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UN report says world ‘moving backwards’ on food insecurity as farmers forced to fight to survive

July 8, 2022 | | Print Article

A United Nations report out this week shows that billions of people are facing food insecurities or are on the brink of starvation.

The report, “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World,” was released on Wednesday and “outlined the horrific statistics on worldwide hunger levels,” Fox Business reported.

World hunger increased in 2021, according to the U.N., with around 2.3 billion people facing moderate or severe difficulty obtaining enough food. People facing severe food insecurity increased to about 924 million.

“Issued by the World Food Program, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, U.N. Children’s Fund, World Health Organization and International Fund for Agricultural Development, the report says the 2021 statistics make clear ‘the world is moving backwards in its efforts to end hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms,'” the network reported. “The heads of the five agencies say in the report that in addition to the disruptions to supply chains from the war in Ukraine that are driving up food prices, more frequent and extreme climate events are also causing supply problems, especially in low-income countries.”

Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean experienced a rise in hunger, but at a slower pace than from 2019 to 2020, Fox Business noted.

“In 2021, hunger affected 278 million people in Africa, 425 million in Asia and 56.5 million in Latin America and the Caribbean,” the report said.

At the same time, farmers in the Netherlands are literally fighting government to survive — the Dutch agricultural sector is the second largest exporter of agricultural products in the world, after the U.S.

The Dutch government is forcing nitrogen emissions to be reduced by 70 percent and many farmers are given the option to invest in sustainability or give up their farms.

Either way, restrictions designed to reduce total nitrogen emissions by 50% by 2030 means that not all farmers can stay in business.

“Some of our farmers will not be able to continue their businesses as they do now,” Christianne van der Wal, the Minister for Nature and Nitrogen said last month, according to The European Conservative.

Farmers would need to reduce their emissions by 40%, which would mean up to a 30% decrease in total livestock being kept in the Netherlands.

Interestingly, the United Nations Chronicle website included a 2009 article titled, “The Benefits of World Hunger” — at least it did until Thursday, when it was scrubbed.

“We sometimes talk about hunger in the world as if it were a scourge that all of us want to see abolished, viewing it as comparable with the plague or aids. But that naïve view prevents us from coming to grips with what causes and sustains hunger. Hunger has great positive value to many people,” wrote former University of Hawaii professor George Kent .

“Indeed, it is fundamental to the working of the world’s economy. Hungry people are the most productive people, especially where there is a need for manual labour,” he added.

There was a suggestion that the scrubbed article was meant to be “satirical.”

For some, this is all the warning they need to start preparing:

Here are other responses to the story from Twitter:

Tom Tillison
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