Food Price Increases Could Plunge 100 Million People Into Hunger, WFP Warns
4/22/2008 4:26:00 PM On Tuesday, the U.N. World Food Program has outlined the alarming impact of rising global food price.
WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran said in press conference that high food prices are creating the biggest challenge the U.N. agency has faced in its 45-year history. She described it as a “silent tsunami that threatens to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger.”
Sheeran, who is in London for a meeting of food producers, retailers and consumers hosted by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, said recent violent unrest in Haiti and 33 other countries shows that food insecurity threatens not only the hungry but peace and security as well.
The skyrocketing food prices have forced the WFP to cut back on food aid to the poor, she told reporters.
“Those living on less than a dollar a day or 50 cents a day have no other choice but to succumb to the pressures of food prices that have increased and often doubled during the past six months,” Sheeran said. She admitted the inability of the organization to procure the same amount of food as it could last June.
According to Sheeran, those who have been priced out of the food market included the rural landless, herders and the majority of small-scale farmers. The World Food Program, which fixed a budget of $2.5 billion to feed the poor around the world, now needs another $755 million to meet its target just because of the soaring prices.
“We are putting out an urgent appeal for the world to help us meet the accessed needs of people from Darfur to Uganda to Haiti and beyond, and also to meet the gap in the budget,” Sheeran said.
The United States, which accounts for about half of all global food aid, has responded to the call by announcing an additional $200 million in aid to help ease the crisis. The governments of Britain, Spain and Germany have also assured that they will contribute to the humanitarian cause, Sheeran said.
Sheeran said it is high time the world addresses the growing danger by making long-term investments. Citing the example of farmers in the Rift Valley in Kenya, whose plantations have shrunk because of the steep rise in the price of fertilizers, she suggested more help to small-scale farmers to produce more food crops. |
