Despite higher agricultural prices, the number of hungry people is falling.
The majority of undernourished people, 55%, live in South and East Asia, around 25% in the African South Sahara zone and only 16% in industrialized countries.
The average number of hungry people in the years 2005-07 fell from just under 900 million to 842 million on average in the years 2011-13. Increasing economic growth in emerging countries has improved people's income and enabled them to feed themselves adequately. Productivity increases in the agricultural sector have been driven by government aid and private investment. An increasing supply of food has become available for a growing population.
But economic growth alone is not enough if stable economic and social conditions are not ensured. There is a strong correlation between a low number of hungry people and stable social conditions and, conversely, a strong correlation between severe famine and politically unstable regions. In order to ensure that all people have access to sufficient food, social compensation measures and broad access to the basics of food production must be introduced.
It is particularly interesting to note that the decline in the number of people suffering from hunger has also taken place at a time when agricultural prices have risen sharply. One might have expected the opposite. The resolution of this apparent contradiction is that high agricultural prices also have the effect of increasing production. If sufficiently profitable agricultural prices are not just temporary, but sustainable or reliable, investments to increase food production are worthwhile. But it also requires an additional boost through the provision of capital to procure the necessary operating resources in order to be able to produce food at all.
The ambitious goal of the 1996 World Food Summit to halve the number of hungry people by 2015 will not be achieved, but progress is well on the way. Efforts must be stepped up to promote broad-based economic growth under stable socio-political and socially acceptable conditions with broad access to resources. This applies in particular to 75% of the hungry who live in rural areas.
