Hunger threat looming over poor countries: but crisis is not inevitable.

Hunger threat looming over poor countries But crisis is not inevitable

With food production declining and prices rising worldwide, hunger has again become a major threat to poor countries, the World Food Council (WFC) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and warning. In recent international meetings the two major UN food agencies have documented the worsening world food situation and suggested ways to avert a new full-blown crisis.

"Hunger and malnutrition are growing, and will continue to grow unless nations ... take more effective action in favour of the hungry poor," states a report considered by the fifteenth ministerial session of the World Food Council (22-25 May, Cairo)

For two years now the world has consumed more food than it has produced, states a report presented at the ninety-fifth session of the FAO Governing Council (19-30 June, Rome). After poor harvests in 1987, the worst drought since the 1930s dustbowl hit North America in 1988, while other developed countries slashed production to cut agricultural surpluses.

Despite these dire realities, the World Food Council insists that a hunger crisis is not inevitable. "Hunger is largely a man-made phenomenon," the Council's Cairo Declaration states. "Human error or neglect creates it, human complacency perpetuates it, and human resolve can eradicate it."

How? At last year's meeting in Cyprus, the Food Council asked its President Eduardo Pesqueira of Mexico to come up with some answers. He consulted with Governments, international organizations and non-governmental organizations and those ideas discussed at this year's session were adopted by acclamation as the "Cairo Declaration".

Its main recommendations include domestic policies in favour of rural areas (agrarian reforms, credit for the landless and small farmers, prices favouring producers), measures to protect the nutritional level of the poor (food stamps schemes), as well as ecological protection and South-South co-operation through regional and sub-regional institutions.

The developed world can also do its part. Increasing resource flows to developing countries, granting debt relief in exchange for food, poverty alleviation programmes, and fighting protectionism would help pull the world away from the brink of another world food crisis, the Council believes.

Stock depletion

Underproduction has meant depletion of stocks. In 1988-1989, the FAO noted "the largest recorded year-to-year drawdown" in the world stock of grain. Between 1987 and 1989, reserves fell by 40 per cent to 288 million tons, or 16 per cent of world consumption. This is their lowest point since the world food crisis of the early 1970s, and below the 18 per cent level that FAO considers necessary for food security.

Despite an expected upturn in food output in 1989, the trend is unlikely to be reversed soon. In order to replenish stocks, grain production in 1989-1990 would need to grow by an unprecedented 12 per cent, or 200 million tons. "Even good weather for the remainder of 1989 would do no more than avert a further deterioration of world food security," the Food Council reported.

Poor countries with a food deficit are particularly at risk. For one thing, rising prices mean more hardship for economies wracked by balance of payment and debt problems. Maize has risen by two thirds. With wheat up by 40 per cent, food deficit nations will need to pay an additional $2.5 billion this year to maintain their level of wheat imports at the 1988 level.

To make things worse, these countries will get less aid to compensate for rising food bills. Aid, given in cash, is buying less as prices increase. FAO estimates that cereal aid in 1989 will have dropped by a quarter to less than 10 million tons, the lowest level since 1983-1984.

Malnutrition:

the main threat

The main threat to food deficit countries is not outright starvation. Famine has been reduced by two thirds since its peak in the early fifties and persists only in a handful of war-torn African nations. Today's most pressing hunger danger is malnutrition--people have enough to eat but the quality of their diet is poor--which affects mostly the elderly, children and pregnant women.

Fifteen years after the World Food Conference adopted the Universal Declaration on the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition, the problem continues to grow. The number of hungry people has reached 550 million in 1989, up 90 million from 1980. In the 1970s, the increase was 15 million.

The majority of undernourished people live in Asia. But the largest increases in the number of hungry people occur in Africa. Countries most at risk are Chad, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Somalia, Uganda, Zaire and Zambia, where at least 40 per cent of their citizens are considered "food insecure" by the World Food Council.

Demographic data are not encouraging. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where the population growth rate is expected to increase throughout the 1990s, peaking at 3 per cent. During the period 1970-1985, grain output grew at an annual rate of 1.5 per cent. If production is not dramatically stepped up, sub-Saharan Africa will become increasingly dependent on expensive food imports in the decade ahead, the World Food Council predicts.