending hunger. Some point to the lack of any ability of the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization to bully developed nations into action. Others say it's a lack of interest by any elected officials of the developed world over people starving to death.

From the IPS, writer Paul Virgo gives us the analysis.

At best it reflects the limits of the U.N. and its flagship body in the fight against hunger, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), activists say.

At worst, they say it shows wealthy countries’ leaders lack the political will to really to put their backs into solving a problem that - no matter how unjust and scandalous, in a world with more than enough to feed everyone - generally does not directly affect the voters who put them into office.

Either way it is probably bad news for the 1.02 billion people, almost one sixth of the global population, who go to bed every night with empty stomachs.

FAO Director General Jacques Diouf tried to make the best of it Monday after the approval of a toothless declaration.

He pointed out consensus had been achieved on the need to end the long- running decline in agricultural investment, which is one of the major reasons many people in rural areas of developing countries struggle to feed themselves.

But, Diouf admitted "regret" that countries had failed to commit themselves to wiping out hunger by 2025 and that developed nations had not agreed to allocate 44 billion dollars in aid to agriculture per year.

That figure sounds like an awful lot of money, but it was not such an ambitious target if one considers other ways money is spent.
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The summit was skipped by all but one of the leaders of countries in the Group of Eight leading world economic powers - Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who only had to take a short drive from his office to reach the FAO’s headquarters.

The G8 pledged to devote 20 million dollars to agricultural aid over the next three years at the L’Aquila summit in July. So some believe the no-shows here imply they want to implement their food security policies via G8 organs or other bodies, such as the World Bank, which has frequently been accused of infringing national sovereignty by trying to promote models of development imported from the West that are not appropriate in poorer countries.

"The absence of the G8 leaders is a clear message that the rich countries are still trying to impose their policies on poor countries," said Sergio Marelli, head of the association of Italian non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

"Agro-food policies and management of resources for their implementation can only be the competence of the specialised United Nations agencies, above all the FAO and the International Fund for Agricultural Development, and should not be handed to the World Bank," Marelli said. "We believe assigning the World Bank the role of policy-maker would mean giving it back to the institution that has the greatest responsibility for the current food crisis."

FAO: conditions 'ripe' for another food crisis

The Food and Agriculture Organization is warning that another food crisis could occur soon. The FAO says that food production in the under-developed world needs increase to protect those countries from sharp hikes in food prices.

From Reuters, writer Daniel Flynn attended a speech made by FAO director Jacques Diouf.

In an interview ahead of a global summit on food security in Rome next week, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said more aid was needed to curb the rising number of hungry people in the world, which topped 1 billion for the first time this year.

"There is a lack of priority in fighting hunger and poverty at the highest political level, not only in developed countries but in developing countries," Diouf told Reuters on Monday.

"The fundamentals that led to the crisis in 2007-2008 are almost all still there, except for oil prices," he added, citing climate change shocks like droughts in Africa, strong population growth in developing countries and use of bio-fuels.

Prices of food staples like cereals doubled in many parts of the world in 2007-2008, sparking protests and rioting.

Rich nations responded by raising output by 13 percent, but developing countries were only able to manage a 2.7 percent increase, Diouf said. Excluding China, India and Brazil, the rise in output was an anaemic 0.7 percent.

"No wonder that in those countries prices have remained very high," said Diouf, noting that food prices had barely eased from their peaks of last year in many developing nations.

Rich nations needed to raise the share of aid earmarked for agriculture to 17 percent, from 5 percent at present, to provide farmers in poor nations with irrigation, fertilizers, disease-resistant seeds, storage for their crops and roads to take them to market, Diouf said.

FAO: 1 billion hungry people in the world

In years past, it was natural disasters that led to increases of hungry people, but now it's mankind's doing.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization says there are now 1 billion hungry people in the world, that's more then ever before. The FAO puts the blame squarely on the global recession and rising food prices.

From this VOA story that we found at New Jersey News Room, writer Joe De Caupa recieved some quotes from FAO director Jacques Diouf.

"The number of those suffering from chronic hunger in the world has topped one billion in 2009. One billion and 20 million to be more precise," he says.

Diouf says a "dangerous mix" of the global economic slowdown and very high food prices pushed another 100 million people into the hungry category over the past year.

"Neither drought, nor floods or disastrous harvests can be held to blame this time. Worsening hunger in the last three years largely stems from economic shocks," he says.

This includes the global credit crunch, falling trade and investment flows, declining remittances and budgetary pressures on development aid.

"The financial and economic crisis is having a particularly profound impact on poor and rural households, specifically, the rural landless, the urban poor and the female-headed households," he says.

The latest figures show the number of hungry people in the Asia-Pacific region is up 10.5 percent. In sub-Saharan Africa, there's an 11.8 percent increase. The Near East and North Africa are up 13.5 percent. Latin America and the Caribbean show a 12.8 percent increase. Even developed countries are not immune, showing a nearly 15 and a half percent hike in the number of hungry people.

