Ending hunger is possible, UN says on World Food Day

ROME // The United Nations marked World Food Day today, saying it was possible to eradicate hunger and stressing the importance of cutting food waste and ensuring balanced diets.

“We can win the fight against hunger,” Jose Graziano da Silva, the director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said at a ceremony at FAO headquarters in Rome.

He said 62 out of the 128 countries monitored by the FAO had reached the Millenium Development Goal of cutting by half the number of hungry people from 1990 levels, showing the target was achievable by 2015.

The number of the world’s hungry has gone down in recent years — mainly thanks to economic growth in developing countries and higher farm productivity — but still stands at 842 million people.

Graziano da Silva said the fallout from hunger cost about five per cent of global income due to lost productivity and health care costs.

In a message for World Food Day, Pope Francis called for solidarity and an end to indifference to the plight of the hungry.

“It is a scandal that there is still hunger and malnutrition in the world,” he said. “Something has to change in ourselves, in our mindsets and in our societies.”

Ertharin Cousin, head of the World Food Programme, the UN food aid agency, said in an interview that now was no time for “donor fatigue”, and said some humanitarian crises around the world such as North Korea and Yemen risked being forgotten.

“The biggest challenge is ensuring we don’t forget conflicts that are beyond the attention of the media,” said Cousin, adding: “Food crises don’t just affect the countries where people go hungry.”

She also said the WFP was now using vouchers for the needy to purchase food on local markets, following accusations that the agency has harmed small farmers by undercutting them with its aid supplies.

One of the main themes being discussed on World Food Day is the cost of the 1.3 billion tonnes of food that go to waste every year — around a third of the total food produced.

“With just a quarter of that, we could feed the 842 million hungry,” said Robert van Otterdijk, an agriculture industry expert at the FAO.

Mathilde Iweins, coordinator of a report on the cost of food waste, said that “the agricultural areas used to produce the food that will never be eaten are as big as Canada and India combined”.

But the FAO said focusing on the type of food being consumed was just as important, warning that bad diets place high costs on society.

“One out of every four children in the world under the age of five is stunted,” the FAO said.

“This means 165 million children who are so malnourished they will never reach their full physical and cognitive potential,” it said.

About two billion people in the world lack vitamins and minerals that are essential for good health, while 1.4 billion people are overweight.

*Agence France-Presse