Hunger, corona viruses tussle for supremacy
Some Nigerians have been saying,
crying, joking and just making it known any way they can that hunger virus is a
bigger problem in the country than coronavirus.
According to them, hunger virus disease
is just as its name says: a situation whereby someone consistently goes hungry
unwillingly just like people get infected unwillingly by viruses.
And now, a report indirectly
backing the existence of HVD has been released and is presently trending in the
right quarters.
And it no doubt begs the question
of which is more severe of the unofficial hunger virus and the official
coronavirus.
The report, the latest edition of
the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, estimates that almost
690 million people went hungry in 2019 – up by 10 million from 2018, and by
nearly 60 million in five years.
High costs and low affordability
also mean billions cannot eat healthily or nutritiously. The hungry are most numerous
in Asia, but expanding fastest in Africa. Across the planet, the report
forecasts, the COVID-19 pandemic could tip over 130 million more people into
chronic hunger by the end of 2020.
The SFSNW is the most
authoritative global study tracking progress towards ending hunger and
malnutrition. It’s produced jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization of
the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agriculture (IFAD), the
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and
the World Health Organization (WHO).
Writing in the Foreword, the
heads of the five agencies warn that “five years after the world committed to
end hunger, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition, we are still offtrack
to achieve this objective by 2030.”
The hunger numbers explained
In this edition, critical data
updates for China and other populous countries have led to a substantial cut in
estimates of the global number of hungry people to the current 690 million.
Nevertheless, there has been no change in the trend. Revising the entire hunger
series back to the year 2000 yields the same conclusion: after steadily
diminishing for decades, chronic hunger slowly began to rise in 2014 and
continues to do so.
Asia remains home to the greatest
number of undernourished (381 million). Africa is second (250 million) followed
by Latin America and the Caribbean (48 million). The global prevalence of
undernourishment – or overall percentage of hungry people – has changed little
at 8.9 percent but the absolute numbers have been rising since 2014. This means
that over the last five years, hunger has grown in step with the global
population.
This in turn hides great regional
disparities
In percentage terms, Africa is
the hardest hit region and becoming more so, with 19.1 percent of its people
undernourished. This is more than double the rate in Asia (8.3 percent) and in
Latin America and the Caribbean (7.4 percent). On current trends, by 2030,
Africa will be home to more than half of the world’s chronically hungry.
The pandemic’s toll
As progress in fighting hunger
stalls, the COVID-19 pandemic is intensifying the vulnerabilities and
inadequacies of global food systems – understood as all the activities and
processes affecting the production, distribution and consumption of food. While
it is too soon to assess the full impact of the lockdowns and other containment
measures, the report estimates that at a minimum, another 83 million people,
and possibly as many as 132 million, may go hungry in 2020 as a result of the
economic recession triggered by COVID-19. iii The setback throws into further
doubt the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 2 (Zero Hunger).
Unhealthy diets, food insecurity and malnutrition
Overcoming hunger and
malnutrition in all its forms (including undernutrition, micronutrient
deficiencies, overweight and obesity) is about more than securing enough food
to survive: what people eat – and especially what children eat – must also be
nutritious. Yet a key obstacle is the high cost of nutritious foods and the low
affordability of healthy diets for vast numbers of families.
The report presents evidence that
a healthy diet costs far more than $1.90/day, the international poverty
threshold. It puts the price of even the least expensive healthy diet at five
times the price of filling stomachs with starch only. Nutrient-rich dairy,
fruits, vegetables and protein-rich foods (plant and animal-sourced) are the
most expensive food groups globally.
The latest estimates are that a
staggering 3 billion people or more cannot afford a healthy diet. In
sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia, this is the case for 57 percent of the
population – though no region, including North America and Europe, is spared.
Partly as a result, the race to end malnutrition appears compromised. According
to the report, in 2019, between a quarter and a third of children under five
(191 million) were stunted or wasted – too short or too thin. Another 38
million under-fives were overweight. Among adults, meanwhile, obesity has
become a global pandemic in its own right.
A call to action
The report argues that once
sustainability considerations are factored in, a global switch to healthy diets
would help check the backslide into hunger while delivering enormous savings. It
calculates that such a shift would allow the health costs associated with
unhealthy diets, estimated to reach US$ 1.3 trillion a year in 2030, to be
almost entirely offset; while the diet-related social cost of greenhouse gas
emissions, estimated at US$ 1.7 trillion, could be cut by up to
three-quarters.iv
The report urges a transformation
of food systems to reduce the cost of nutritious foods and increase the
affordability of healthy diets. While the specific solutions will differ from
country to country, and even within them, the overall answers lie with
interventions along the entire food supply chain, in the food environment, and
in the political economy that shapes trade, public expenditure and investment
policies. The study calls on governments to mainstream nutrition in their
approaches to agriculture; work to cut cost-escalating factors in the
production, storage, transport, distribution and marketing of food – including
by reducing inefficiencies and food loss and waste; support local small-scale
producers to grow and sell more nutritious foods, and secure their access to
markets; prioritize children’s nutrition as the category in greatest need;
foster behaviour change through education and communication; and embed
nutrition in national social protection systems and investment strategies.
The heads of the five UN agencies
behind the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World declare their
commitment to support this momentous shift, ensuring that it unfolds “in a
sustainable way, for people and the planet.”
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