Economic crisis is devastating for the world's hungry

Source: FAO

(edtied for copyright purposes proud patriot Moderator Democratic Underground)

1.02 billion hungry people in 2009 - FAO hunger report published

14 October 2009, Rome - The sharp spike in hunger triggered by the global economic crisis has hit the poorest people in developing countries hardest, revealing a fragile world food system in urgent need of reform, according to a report released today by FAO and the World Food Programme (WFP).

The combination of food and economic crises has pushed the number of hungry people worldwide to historic levels — more than one billion people are undernourished, according to FAO estimates.

Nearly all the world's undernourished live in developing countries. In Asia and the Pacific, an estimated 642 million people are suffering from chronic hunger; in Sub-Saharan Africa 265 million; in Latin America and the Caribbean 53 million; in the Near East and North Africa 42 million; and in developed countries 15 million, according FAO's annual hunger report, The State of Food Insecurity, produced this year in collaboration with WFP. The report was published before World Food Day, to be celebrated on 16 October 2009.

Decade-long trend

Even before the recent crises, the number of undernourished people in the world had been increasing slowly but steadily for the past decade, the report says.

Good progress had been made in the 1980s and early 1990s in reducing chronic hunger, largely due to increased investment in agriculture following the global food crisis of the early 1970s.



Read more: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/36207/icode/

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More than four paragraphs but I'm sure UN and FAO won't mind. In this case it's the message, not the media, and I prefer to link to the original story, not what some commercial "news agency" edits it into.

So, famine has been growing steadily and lately faster. The policies of "progress" and "development" are not delivering what they promise. IMHO the reason is simple, limits of growth have been met and now is time to stop growing for growth's sake (in practice rich eating from poor's table, more and more). I've had this conversation and similar with also DUers and one usual response "we can't go back to 50% child mortality" is not a good response, because that's where we are going with current trends of meeting the limits of growth and trying to grow to please banksters. Earth is still plentifull and can support all our needs, but not our greed. People can and do survive with small scale home gardening (Russia, Cuba, Kerala etc.) which gives the most edibles per acre, and we have still lot to learn about gardening, growing into gardeners. If we like to exchange and donate our gardening products with other peoples and places, we can do that too. But healthies most sustainable way is to share our local products based on local self-sustainability, not based on imperial dependencies. We can do this, but we cannot expect others to do this for us, we are all needed to participate, however little, small steps at time.

Old habits of mindless consumerism die slow. So let them die slowly, let's have patience with each other and most of all with ourselves. We are products of the same structures that cause hunger, but even more than mere products, we are humans with innate (though often suffocated) compassion.

Not to go off on a tangent, but I would like to point out that landscaping in America is almost diametrically opposed to self-sufficient gardening. In the South, people landscape with pine trees, azaleas, holly, boxwood, etc., plants that have next to no food value. (Maybe the pine trees support a few squirrels.) In the southwest, oleanders may look pretty, but one plant can kill a herd of goats. All over the country, golf courses and lawns consume fertilizer like pigs at a trough, but yield nothing in the way of food in return.

The first thing to do to grow into gardeners is to re-evaluate what is pleasing to the eye, and replace it with what is pleasing to the palate. Yank out the azaleas, boxwood and holly and plant berries or amaranth instead. Pull out the crap myrtle and put in a fruit tree. Not one of those flowering pears with the inedible fruits either, plant a REAL fruit tree. I would like to be able to be able to go to a garden store and see 90% edible plants, instead of the current 90% inedible.

At least kudzu landscaping is edible! ;)

Actually, also pine trees are edible, namely part of the bark (phloem?), in my language 'pettu'. It's washed, dried and grinded into flour. AFAIK all indigenous nordic peoples both Eurasia and America have been eating pettu. A really delicious edible pine tree is cembra (Swiss pine, Siberian pine), with huge fatty seeds. If you can get them before the squirrel does. If you don't, then get the squirrel. ;)

One more comment on amaranth. I just read somewhere that "wild" amaranth has become unresistable weed in many places in America - doesn't die with monsanto poison, too hard to get rid off manually. SO WHY EVEN TRY, EAT THE AMARANTH! :)

Edible landscaping is beautifull thing and I'm glad you mentioned it. One of my favourite plants is saskatoon.

in fact they are harming the planet and small farmers everywhere. Time to shut them down..(legally of course)....and you assholes know who you are too.
I also agree...we all need to start growing more gardens and start growing wiser and better and we need to do it now.

Why don't they pull themselves up by their own bootstraps? :sarcasm:

"Even before the recent crises, the number of undernourished people in the world had been increasing slowly but steadily for the past decade,"