The FAO leader says the world's food system is "fragile and vulnerable."

FAO: The fight against world hunger could be lost

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization is very alarmed over the increase in hungry people. Now one billion people are hungry compared to 850 million ten years ago. The FAO doesn't even blame the current global recession for the problem, but says the increase began in the 1980's.

Leaders from the FAO made statements on the increase of hunger ahead of meetings in Paris. From the Voice of America, reporter Joe DeCapua covered the statements.

Experts from the FAO and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development open a two-day meeting in Paris Tuesday to discuss the problem. Joseph Schmidhuber, head of the FAO's Global Perspectives Unit, spoke from Rome about the growing number of people labeled as hungry or malnourished.

"We've seen first a stagnation in the number of under nourished people and then actually we saw quite an increase. And we expect a further increase due to the financial and economic crisis. The first increase was essentially an increase that reduced implicit incomes through higher food prices and the second one is an increase that will reduce explicit incomes and purchasing power through the financial and economic crisis," he says.

The Paris meeting will look for long-term solutions. "The meeting will focus on investing in agriculture and food security. What we sense now is an urgent need to step up investment in agriculture in order to avoid the situation as we had in the early 1980s," he says.

The economic crisis of the 1980s, triggered in part by a debt crisis, brought a sharp downturn in investment in agriculture. Schmidhuber says that resulted in "a reduction of production and stagnation in the fight against hunger."

Last June, in Rome, international donors held an emergency meeting in Rome on soaring food prices and widespread food shortages. Asked whether anything substantial has come from that meeting, he says, "What we've seen is actually that international prices went down considerably. There's no doubt about that." However, what did not happen in many countries was an equal decline in national prices. In fact, in some cases food prices actually rose.

"One of the problems we see as an organization is that we saw enormous pledges in 2008 in the meeting…but there was relatively little follow-up in terms of actual investment. So, we saw pledges to the tune of $26 billion and we saw…actual money coming forward to the tune of $2 billion."

How tight credit could hurt food production

The leader of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization is warning how tighter credit could effect food supply. Jacques Diouf says that small farmers will be unable to get credit to expand production.

Diouf comments are one of many were seeing before the G-20 meeting in London. As every interest or politician is making their voices heard in hopes of swaying what comes of the G-20 meeting. Diouf is calling on the G-20 to make more investments in agriculture to keep food supply growing and to prevent another increase in food prices.

From the Wall Street Journal, writer Patrick Barta explains the FAO's stance.

In 2007 and 2008, prices of corn, rice, and other grains rocketed higher amid a perfect storm of tight supplies, market speculation, and rising demand for crops in developing countries and for use in biofuels. The price spikes made it harder for people to afford basic foodstuffs, triggering violent protests in some developing countries and leading many economists to call for substantial new spending on farm production.

Prices have fallen by a third or more since then, and some analysts have warned of a possible glut of rice or other commodities as economic growth slows.

But grains prices are still 27% higher than in 2005, Mr. Diouf said, and global stocks remain low. Moreover, the number of people with insufficient food continues to climb. He said it's possible the tally of undernourished people in the world will surpass one billion, from 963 million in 2007, as the full brunt of higher food prices filters through.

A number of countries have stepped up rural spending over the past year, including China, which is making agricultural investments a key element of its economic stimulus initiatives.

But food-policy specialists fear any gains from such stimulus efforts could be offset by reduced credit from the private sector, making it harder for farmers to maintain output. The FAO is projecting global cereals production to decline this year due to smaller plantings and adverse weather, leaving 32 countries -- including Bangladesh, Haiti and Zimbabwe -- in need of foreign assistance.

Although governments are spending more, the global credit crunch "will constrain expansion of agriculture in the developing world this year," said Joachim von Braun, director of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, in a recent interview. "We consider this to be a very precarious situation."

Mr. Diouf said the credit crunch hurts food-challenged countries in at least two ways: by making it harder for them to raise money to buy imported crops and by raising the cost of loans to small farmers.

With less credit available, farmers could be forced to hold back on planting or borrow from black-market lenders, saddling them with high-interest debts that could constrain their output for years.

World must double food production by 2050 says the FAO

The meeting in Spain on world hunger has begun. The headlines of the first day belong to the head of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. Jacques Diouf claims that mass starvation will begin if the world doesn't double food production by 2050.

Many leaders attending the meeting are lamenting the fact the food insecurity is not a priority. Other issues such as AIDS or climate change have taken precedence.

The new US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was not present at the meetings, but gave a speech to the conference that she recorded in Washington DC.

The AFP has more on Diouf's comments at the world hunger conference.

The food crisis pushed another 40 million people into hunger in 2008, Jacques Diouf said here at the start of a two-day international conference on food security.

