Hunger a reality for 854 million

Speaking at the World Food Day ceremony held at FAO headquarters in Rome, director-general Jacques Diouf said that by eliminating social and environmental obstacles to food these rights can be ensured, even if a country is not experiencing economic growth. According to the FAO, the number of undernourished people in the world remains unacceptably high and has huge implications in terms of lost lives and lost time for economic and social development. "Our planet produces enough food to feed the entire planet,"​ said Diouf. "But tonight 854 million men, women and children will go to sleep on an empty stomach." ​​The price crunch being felt in the food industry is also reverberating through to the world's poor. Staples such as wheat and milk have seen price rises mainly due to climate-change induced weather fluctuations that affect harvests, the switch to biofuels and increasing demand from new and emerging markets. There is potential for nutraceutical manufacturers to help bridge malnutrition when it gets to crisis levels, through the supply of fortified products. However, the underlying World Food Day message is that governments need to encourage and help communities to be autonomous in their ability to feed themselves, and not dependent on food aid. The president of Germany, Horst Köhler -a keynote speaker at the event - underscored this notion of ownership and dignity, stating that people should have an adequate supply of food from their own fields and the surrounding region. He said "all people have a right to healthy food, produced in a sustainable manner appropriate to their culture."​ Beyond supplying emergency resources of food aid, the nutraceutical industry has the potential to help malnourished regions by means of transference of its technology. Stabilized rice bran manufacturer Nutracea for example has devised a proprietary means of turning a food waste product into a rich source of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. The manufacturer is now trying to leverage stabilized rice bran's growth potential in the mainstream functional food industry to support the humanitarian aim of bringing a cost efficient ingredient to the developing world. On the academic side, a team from Washington University in St. Louis has been upholding the benefits of a fortified peanut butter it has spent several years researching in Malawi. The researchers' findings, published in July's Maternal and Child Nutrition​, showed an 89 percent recovery rate in severely malnourished children given Ready-to-Use-Therapeutic Food at home. For the project, the food was produced in a Malawian factory and donated through funding from UNICEF and the World Food Programme. The right to food is firmly entrenched in international law and recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as adopted by the United Nations in 1948, as well as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Adopted by the UN in 1966, and put into effect in 1976, ICESCR is a multilateral treaty committing countries to granting at least basic rights to individuals. In his address, Diouf drew on its definition of the right to food: "It is the​ right of every man, woman and child alone and in community with others to have physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement in ways consistent with human dignity."​​ This principle remains far from being put into practice. At today's ceremony, Tanzania's president, Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, stated that "40 000 children die every day throughout the world due to malnutrition and related diseases. These are the people who are being denied the right to food. These are the people who are the subject of this year's World Food Day."​ He added that the ultimate solution lies in improving agriculture, especially in Africa. Diouf emphasized that the right to food also consists of protection from, or at least compensation for, the environmental changes carried out by man that impinge upon a community's ability to feed itself. This includes decisions over the allocation and use of land, such as for forestry or dams. Agricultural development was also highlighted as a means of staving off the potentially worsening effects of climate change, and any subsequent results on hunger. This was put forth in a message from the president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Lennart Båge. He stated that "three quarters of the world's one billion extremely poor people live in rural areas, many already suffer from hunger and malnutrition, but new and growing challenges such as climate change are making them all the more vulnerable. This is why now, more than ever, the world has a pressing moral obligation to invest in agricultural development to combat hunger and restore dignity to the poor."​ World Food Day takes place on the anniversary of the FAO, founded on October 16, 1945.