NEW YORK — Lack of food is rarely the reason people go hungry. Even now, there is enough food in the world, with a bumper harvest this year, but more people cannot afford to buy the food they need. Addressing this growing crisis is the aim of the three-day Global Conference on Food Security in Rome through Thursday.
Even before the recent food price spikes, an estimated billion people were suffering from chronic hunger, while another 2 billion were experiencing malnutrition, bringing the total number of food-insecure people to around 3 billion, or almost half the world's population. Roughly 18,000 children died daily as a direct or indirect consequence of malnutrition. Obviously, the recent increases in food prices are likely to drive the number of people vulnerable to food stress even higher.
There is now an urgent need to finance existing food aid programs to address mounting food demands, avert further social unrest, and ensure that farmers get the costlier farm inputs they need for the next planting season. But as we respond to the current humanitarian emergency due to higher food prices, we must not lose sight of the longer-term problems that have undermined food security in recent decades. Clearly, a "new deal" for food security is urgently needed.