Progress on Hunger Greater than Thought

The number of undernourished people worldwide has fallen more steeply than previously calculated, according to a report with revised estimates from the United Nations.

Improved data and methodology was applied retroactively to 1990, showing greater progress in combating hunger worldwide, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) found. But the number of people who are malnourished "remains unacceptably high," the recently released State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012 report says.

Nearly 870 million, or one in eight people, were estimated to be undernourished during the 2010-12 period.

"In today's world of unprecedented technical and economic opportunities, we find it entirely unacceptable that more than 100 million children under five are underweight, and therefore unable to realize their full human and socio-economic potential," say José Graziano da Silva, Kanayo F. Nwanze and Ertharin Cousin, respectively the Heads of FAO, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Program (WFP), in a foreword to the report.

The revised results imply it is still possible for countries to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving undernourishment by 2015. But this would require taking the right actions to reverse a leveling off of progress since 2007-08, according to the joint report.

Most of the world's undernourished live in developing countries. Progress has varied considerably among regions and individual countries, the report also found. Asia and Latin America have seen a reduction in the number and proportion of undernourished, while Africa "is continuing its large and rising deviation away from what is needed to meet its (MDG) target." Western Asia has experienced a progressive increase of undernourishment since 1990-92.