Food Security and the Role of Agricultural Research

Abstract

not food secure. Even if available food energy were evenly distributed within each country — which it is not — 33 countries would not be able to assure sufficient food energy (2,200 calories per person per day) for their populations. Over 800 million people in the developing world, or 20 percent of the population, are food insecure, more than 180 million preschool children are malnourished, and many hundreds of millions of people suffer from diseases of hunger and malnutrition. With two-thirds of the developing world’s undernourished, Asia remains the main area of concern whereas food security is rapidly deteriorating in SubSaharan Africa. The number of undernourished people in the latter region almost doubled in two decades from 94 million in 1969-71 to 175 million in 1988 -90, and the proportion of the population that is undernourished rose from 35 percent to 37 percent. Between 1988-90 and 2010, the number of undernourished people is projected to increase by 70 percent to 296 million, 32 percent of the region’s population. By 2010, almost half of the developing world’s undernourished will be located in Sub-Saharan Africa, up from 10 percent in 1969-71. Hunger is a consequence of poverty. An estimated 1.3 billion people live in households that earn a dollar a day or less per person. Fifty percent of these absolutely poor people live in South Asia, 19 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa, 15 percent in East Asia, and 10 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean. Almost one-half of the population of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa and one-third of that in the Middle East and North Africa live in poverty. Food Security and the Role of Agricultural Research