Mixed messages in hunger report

Brazil and China have been praised for their efforts to tackle
hunger, in a development charity's report released to coincide with
UN World Food Day. But the ActionAid report criticises India and
others countries for not doing enough to alleviate the problem. The
agency also ranked rich countries, saying Luxembourg is trying
hardest to end global hunger, while the US and New Zealand rank
bottom. Studies estimate that one billion people are malnourished
globally. That figure, given in studies by a number of think tanks
and aid agencies, represents roughly one in seven of the world's
population. ActionAid's report, Hunger Free, says hunger is " a choice
that we make, not a force of nature". "Hunger begins with inequality,"
it says, and then grows because of "perverse policies that treat
food purely as a commodity, not a right". "It is because of these
policies that most developing countries no longer grow enough to
feed themselves, and that their farmers are amongst the hungriest and
poorest people in the world," says ActionAid. 'Unacceptable' Among the
developing countries ranked, Brazil wins the top spot, with the aid
agency praising President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's support for
land reform and community kitchens for the poor. ActionAid said
Brazil's success shows "what can be achieved when the state has both
resources and political will to tackle hunger". China is also praised
for cutting the number of hungry by 58 million in 10 years through
strong state support for smallholder farmers. But the report
criticises economically liberal India where, it says, 30 million
people have been added to the ranks of the hungry since the mid- 1990
s and 46 % of children are underweight. It says hunger exists in India
not because there is insufficient food, but because people cannot
access it, and that the exploitation of natural resources has led to
"horrific displacements" of people, pushing many into poverty. "When
people are already on the brink of starvation this is simply
unacceptable," it says. The report said some progress had been made,
with a scheme to protect rural employment in the case of drought, but
it needed to be implemented more effectively. Neighbouring Bangladesh
is praised for reducing the number of chronically food-insecure
people from 40 million to 27 million in the past 10 years and for
improving childhood nutrition in the past two decades. But the report
says Bangladesh has a long way to go to reduce overall malnutrition
and build a sustainable agricultural system. " This scandal could
easily be ended if all governments took determined action " Anne
Jellema, Action Aid The Democratic Republic of Congo is at the bottom
of the list, with 76 % of the population listed "chronically hungry".
The cost of foods is growing in the country, there has been very low
investment in agriculture and the government offers no social
protection. Robert Dekker, the World Food Programme's ( WFP) DR Congo
director, told the BBC that Congolese people live almost exclusively
on a diet of cassava flour, which is low in nutritional value. He
said health experts recommend adults eat 2 , 100 kilocalories a day
for a healthy diet but in Congo the average is 1 ,650 a day. The
BBC's Tomas Fessy, in the capital Kinshasa, says decades of war and
neglect have meant there is no proper agricultural infrastructure in
the country, while a poor road system makes it hard for people to
reach food supplies. In Ethiopia, Action Aid says famine is "once
again stalking" the country, as a result of continuing drought, a
growing population and damaging land policies. Although the
government has begun to introduce reforms, 7.5 million Ethiopians
are classed as "food insecure". Biofuel 'invasion' ActionAid also
assessed richer, developed countries, praising those that have
invested in agriculture in the developing world but criticising
others that have promoted biofuels which, the report says, have
displaced food crops. It says Tanzania, Mozambique, Ghana and
Ethiopia have seen an "invasion" of agrofuel producers from the West,
using up land that could be used to grow food. The rankings are
weighted to account for what ActionAid calls effort and progress, not
just outcomes - that is how the winner in the rich country list is
tiny Luxembourg, with all the Nordic countries close behind. New
Zealand is at the bottom of the rich country list, accused of making
particularly harsh cuts in its official aid to agriculture. And the
US is second from last, described as " miserly" in its aid to
developing world farmers. "The US owes a huge climate debt to
developing countries and it must not delay in agreeing to find the
finance to help developing countries adapt to climate change, and in
signing up to a just global deal," said the report. ActionAid said
the level of hunger in the world is "perhaps one of the most shameful
achievements of recent history" and that there is no reason for
anyone to go without food. "Every six seconds a child dies from
hunger," said the charity's policy director, Anne Jellema. "This
scandal could easily be ended if all governments took determined
action."