The annual bad news about world hunger
I am late getting to this report but am finally ready to take it on.
This is the annual report from FAO, which always tries to put as positive a spin on its findings as it can.
The press release says:
Hunger numbers stubbornly high for three consecutive years as global crises deepen: UN report
1 in 11 people worldwide faced hunger in 2023, 1 in 5 in Africa
Rio de Janeiro – Around 733 million people faced hunger in 2023, equivalent to one in eleven people globally and one in five in Africa, according to the latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report published today by five United Nations specialized agencies.
Each of these reports tries to do something different, and this one is about financing. It talks about the cost of a health diet (CoHD).
The CoHD has risen worldwide since 2017 (the first year for which FAO disseminates estimates) and continued to rise in 2022, peaking at an average of 3.96 PPP dollars per person per day in 2022. This represents a surge in the global average CoHD, from a 6 percent increase between 2020 and 2021 to an 11 percent increase the following year…Despite the increase in the CoHD, the number of people in the world unable to afford a healthy diet fell for two consecutive years, from 2020 to 2022. Worldwide, an estimated 35.5 percent of people in the world (2.83 billion) were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2022, compared with 36.5 percent (2.88 billion) in 2021.
So the good news is that the percentage of people who can’t afford to eat healthfully dropped by 1%.
That’s still a third of people in the world.
Impossible. Unacceptable. And tragic and frustrating beyond belief.
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