Today is a day to bring awareness to the realities of the situation as it is World Food Day, the theme of this year’s Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is,Achieving Food Security in Times of Crisis.
The world food security governance system is inefficient and not well coordinated to address the present food crisis and the new challenges which we will have to face in the future. -Director-General of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO,) Jacques Diouf. FAO
The food crisis has left the most vulnerable members of society even more vulnerable, with families spending as much at 3/4th of their household income on food. When families reduce their food consumption it is women and children who suffer the most. According to the 2009 Global Hunger Index (GHI), released by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), calls for policy action on gender empowerment, social protection and governance to improve food security. The index ranks 121 countries on a scale of 1 to 100, with those countries ranking 4.9 or less as “low hunger”, Those ranking between 10 and 19.9 are seen as “a serious problem” and those who rank over 30 are deemed “extremely alarming.”
According to the IFPRI, “Wherever women are not empowered you see high levels of hunger…Gender equality is a key factor in solving the problem of hunger. The more women are educated, the more likely they are to take children to hospital,” Suresh Babu, a senior research fellow with IFPRI, told IRIN.
The food crisis is a global crisis and it has left the world in need of major reforms in the agricultural sector, especially in regards to increasing small scale farming and developing climate control policies. The crisis is not new and it was with this growing problem that world leaders from more than 100 nations came together in 2000 at the United Nations and agreed to the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). One of the eight goals was to reduce the number of people in the world who live on $1 a day or less, in half by the year 2015. At the current rate what was set as a goal appears to be more of a dream.
Visit FAO’s World Food Day page and World Food Programs 10 Things You Can do on World Food Day, to learn how you can get involved.
Links:
One Campaign
Action Against Hunger
Oxfam – World must learn lessons from food price crisis
USAID Statement on World Food Day
FAO Statistics
