MOVE FORWARD WITH STRONG HEART

1 – 1. How many people suffer from food shortages in the world?

At first, how many people suffer from food shortages in the world? Chart 1 below is the data of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in September, 2010 (Food Security Statistics, "Number of Undernourished Persons" (13, 09, 2010)).  According to this, there were 848 million people who were “undernourished” because of food shortages during the two-year period between 2005 and 2007.   Because of a rise in grain prices in 2008, FAO released that the “undernourished” population exceeded 1 billion people in 2009. In September, 2010, FAO and WFP released that the estimation of the undernourished population in 2010 was 925 million people. Lots of people are still suffering from undernourishment now.  If you look at changes in the “undernourished” population in Chart 1, you could tell the situation hasn’t been improved since 20 years ago, unfortunately. In the year 2009, the world population was estimated at about 6.8 billion, so at least 15% of the population, that is, one in seven people suffer from a food shortage. http://www.fao.org/economic/ess/food-security-statistics/en/ http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/36207/icode/
Let’s look at the definition of “undernourishment”. FAO defines “undernourishment” as “the condition of people whose dietary energy consumption is continuously below a minimum dietary energy requirement for maintaining a healthy life and carrying out a light physical activity with an acceptable minimum body-weight for attained-height."  Each country sets a different minimum dietary energy because it differs based upon your age, gender, physique, and so on.  In the data FAO published on various countries, the minimum dietary energy is almost between 1600 kcal and 1900 kcal a day.  A slice of bread has about 180 kcal, and a glass of milk has 130 kcal.  If you have a very simple meal three times a day, you will easily obtain 1600 kcal.  That means there are about 1 billion of people who cannot have a very simple meal three times a day, and there are lots of people who are in danger of losing their lives because of undernourishment among them.
Chart 1   Country-groups 1990-92 1995-97 2000-02  2004-06   2005-07 (million people)     World 845.3 824.9 856.8  872.9  847.5 Developed countries 19.1 21.4 18.7  15.2  12.3 Developing World 826.2 803.5 838.0  857.7  835.2 Asia and Pacific 585.7 528.5 552.1  566.2  554.5 East Asia 183.3 152.0 141.7  136.3  139.5 Southeast Asia 105.7 88.6 93.9  84.7  76.1 South Asia 286.1 278.3 302.8  336.6  331.1 Central Asia 4.0 4.7 9.3  5.8  6.0 Western Asia 6.1 4.4 3.5 2.1  1.1 Latin America and the Caribbean 52.6 51.8 49.4  45.3  47.1 North and Central America 9.3 10.2 9.3  9.0  9.7 The Caribbean 7.5 8.6 7.2  7.8  8.1 South America 35.8 33.0 32.9  28.5  29.2 Near East and North Africa 19.1 29.6 31.6  33.8  32.4 Near East 15.0 25.3 27.1  29.0  26.3 North Africa 4.0 4.3 4.5  4.9  6.1 Sub-Saharan Africa 168.8 193.6 205.0 212.3  201.2 Central Africa 22.0 38.4 47.3  54.3  51.8 East Africa 77.2 85.7 83.4  86.5  86.9 Southern Africa 32.4 35.8 36.5  36.7 33.9  West Africa 37.3 33.8 37.7  34.7  28.5
Next, let’s check a breakdown of the “undernourished” population.  98% of the whole “undernourished” population is concentrated in developing countries; about 550 million people in Asia and about 200 million people in sub-Saharan Africa.   In the detailed data on the world’s population of undernourished people on the FAO homepage (in the total of 848 mil. people in 2005-07), the countries which have large populations of the undernourished are as follows: India: 238 millio China: 130 million Pakistan: 43 million D.R. Congo: 42million Bangladesh: 42 million Ethiopia: 32 million Indonesia: 30 million

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Copyright (c) Makoto Kurata, 2009