Overview
- More than 800 million people in 70 lower income countries are food insecure, and the situation could grow worse in the poorest countries.
- Food
insecurity can be either temporary or chronic. The broader reasons for it are many: war, poverty, population growth, environmental degradation, limited agricultural technology, ineffective policies, and disease.
- Many low-income countries have difficulty producing enough food and are thus food-insecure on a national level.
More common is inequality of food consumption within countries—the
result of uneven purchasing power.
- Some countries—due in part to policy changes and stronger economic growth—have significantly improved their food security situation since the 1996 World Food Summit. This includes several lower income countries in Asia and Latin America. Sub-Saharan Africa, however, has seen little progress, and prospects for improvement are not strong.
- Despite a decline in food prices in late 2008, deteriorating purchasing power and food security are expected in 2009 because of the growing financial deficits and higher inflation that have occurred in recent years. The number of food-insecure people is estimated to rise 2 percent between 2008 and 2009 in the 70 lower income countries studied by ERS.
ERS provides research, analysis, and information on food security, including factors affecting food production and ability to import food, in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Commonwealth of Independent States to decisionmakers in the United States and throughout the world.
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