Hungry Population Falls but Remains Large

The number of hungry people in the world is shrinking, according to United Nations officials speaking to the New York Times. This is the first drop in the number of hungry individuals in the last fifteen years. Standing at around 925 million people instead of 1.02 billion seems like a small change in the right direction for the world's population. However, officials caution that these numbers were calculated before the floods in Pakistan and the spike in wheat prices as Russia announced its limitation of wheat exports over fires and droughts. This drop in the number of hungry people in the world, however, will affect the decisions made by the United Nations committee of over 100 delegates who are convening to decide how to proceed with development goals set in 2000. With an end date fast approaching in the next five years, many of the goals are going to be near impossible to accomplish. The very first goal, reducing the number of hungry people in the world to half of the level in 1990, looks to be almost impossible to surmount. Although $22 billion was promised by the twenty wealthiest countries in 2000, so far only $425 million has been spent on aid. Just seven countries account for two thirds of the world's hungry, with India and China alone accounting for forty percent of the world's hungry. The number of hungry people in the world jumped in 2008 thanks to biofuels investments, commodity speculation and stagnant productivity in sub-Saharan Africa, and these factors still exist according to Oxfam International, a group of antipoverty organizations. There is still a light at the end of the tunnel, as the cereal crop will be the 3rd largest on record and the rice crop has been good. Still the Mozambique riots over food prices leave officials worried that the number of hungry people in the world will once again sky rocket.

by Margaret Nunne