Lodesani said three-quarters of the more than one billion hungry people in the world are poor farmers, a vulnerable population that will bear the brunt of the consequences of global warming through catastrophes like drought and flooding. “We are already seeing the impact of climate change on food production patterns. We know there are poor areas of the world that will become poorer through lack of rainfall. Desertification is already happening,” he warned.
“We have to address this now, through specific measures,” said the expert, who previously coordinated emergency food aid plans in countries like Sudan and Ivory Coast.
The WFP report titled Climate Change and Hunger: Responding to the Challenge says that “by 2050, the number of people at risk of hunger as a result of climate change is expected to increase by 10 to 20% more than would be expected without climate change.” Lodesani emphasized the need for specific programs to encourage sustainable development, through “the use of land resources to produce food” without further harming the environment.
With respect to biofuels, produced by Brazil and other countries, the WFP official’s view is that they reduce environmental pollution, but that further research on their disadvantages is needed. Biofuels, such as ethanol and biodiesel, are derived from crops like sugarcane and vegetable oils and, therefore, take up agricultural land. Lodesani stressed that growing plants for biofuels must not displace food crops, “especially since world population will be over nine billion in 40 years’ time.”
Population growth is another challenge to be faced “when over one billion people already lack access to enough food to meet the nutritional recommendations of international bodies like the World Health Organization,” Lodesani said. When global population reaches over nine billion in 2050, it will be even more difficult to meet nutritional needs, creating a new vicious circle of poverty to be solved, he warned. “Three-quarters of the more than one billion people who are hungry today are poor farmers. This means they don’t have enough food to live a normal life, and above all a productive life, while they are the very people who are relied on to produce food,” he added.
In recent years, the WFP has made it a top priority to buy food from developing countries for its aid programs. Lodesani said that, in the last three years, WFP food purchases from developing countries amounted to 80% of the total outlay of close to 2.9 billion dollars. In 2008 alone, 427 million dollars were spent in African countries, out of a total of 1.4 billion dollars.
“WFP’s policy is to buy food as close to where it is needed as possible. We used to buy it through the regular markets, which is a good thing, but they don’t always benefit poor small-scale producers,” he said, referring to a new WFP program called Purchase for Progress. This program aims to give poor farmers access to a market for their surplus produce, providing them with more income while guaranteeing the subsistence needs of their families.
“Purchase for Progress,” which is being implemented in countries like Haiti and Mozambique with the help of the European Union, seeks to open farmers’ access to markets by improving the quality and presentation of their products.
Lodesani mentioned other challenges that “need to be closely watched,” such as the cost of food, which is still expensive according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) food commodity price index. People in developing countries are affected by high food prices, which create a situation where “food is available, but significant segments of the population do not have access to it,” he said.
The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2009, a report by FAO and the WFP, says that, of the 1.02 billion hungry people in the world today, 642 million are in the Asia-Pacific region, 265 million in sub-Saharan Africa, 53 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, 42 million in the Middle East and North Africa, and 15 million in industrialized countries.
