Recessions caused by the coronavirus pandemic are leaving people hungry and raising the specter of famines this year. