Yesterday was World Food Day and it brought good news and bad. The good news is that many countries in the world, particularly developing regions, are registering significant progress towards the Millennium Development Goals’ hunger target for 2015. The number of hungry people in the world has come down by 37 million. The World Food Programme Report 2013 stated that “if the average annual decline of the past 21 years continues to 2015, the prevalence of undernourishment will reach a level close to the target” and this year, 63 countries have reached their hunger reduction targets of 2015.
This is a significant achievement given the many obstacles the world faces today, such as water crises, land degradation, climate change and agricultural diseases. This reduction is proof of how this goal can be reached if all stakeholders remain committed. But the bad news is that there are still 805 million people facing food insecurity. Government inefficiencies in terms of poor planning and infrastructure contribute to this problem, which is exacerbated during conflicts, natural calamities and outbreaks of diseases.
Another contributing factor is the problem of food sovereignty. The use of arable land by multinational corporations in many developing or impoverished countries for their own businesses leaves local farmers with mere scraps of land to farm on and this in turn inflates food insecurity. The fact is the world grows enough food for all its people. What it needs to do is find better ways to make this bounty available to all — a millennium goal all countries need to approach together.
