World's Hungry Number 800 Million

January 5, 2000

The United Nations estimates 800 million people in the developing world do not have enough to eat. If all the undernourished in the wold were gathered together, says the UN, their number would dwarf the populations of every continent except Asia.

Stewart Truelsen, director of broadcast services for the American Farm Bureau Federation, notes world leaders pledged in 1996 to reduce the number of hungry people to 400 million by 2015 -- a goal that now appears will not be met.

"The hunger of these people is not a transitory condition," says the UN. "It is chronic. It is debilitating. Sometimes it is deadly. It blights the lives of all who are affected and undermines national economies and development processes where it is found on a large scale, as is the case across much of the developing world."

At the World Food Prize Conference in Des Moines, IA, last October, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue said there are three issues involved in world food growth: a pro-technology environment, food production regulations based on sound science and common sense, and a free trade environment.

The UN points out there has been progress, but it is "far from satisfactory. More detailed analysis (of apparent gains) confirms that the momentum is too slow and the progress too uneven to achieve the goal (of 400 million hungry by 2015). In fact, the number of hungry people is growing in many parts of the world."

Small increases or declines in the number of undernourished people from one year to the next "may simply reflect transitory conditions that claim our attention but do not touch the fundamental problem," the UN says. "Significant, lasting change in the number is the appropriate indicator of progress or setbacks in banishing chronic hunger from out world."