Food insecurity

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving today.

Last week, the Department of Agriculture released its annual report on "food security" and in the face of a recession, the news wasn't good. From the CNN report, November 25:

Almost 700,000 U.S. children lived in households that struggled to put food on the table at some point in 2007, the highest number since 1998, according to a federal report.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's annual report on food security showed that those 691,000 children lived in homes where families had to eat non-balanced meals and low-cost food, or even skip meals because of a lack of money. The number of children struggling to feed themselves adequately rose 50 percent from 430,000 children in 2006.

Nearly 36.2 million children and adults struggled to put proper food on the table in 2007, according to the report, up slightly from 35.5 million in 2006.

Of the 36.2 million, nearly a third were not able to eat what was deemed a proper meal.

The story has additional detail, noting for example that the worst crisis is faced by people living in Mississippi, New Mexico, Texas and Arkansas.

Note: I was also a Thanksgiving scold in 2005 -- and 2003. Those stories, however, were primarily about global hunger.


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Thanksgiving scold

BBC, November 22:

Nearly six million children die from hunger or malnutrition every year, the Food and Agriculture Organisation says.

Many deaths result from treatable diseases such as diarrhoea, pneumonia, malaria and measles, the agency says.

They would survive if they had proper nourishment, the agency says in a new report on world hunger.

The article includes links to the full report on "food insecurity" as well as the Executive Summary.

"Reducing hunger should become the driving force for progress and hope," FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf wrote in the report.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Food holiday

Just in time for the US Thanksgiving holiday,the NY Times has this headline (registration required): "Hunger Worsens in Many Lands, U.N. Says." The findings are depressing:

The number of hungry people worldwide has swelled in recent years, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, because of war, drought, AIDS and trade barriers, according to a report released Tuesday by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

The report, "The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2003," found that after falling steadily during the first half of the 1990's, hunger grew in the latter half of the decade.

Between 1999 and 2001, the report found, more than 840 million people, or one in seven, went hungry. Most alarming of all, between 1995 and 2001, the number of malnourished people across the developing world grew by an average of 4.5 million a year.

So what can be done about it?

The rise in hunger came even though the world produced ample food..."Bluntly stated, the problem is not so much a lack of food as a lack of political will," the report declared.

The agency called on rich countries to invest in improving agricultural productivity, conserving natural resources and expanding access to global markets for farmers in the developing world."

If that last bit sounds familiar, it is because developing countries were making that argument at the recent WTO negotiations.

Rich nations need to stop subsidizing agriculture so heavily (this would have beneficial budgetary and environmental consequences too) and open markets to food trade from poor states.

Happy thanksgiving readers.