Target to cut world hunger in half by 2015 ‘will not be met’

SEVEN years after the target was set, the world is well below the goal of cutting in half the number of hungry people by 2015 and may not even reach that goal by 2030, a new study by a UN food body has found.

The study by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said the world’s population will be better fed by 2030 than it is now, but that hundreds of millions of people in developing nations will be chronically hungry.

“The study says the number of hungry people is expected to decline from around 800 million today to about 440 million in 2030.

“This means that the target of the (FAO) World Food Summit in 1996, to reduce the number of hungry by half by 2015, will not even be met by 2030,” said a FAO spokesperson.

The report, entitled World Agriculture: Toward 2015/2030, is FAO’s latest global assessment of the long-term outlook for food and agriculture. It updates a 1995 study.

Growth in food production will exceed population growth, it said.

“Per capita food supplies will have increased and the incidence of undernourishment will have been further reduced in most developing regions,” FAO Director General Jacques Diouf wrote in his foreword to the report.

However, parts of South Asia may still be in a difficult position and much of sub-Saharan Africa will probably not be significantly better off than at present in the absence of concerted action, Mr Diouf said.

“The world must brace itself for continuing interventions to cope with the consequences of local food crises and for action to remove permanently their root causes,” he said.