That brought the global number of undernourished people to 973 million last year out of a total population of around 6.5 billion, he said.

"We face the challenge now of not only ensuring food for the 973 million who are currently hungry, but also ensuring there is food for nine billion people in 2050. We will need to double global food production by 2050," he said.

But Diouf warned the global economic crisis was already undermining efforts to tackle food insecurity as it was making it harder for farmers to get loans to buy materials and new equipment that would boost yields.

"The current economic situation does not make our task easier," he said.

The fall in prices for certain food staples from last year's highs could also discourage farmers from sowing crops, adding to the difficulty in meeting FAO's goal to halve the number of people who live in hunger by 2015, he said.

Bumper crop of rice expected, but can the poor buy it?

A bumper crop of rice is expected in Asia this year. Not only rice, but other staples of the diet are expected to have great harvests. But will the poor have enough money to buy this food?

In a conference on food security of Asia, an United Nations official urged governments to create jobs and food stamp programs to make sure that the poor get some of the surplus.

The Associated Press reports that the good harvest is expected to ease food prices. Our snippet of the story comes from the International Herald Tribune.

U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization official Purushottam Mudbhary said buffer stocks of rice, corn and wheat, along with recent sharp drops in oil prices, should further ease food prices that rose alarmingly earlier this year.

But if the poor, who will be hit hard by the global financial crisis, are not able to buy them, Southeast Asian nations still risk facing malnutrition and social unrest, he warned.

He urged countries to develop job-creating projects, food stamp programs and other livelihood initiatives to help the poor gain better access to food. Most Southeast Asian countries lack adequate support for the unemployed and the poor.

"We expect to have very good harvests in Southeast Asia," Mudbhary told a news conference Wednesday at the end of a two-day meeting on food security hosted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Rice has the brightest harvest prospects in Thailand, the world's largest rice exporter. The country is expected to have a surplus of 6 million tons. Vietnam, the world's third largest rice exporter, also expects a robust harvest while Indonesia and Cambodia should be able to produce enough for domestic consumption, Mudbhary said.

The Philippines, the world's top rice importer, has contracted enough rice to fill a 10 percent domestic production gap, officials said.

The soaring food prices of the past year triggered riots around the world.

Rising prices tip another 75-million towards starvation

from the Mail and Guardian

Global numbers afflicted by acute hunger rose from 850-million to 925-million by the start of 2008 because of rising prices, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said on Wednesday.

The number of people suffering from malnutrition, before the worst effects of global price rises, "rose just in 2007 by 75-million", Jacques Diouf, director general of the Rome-based agency, told an Italian Parliament committee, according to ANSA news agency.

An FAO prices index showed global food price rises of 12% in 2006, 24% in 2007 and 50% over the first eight months of 2008, Diouf added -- suggesting the number affected is likely to top one billion by the end of the year.

"$30-billion per year must be invested to double food production and eliminate hunger," Diouf said, calling the figure "modest" in comparison with the amount many countries spend on arms and agriculture.

An FAO summit vowed in June to halve global hunger by 2015 and take "urgent" action over the global food crisis, but only after going into overtime at the fractious gathering.

In a final declaration at the summit -- which saw about $6,5-billion pledged but which exposed strains, notably over biofuels -- world leaders also agreed to boost food production in poor countries.

The declaration restated similar conclusions from food summits in 1996 and 2002.

Diouf said previously that "under the current trends, that objective would be obtained in 2150 instead of 2015."

Rising food prices have pushed 100-million people below the poverty line, the World Bank has estimated, and have sparked protests and even riots in some parts of the world, while also threatening world economic growth.

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World leaders ignored FAO warning on global food crisis: Diouf

from AFP

PRETORIA (AFP) — UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) chief Jacques Diouf Thursday said world leaders had ignored warnings on the current food crisis and rising costs.

"No one can say that we did not inform well ahead of time. Everybody was informed. But as usual, unfortunately, it is a general trend in the world: we react when the crisis is already here," Diouf told a news conference.

"Before a crisis, you can say everything, people will listen to you but they won't act," said Diouf, who is on a one-day visit to South Africa.

The FAO had in 1996 and 2002 convened world food summits, each attended by more than 100 heads of state, to draw attention to food security, he said.

"What lacked was the political will and the resources through the political will. So they were informed. In September (last year), I announced that there will be crisis of social and political nature...food price rise."

At the 1996 food summit, 112 heads of state and government and 185 countries decided that before 2015 they would cut the number of hungry people by half.

"We looked at the trends...and we realised that instead of investments into agriculture increasing, they were decreasing and we indicated that if the trends were maintained, we would achieve the goal not in 2015 but 2150," he said.

The global population is expected to grow from six billion to nine billion by 2050, a situation which will impact on food demand.

Link to full article. May expire in future.