1 in 6 people in the world goes hungry

UN report stresses need for countries to boost agriculture

NAIROBI: Parents in some of Africa's poorest countries are cutting back on school, clothes and basic medical care just to give their children a meal once a day, experts say.

Still, it is not enough. A record one billion people, or one in six people, are starving, and a new report says the number will increase if governments do not spend more on agriculture.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which issued the report to mark World Food Day yesterday, 30 countries now require emergency aid, including 20 in Africa.

The trend continues despite a goal set by world leaders nine years ago to halve the number of hungry people by 2015.

'It is actually a world emergency that calls for action from both developing and developed countries,' said Dr Otive Igbuzor, head of international campaigns for ActionAid International. 'We know a child dies every six seconds of malnutrition.'

Spiralling food prices have added to hardships, especially in the world's most desperate countries, where the poor can barely afford a single meal a day.

The inflated prices - which caused riots across the world last year - have stabilised, but remain comparatively high, especially in the developing world, said Dr Jacques Diouf, director-general of the FAO.

Ms Grainne Moloney of the Somalia Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit said that in the country, ravaged by violence and anarchy for almost two decades, the monthly expenditure for food and other basic needs for a family of six has risen 85 per cent in the past two years.

Ms Moloney, a nutrition expert for the Horn of Africa nation, said that on average, such a family spent US$171 (S$240) in September this year, compared with US$92 for the same amount of food and other needs in March 2007.

'Families are cutting out school, cutting out clothes. A lot of them are going for cheaper cereals,' she said, adding that despite these desperate measures, one in five children in Somalia is acutely malnourished.

Dr Igbuzor said the trend could be seen in impoverished countries across Africa.

The long-term trend is due largely to reduced aid and private investments earmarked for agriculture since the mid-1980s, the Rome-based FAO said in its State of Food Insecurity report for this year.

In 1980, 17 per cent of aid contributed by donor countries went to agriculture. That fell to 3.8 per cent by 2006, and only slightly improved in the past three years, Dr Diouf said.

'In the fight against hunger, the focus should be on increasing food production,' he said.

'It is common sense...that agriculture would be given the priority, but the opposite has happened.'

FAO economist David Dawe said the decline may have been caused by insufficient private investment in agriculture and competition for public funds from other aid fields, including emergency relief.

Governments and investors may also have chosen to put their money into other economic sectors because agriculture's share of the economy in some developing countries has dropped as people move to cities and find work in industry.

ASSOCIATED PRESS