The international agency charged with tracking hunger around the world and working to meet the goals of the 1996 World Food Summit has announced a new measurement that allows "depth of hunger" to be tracked nation by nation for a clearer assessment of the problem.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization announced the new standard on World Food Day, Oct. 16th, to call attention to the global problem, the Associated Press reports.
The new FAO gauge measures average dietary intake of people in a specific country and contrasts that with minimum requirements for maintaining body weight under routine daily activity
Somalia, Afghanistan and Haiti ranked as the hungriest nations in the world under the new guidelines, with the general populations missing from 27 to 24 percent, respectively, of their minimum nutritional needs. Estimates show that 75 percent of Somali residents, 70 percent of Afghanistan's people and 62 percent of all Haitians undernourished, the FAO reports.
Nearly one in six people around the world -- an estimated 826 million people -- are undernourished, the report states. With its large population, Asia has the largest number of undernourished people, but sub-Saharan African nations report the most problems with "food insecurity."
The 1996 summit set a goal to reduce this number to 400 million people by 2015, but the U.N. agency says this goal can't be met before 2030, AP reports.
Using the recent successes achieved in Ghana and Thailand, the solution to hunger is described as a blend of national political stability, sustained economic growth and agricultural development, FAO officials say.
Ghana's hunger rates dropped from 29 percent to 10 percent of the population between 1990 and 1998, due primarily to agricultural research and increased production.
Thailand has reported huge declines in poverty over the past 20 years, with sustained rural development identified as the key factor.
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