A world without food
Almost 1 billion people go to bed hungry every night and ironically, they include smallholder farmers who produce half the world’s food.
In addition, millions of children suffer the irreversible effects of malnutrition.
Millions of children suffer the irreversible effects of malnutrition
Volatile food prices, which give rise to increasing food insecurity, seem to threaten people’s resilience to disasters and diseases.
Rice, for example, a staple of some 30 billion people worldwide, is expected to cost more.
The 10-year average for Thailand’s benchmark 100 per cent grade B white rice, at US$400 (RM1,200) a tonne, costs more than US$600 a tonne today.
This is allegedly in part due to Thailand (the largest producer of rice) increasing payments to farmers at an equivalent of US$800 a tonne in the export market to increase their income.
In the longer term, the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines stated that the situation will worsen as rice farming land gets scarce due to larger populations and increasing industrialisation.
Unless there is an emergence of “new rice producers” such as Myanmar, Cambodia and Brazil — and other countries which have abundant land and water (perhaps even Malaysia?) — there is cause for concern.
As the experience in 2008 demonstrated, it could lead to riots and socio-political instability, particularly in the Global South, due to food crises, hunger and malnutrition.
The Geneva-based humanitarian group responsible for WDR underlined widening disparities between the “haves” and “have - nots”, made worse by rising food prices.
The report showed jarring unequal access to food — 1.5 billion people worldwide were obese in 2010 compared to 925 million who were undernourished.
Some five years ago, the latter numbered only about 850 million.
It is baffling that the current access to more food is causing more human suffering and death than the converse.
Indeed, the report acknowledges the complexities of the issue, going back to the core of virtually all the major components of the functioning of the international system.
Factors for the food crisis extended from international trade to climate change; water scarcity to scientific innovation; as well as speculative commodity trading.
Aptly, it was pointed out in a statement: “If the free interplay of market forces has produced an outcome where 15 per cent of humanity are hungry while 20 per cent are overweight, something has gone wrong somewhere.” The key issues are more of poor distribution, wastage and increasing prices that push food out of the reach of the larger population globally.
This demands a rethink of the current world food system, and hunger and malnutrition eradication programmes which are too often “simply top-down”.
Agricultural development focuses narrowly on increasing productivity rather than on the broader food and nutritional security of people.
After all, freedom from hunger is the first requisite for sustainable human security as the report emphasises.
Lest we forget, this problem of food insecurity has a profound impact on health as highlighted in the United Nations Summit on Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) from Sept 19-20.
Such illnesses, commonly known as “chronic” or “lifestyle-related diseases” today, represent a new frontier in the fight to improve global health.
Worldwide, the increase in such diseases means that they are now responsible for more deaths than all other causes combined.
The illnesses are largely caused by four shared behavioural risk factors. One pertains to poor diet, in addition to physical inactivity, and alcohol as well as tobacco use.
NCD will become the new global killers in the next decade when they will increase by 17 per cent worldwide (27 per cent in the African region alone) if nothing is done today.
Chronic diseases already account for two-thirds (36 of 57 million) of deaths worldwide and developing countries are not spared.
The impact of global warming and climate change has yet to be factored in.
It is obvious that we are faced with a multifaceted problem that has huge impact on the quality of life.
No magic bullet is needed.
What it takes are effective policy and behavioural change, and the use of cost-effective treatment as well as readily available technology, taking us back to the question of political will!
The writer is the former Vice Chancellor of USM.