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Feng Zhaokui

Ensure food security for all

By Feng Zhaokui (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-23 07:44

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Act now to feed 1 billion hungry people and save 6 million children a year facing death from starvation

A lingering drought in a number of areas in grain-abundant Southeast Asian countries and China's southwestern regions in recent months has renewed worries over global food security.

The number of people facing food shortages worldwide reached 1.02 billion last year, the first time it crossed the 1 billion mark since 1970, when a record number of people faced hunger, statistics have shown.

The latest figure was also 100 million more than the previous year and accounted for about one-sixth of the world's population. The increasing number of people facing hunger has raised serious questions about the supply of grain available for feeding a growing global population in the coming decades.

Theoretically, current world grain output is sufficient to feed the global population. The global output of grain amounted to 2.35 billion tons in 2007, which would mean that the per capita output is 0.23 tons a year if distributed to the world's 6.75-billion-strong population, excluding the output of bean and tuber crops. The nearly 1-kilogram per capita daily grain supply should be enough to provide for one person.

But the biggest problem is the uneven distribution of grain supply among countries and regions, with a number of areas with insufficient grain. In some East African nations, it is very common for people to have only one or two meals a day. Their average food intake account for only one-quarter to one-tenth of the grain consumed by people in developed countries in the West. Due to the hikes in grain prices in the past few years, hunger-driven unrests have occasionally erupted in some famine-hit nations, from Cote d'Ivoire in Africa to Haiti in Latin America.

The possession of redundant grain by a number of countries has added to grain shortages in others. In North America, the per capita grain consumption exceeds three kilograms a day, given that meat dominates the daily diet of its people. Statistics show that the production of 1 kilogram of pork, meat, chicken, and eggs needs more than 11, 7, 4 and 3 kilograms of grain, respectively.

A survey published by the Trust for America's Health and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2009, both non-profit organizations, indicate that adults who are overweight or obese in the United States account for 66 percent of the same-age population - contributing to the fact that the number of obese people in the world has exceeded that of hungry people.

There are also people who are enduring hunger in the US and other wealthy countries, but the overwhelming majority of the world's hungry are mainly distributed in developing nations, mostly in Asia-Pacific countries and the African continent. Hunger-stricken people in Asia-Pacific nations reached 642 million last year and the figure in African countries south of the Sahara Desert amounted to 265 million.

Everyone in the world would have enough food to eat if developed countries offer adequate agricultural, technological and funding assistance to less developed nations facing hunger.

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