United Press International - Friday, November 28, 2003
Dar Haddix, UPI Correspondent

The report, "The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2003," showed that several developing countries have succeeded in reducing hunger, but the total number of malnourished increased by 18 million in the last half of the 1990s, after decreasing by 37 million in the first half, the report stated.Most of the world's hungry - 798 million out of 843 million -- live in developing countries.

Countries that were able to reduce hunger exhibited faster economic growth, as well as faster agricultural growth, slower population growth, lower levels of HIV and fewer food emergencies, according to the report released Tuesday.

"Overall, countries with that are more involved in trade tend to enjoy higher rates of economic growth," the report said.

But development and trade must go hand in hand with "policies and investments that provide access to food for the hungry and promote growth" in rural places where 75 percent of hungry people live, the report said.

The report also advocated developed countries removing trade impediments such as farming subsidies, consumer taxes on certain commodities, and tariffs.

While poverty causes hunger, hunger in turn causes poverty, since the malnourished cannot take advantage of education and employment opportunities, Hartwig de Haen, assistant director-general of the FAO, said Tuesday at the National Press Club.

The hungry are "too weak, too poor, too ill ... to go to school or get a job," de Haen said.Programs that immediately provide food and medical care to the undernourished would be more effective at solving problems than only long-term solutions, he said.

For example, Brazil's "Fome Zero" (Zero Hunger) project, which de Haen called "outstanding," aims to feed the hungry in the short-term and to combat poverty, unemployment and landlessness in the long-term.

Introducing more trade into developing countries would boost their economies, but an accompanying policy infrastructure and "targeted social safety net programs" should also be in place, de Haen said.

The situation in the Commonwealth of Independent States (a group of the former Soviet States) illustrates the importance of infrastructure; agricultural, marketing, and trade have broken down, and these countries demonstrated most of the increases in hunger.

Also, countries where more than 15 percent of the people are hungry spend more than twice their export revenues on importing food than countries with fewer hungry people, but import less than 10 percent of their food, the report said.

Encouraging agricultural growth and trade is essential in hunger-afflicted countries which have remained quite dependent on agricultural trade, the report said. In these countries, agriculture represents nearly 30 percent of GDP and almost 70 percent of employment. Increasing jobs and incomes in agriculture would also have a positive impact on non-agricultural rural incomes, the report said.

Part of the problem is single-commodity dependence.The report described how Central America suffered after the price of coffee, by far their primary export, sank.Similarly, those who depend heavily or exclusively on livestock for their incomes, such as Mongolian nomadic herders, are ruined if they lose their herds.

Trade would also allow countries that are drought-stricken or have "erratic rainfall or access to water" to benefit from "virtual water." These countries could use their water to grow high value crops for export, while importing food from countries with abundant water, the report said.

But countries with similar levels of agricultural trade demonstrate a range of hunger and poverty levels, since other factors, including "markets, institutions, and policies to combat hunger," affect the success of such trade, the report said.

For example, Vietnam increased their agricultural trade surplus in the 1990s, but also enacted economic reforms and invested in rural infrastructure, and lowered the number of hungry from 27 percent to 19 percent.But Mozambique removed a ban on raw cashew exports that resulted in higher cashew prices for some farmers but also shut down cashew processing plants and laid off 7,000 workers.

The report also condemned trade restrictions such as farming subsidies, which present "unfair competition for farmers in poor countries," and leave "little chance" for poor farmers to improve their incomes, de Haen said.

One suggestion the report makes is to ensure "lower tariff cuts" for products that developing countries identify as important to food security and rural development.

The report pointed out a promising way to raise rural incomes: water conservation. Water is one of the key elements in not only agriculture, but also small home businesses like gardens, brewing, building, and raising livestock, the report said.

Poverty is also exacerbated through loss of farm labor through the number of HIV casualties in hungry populations.The poor trade sex for food or money and contract HIV. Survivors, often orphaned children and the elderly, only grow the foods they need to survive rather than marketable crops.

"The impact on farm production and food security is often devastating," the report said.

Further economic impacts of AIDS include fewer household assets, less education as children leave school and go to work, and loss of skills and knowledge that are normally passed from parent to child.

De Haen said that in spite of the daunting obstacles, halving the number of hungry by 2015 is "realistic."

"We will not give up our optimism ... but pre-conditions have to be met," he said. "There is food enough for all in the world."

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