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| Percentage of Population |
By the time this day is over, about 40,000 human beings-mostly children-will have died from hunger, malnutrition and related causes. Today and every day the deaths will mount reaching an annual toll of thirteen to eighteen million. Few of these people will have been caught up in famine or other emergencies. Most will have suffered from a silent assault the kind that seldom makes the headlines, but which claims its victims just as relentlessly.
It is intolerable that such deprivation and suffering should be allowed to exist in a world of potential food plenty. Having enough food is fundamental to all else. At the most basic level, this may entail humanitarian relief to assist people in emergency situations. In the transition from relief to development however we must look at systems for ensuring that societies have the capacity to produce or purchase the food they need and that it is accessible to all.
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| Poverty |
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| Poor People |
Sustainable food security fuses the goals of house hold food security and sustainable agriculture, it requires both. It requires looking not only at the aggregate supply of food but also at the distribution of income and land, and at other issues: do people have enough income to buy food? Enough land to grow their own food? Does the food distribution system deliver food where it is needed? How much food is wasted due to inadequate distribution system?
The challenges of sustainable food security are immense and it is growing. One billion people -20 percent of the global population are too poor to obtain enough food to sustain normal work. Half a billion are too poor to obtain the food needed for healthy growth of children and minimal activity of adults. Today’s failure to feed people however may be but a prologue to a much larger failure in the future. Given likely population increases, world food output must triple must over the next 50 years if the world’s people are to have a nutritionally adequate diet. It will be difficult enough to achieve this expansion under favorable circumstances, and conditions may be far from favorable.
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| Food Production |
Viewed from this perspective, the goal of achieving sustainable food security in the decades ahead emerges as one of the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced agricultural output must be tripled, and people must have the income to buy food they need. The erosion of the resource base must be halted and then reversed. Failure on any of these fronts will yield unprecedented human suffering.
Third, we must forge a true global partnership, a compact for sustainable food security. All countries rich and poor have important roles and responsibilities. There must be reciprocal responsibilities among nations, not one way transfers.
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| Water Crisis |
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| Cultivation |
Fourth, we must see deterioration of the agricultural resource base terrestrial, aquatic and climatic for what it is: a major threat to development and a major source of economic logs. Farmers are the largest group of environmental decision makers in the world. We must ensure that they have the means to make sustainable development a reality where it counts in the fields and fisheries.
We know a good deal about how to rid the world of the scourge of hunger, and how to begin to move toward sustainable food security on a global basis. We know that economic growth and prosperity are necessary, though not sufficient, conditions for eradicating hunger. We also know that development efforts must encompass not only food production, but also socio economic factors, including sustainable livelihoods for poor families, the implications of population growth rates, the status of women and girls and so forth. We also know that good words are not enough now more than ever before it is crucial that we marshal the political will to achieve our goals.
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