Global hunger is on the decline. Yes, that’s right—decline. That’s the central message of this year’s United Nations State of Food Insecurity (SOFI) report.
According to the report, the world is well on its way toward achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the proportion of hungry people in the world by 2015.
Not only that; 63 developing countries have already surpassed this hunger goal of halving the proportion of hungry people, while 25 developing countries have surpassed the more stringent goal of halving the number of hungry people in their countries.
Altogether, the report notes that the number of chronically malnourished people has fallen by over 200 million since 1990-92, to about 805 million people. In that same time period, the prevalence of undernourishment has fallen from 18.7 to 11.3 percent globally, and from 23.4 to 13.5 percent for the developing countries.
But the report is significant for more than just this encouraging news. For the first time, the SOFI report digs much deeper into the problem of hunger, going well beyond estimated counts of hungry people to look at the reasons for hunger in different countries.
The report does this by uses the following four dimensions of hunger: Availability—is there enough food produced/imported in each country? Access—does everyone have the means to get an adequate amount of the available food? Utilization—does the food consumed result in good nutrition? And stability—can everyone have confidence in their future access to food?. These dimensions are assessed by using a wide range of available data for each country.
Of these four dimensions, overall utilization—ensuring good nutrition—is the most difficult challenge. Even in developing countries that have ensured adequate availability and access to food, there are still widespread problems of stunting, underweight and micronutrient deficiencies. This addition to the report makes it possible to see what actions are most needed in each country.
For example, Malawi has achieved the first MDG of halving the proportion of citizens who are hungry. It has done this through a strong fertilizer and seed subsidy program that has improved both availability and access to food. But utilization remains a major problem. Cereal consumption has increased, but diet diversity hasn’t. Many people are getting the overall calories they need, but not the vitamins and nutrients they require. The result is that stunting and malnutrition remain high.
Similarly, Indonesia—the most populous country in South-East Asia—has also achieved the first MDG goal. Like Malawi, its government has focussed on improving agricultural productivity through fertilizer and seed subsidies, and a long-standing and well-developed system of grain buffer stocks ensure price stability for both farmers and consumers. Indonesia has also passed a Right to Food law and is in the process of passing regulations to make it a reality for people who are food insecure people. But as in Malawi, poor nutrition associated with a cereal based diet remains a problem, although it is less of a problem in Indonesia.
Despite overall progress, the report notes that Sub-Saharan Africa continues to have the highest prevalence of undernourishment, with only modest progress in recent years. Around one in four people in the region remains undernourished. Asia, the most populous region in the world, still has the highest number of undernourished people. Latin America and the Caribbean, as a whole, has met the MDG goal of halving the proportion of people who are hungry, target while Latin America has achieved the more stringent target.
With over 800 million people still hungry, there is still a lot of work to do. But the progress is very encouraging.
