Saturday, June 20, 2009

1 billion people are starving - up 100 hundred million from 2008

SHOOT: There were 915 million hungry last year. That figure has leapt up to 1.02 billion - an 11% increase.

Yahoo.com: Asia and the Pacific, the world's most populous region, has the largest number of hungry people, at 642 million.

Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of hunger, with 265 million undernourished representing 32 percent of the region's population.

In the developed world, undernourishment is a growing concern, with 15 million now hungry, the report said.
clipped from news.yahoo.com
FILE- Indian workers are seen silhouetted as they load rice sacks onto a truck

ROME – More than a billion people — a sixth of the world's population — are now hungry, a historic high due largely to the global economic crisis and stubbornly high food prices, a U.N. agency said Friday.

Compared with last year, there are 100 million more people who are hungry, meaning they consume fewer than 1,800 calories a day, the Food and Agriculture Organization said.

Almost all the world's undernourished live in developing countries, where food prices have fallen more slowly than in the richer nations, the report said. Poor countries need more aid and agricultural investment to cope, it said.

"The silent hunger crisis, affecting one-sixth of all of humanity, poses a serious risk for world peace and security," said the agency's Director-General Jacques Diouf.

"A hungry world is a dangerous world," she told reporters.

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