UNITED NATIONS, Oct 14 (IPS) – World Food Day 2024 A landmark report released last July by five UN agencies: the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the World Food Program (WFP) and the UN children’s agency UNICEF – outlined the setbacks in the fight against world hunger, warning that the world has fallen more than fifteen years behind in its brutal fight against food scarcity, with levels of malnutrition comparable to in 2008-2009.
The future seems almost bleak, especially if current trends continue: by 2030, more than 582 million people will be chronically undernourished, half of them in Africa. And it is also unlikely that the UN will achieve Goal 2 of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), aimed at ending global hunger by 2030.
The UN also points out a cruel paradox: that the world produces enough food to feed everyone, but almost 20% of it is lost or wasted before it is eaten.
Poor storage facilities on farms can lead to crop loss due to pests and mold. In wealthy countries, food waste often occurs in the kitchen when food is prepared but not eaten, or left in the refrigerator to spoil.
Joseph Chamie, consulting demographer and former director of the United Nations Population Division, offers a different perspective. In addition to the environment, climate change, technologies, social organization and conflicts, population remains an important factor influencing the world’s food crisis. many countries.
Rapid population growth, he pointed out, is increasing the overall demand for food. The growth of the world population means that food production must increase to meet demand.
“Rapid population growth can lead to increasing food insecurity due to resource scarcity. Although the world produces enough food to feed the current population of 8 billion people, too often this food does not reach or have access to those in need. said Chamie, author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Population Levels, Trends and Differences”.
Over the past five decades, the world’s population has doubled from 4 billion to 8 billion today. And as the world’s population has increased, the number of people in the world facing food insecurity has increased, with more than 800 million people going to bed hungry every night.
Even in developed countries, he pointed out, too many people face food insecurity because they cannot afford to buy food or have limited access to food sources.
By 2060, the world’s population is expected to increase to 10 billion, with most of that growth taking place in countries with the highest levels of food insecurity.
With most of the population facing hunger, Africa’s current population of 1.5 billion is growing rapidly and is expected to reach 2 billion in 12 years and 3 billion in 40 years, he said.
“Unfortunately, a world free of hunger by 2030, Goal 2 of the SDGs, is unlikely to be achieved due to major global and national trends, including rapid population growth in many developing countries,” Chamie said.
Olivier De Schutter, co-chair of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), and UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said: “These hunger figures are an important wake-up call.”
Global hunger remains catastrophically high: 733 million people still go to bed hungry every day – 36% more than a decade ago. And 2.8 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet – meaning that for one in three wages are too low and social protections too weak to ensure adequate nutrition, he said.
“This is not just a glitch: the global industrial food system is disastrously vulnerable to increasing climate, conflict and economic shocks – with climate change increasingly ravaging farmers. Building climate-resilient food systems is now a matter of life and death. establishing social protection floors and guaranteeing that workers receive a living wage.
“We urgently need a new recipe to tackle hunger – based on diverse agro-ecological food production and localized food markets rather than global industrial food chains, and social protection schemes that guarantee the right to food for the world’s poorest,” said The Shooter.
Frederic Mousseau, policy director of The Oakland Institute, a progressive think tank headquartered in Oakland, California, says the world has produced record levels of food despite the climate crisis and war in Ukraine, which hasn’t stopped the increase in food prices and the persistence of unbearable levels of world hunger.
Reducing waste is important, but should not let governments lose sight of two fundamental policy issues that require decisive action, he noted.
First, the use of food products for non-food purposes is enormous and growing rapidly, with animal feed and agricultural fuels accounting for 38 percent and 18 percent of the world’s grain use, respectively.
“This is happening at great cost to humanity, with raw materials unavailable for human consumption, as well as land taken from indigenous and local communities, the destruction of forests, waters and biodiversity, and the pollution from chemical and fossil fuel-based intensive industrial agriculture” .
Second, he emphasized that while food is available, it is often not affordable for poor households, even in rich countries where hunger is increasing. Several international institutions, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have shown that the rise in food prices in 2022, which threatened access to food for billions around the world, was in large part due to the significant increase in profit margins for agriculture. food companies.
All the major transnational players in the sector have made record profits in recent years after raising their selling prices.
Consumers can reduce their own food waste with relative ease, but this should not distract from the real challenge, which is that they need to mobilize as citizens and take back control of their food systems, he said.
“Governments have largely overlooked the above issues and many prominent issues, starting with the Biden administration, continue to call for increased food production. This is a case of willful blindness, which goes against all evidence that the problem is not the amount of food produced. but what we do with them and who controls and benefits from the production and trade of food products.”
The time has come for a global treaty on the non-proliferation of industrial meat production and agricultural fuels to curb the seemingly endless expansion of non-food agricultural production, Mousseau argued.
“The other urgency is to take stronger action against a global tax mechanism of the big food and agrochemical companies that would limit their speculative behavior and redistribute part of their revenues in global solidarity to tackle both world hunger and the climate crisis to catch,” he said. declared.
IPS UN Office
Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
Follow IPS News UN Bureau on Instagram
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All rights reservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
