Recession tips world’s hungry over the billion mark

The number of people who go to bed hungry every night has reached 1 billion, according to a new report by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation. Today because of the global recession and rise in the price of basic foods in poor countries means there are more hungry children, women and men than at any time since 1970. In just the past year, that total has risen by at least 100 million and is now equal to one in six of the Earth's population.

A new United Nations survey called the "state of food insecurity" found that five years ago, about 15 per cent of people in the developing world were undernourished, today that number is 20 per cent. Poor harvests and bad weather are not the main causes of rising hunger, the report said, even though drought has caused mass suffering in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia this year. Instead, the driving factor is rising food prices combined with cuts in aid from richer countries and the loss of jobs and pay caused by the recession.

Food prices in shops in rich countries have actually dropped over the last year, but cruelly they have stayed high in poor countries. "As usual, it is the poorest countries – and the poorest people – that are suffering the most," said Jacques Diouf, the head of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, and Josette Sheeran, the head of the World Food Programme (WFP), in their introduction to the annual study.

The most basic foods in poor countries still cost more than they did before the recession. And out of the 56 nations surveyed by the WFP, basic food prices in 47countries were about 19 per cent higher than in 2007. For this reason, many people simply cannot afford to feed themselves or their families, while others are forced to buy cheaper and less nutritious products. "The cost of food in developing countries has not come down,” said Caroline Hurford, spokesman for the WFP, adding that "the world's economic troubles have reduced employment opportunities and remittances. "Many families have already sold off all they own to pay for food and they've been pushed into destitution as jobs disappear."She said the only way to fix the problem in the long term is to grow more food and make food prices drop by boosting the supply. But rich countries have steadily cut the share of their aid budgets.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children