Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 26 Oct. - 1 Nov. 2000 Issue No. 505
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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A piece of the pie

By Fatemah Farag

If there were only one day to remember that 800 million people in the developing world are undernourished, it was 16 October. This was the day to stop and realise that in most poor countries, average food availability per person amounts to less than 2,100 calories per day, while in the countries of the North, the average tops 3,200. It was a day to consider that the richest one-fifth of the world population eats 45 per cent of all world's meat and fish, while the poorest one-fifth get five per cent. On 16 October, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) observed World Food Day.

But one day is not enough. And not enough people gave it even that. This is what the FAO, the largest United Nations specialised agency, is up against. Since its inception in 1945, the FAO has been at the centre of efforts by the international community to alleviate poverty and global hunger, by promoting agricultural development, improved nutrition and the pursuit of food security.

It is a travesty, when you consider that there is enough food to nourish everyone. Despite the fact that the world's population has doubled over the past 40 years, the FAO says that food production has outgrown this population increase and that at the global level, the amount of food available per person increased by almost 20 per cent.

FAO literature indicates that inequitable distribution of food is a major factor in this sad state of affairs: "Simply growing enough food has not eliminated hunger in the past, and will not guarantee its eradication in the future. Recent studies suggest that four out of five malnourished children in the developing world live in countries that boast food surpluses. The larger challenge is making sure that food gets into the hands and mouths of the people who lack it now."

The point is driven home in an essay written by Sir Arthur C Clark in honour of World Food Day: "The short answer is that there are serious anomalies in the distribution of food. Capricious and uncaring market forces prevent millions of people from having at least one decent meal a day, while others have an abundance. There is no shortage of food on this planet; there is, however, a serious shortage of intelligence. And, I might add, compassion."

There is no shortage of conventions that consider access to adequate food a universal human right and collective responsibility: the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in 1948; the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1966; the World Food Conference in 1974; the World Food Security Compact in 1984; the International Conference on Nutrition in 1992; and the Word Food Summit in 1996. But as Adel Bishai, professor of economics at the American University in Cairo suggests, "The effectiveness of the FAO is hampered by the same problem that hampers the UN as a whole: despite the meetings, the spending and the very good studies produced, the impact is minimal because decisions are morally, as opposed to legally, binding." Bishai was assistant to the secretary-general of the 1974 World Food Conference.

The fight against hunger is effective when it is not stymied by international apathy. Since 1970, the number of undernourished people in developing countries has declined by approximately 130 million people and between 1960 and the mid-1990s, the per capita availability of food grew by 32 per cent. However, the World Food Summit of 1996 pledged to reduce the number of hungry people by half come 2015, and the figures of progress lag behind target.

"In the early '70s, the real problem was that agriculture was not on the priority list of developing countries -- leaders such as Nkrumah and Nasser were more interested in industry and that was a mistake," explains Bishai. "Once the supply side was being addressed in the early '80s, we discovered the problem of distribution."

The problem of distribution is inextricably tied to that of poverty. "Food can be there but people will be too poor to buy it," said Bishai. "That is why a country like Ethiopia can be an exporter of agricultural produce, and at the same time there is famine," he said. World Bank figures paint a grim picture indeed: the organisation estimates that 1.5 billion people in the world live on less than one dollar per day.

Production remains a FAO priority and the latest projections of the UN agency indicate that the world will need to substantially increase food production over the next 50 years.

Bishai concluded that in the end, the solutions to famine and hunger do not lie in the hands of the FAO, but in the hands of national governments. But as the FAO's pamphlet The vision -- food for all indicates, a world without hunger would also be a world without extreme poverty, without cruel inequality in the distribution of wealth and food, without war or environmental degradation and without inequalities based on gender and ethnicity. One cannot help but wonder what kind of world system would make it possible for humanity to experience such a world; a world where the banner raised on 16 October "A millennium free from hunger" could be attained.

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