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How to address Global Hunger* |
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Oct 13th 2023, Jayati Ghosh |
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Regulating
financial activity in global commodities markets, while
important, is not enough to stave off rising food insecurity.
Policymakers must also take measures to help developing
countries build up reserves of essential items and cope
with price fluctuations, possibly through a publicly
administered virtual reserve mechanism.
Among
the multiple crises that have erupted around the world,
the avoidable tragedy of growing hunger receives only
fleeting mention. And any attention that it does attract
is apparently not enough to prompt global policymakers
to act.
Yet a new report from the Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) of the United Nations makes for grim reading.
According to the State of Food Security and Nutrition
in the World 2023, an estimated 42% of the world’s population
more than 3.1 billion people were unable to afford a
healthy diet in 2021. Moreover, global hunger is still
far above pre-pandemic levels, with around 122 million
more people facing food insecurity in 2022 than in 2019,
and is on the rise throughout Africa, Western Asia,
and the Caribbean, owing partly to higher prices.
At the national level, a worrying pattern can be seen:
the countries with the largest increases in food insecurity
are also those engulfed in debt crises and experiencing
the severest effects of climate change.
Hunger reflects the interplay between food supply, purchasing
power, and prices. Supply depends on domestic production,
which can be affected by extreme weather and conflict,
and on a country’s ability to import foodstuffs, which
can be undermined by high transport costs and foreign-exchange
constraints. The purchasing power of households and
individuals is determined by the availability of income-earning
opportunities; money wages and earnings from self-employment
relative to food prices; and the extent of social protection,
for example through public provision of essential items.
Food prices, meanwhile, are driven largely by national
and international trade patterns.
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here for full article.
*
This article was originally published in the Project
Syndicate on October 12, 2023.
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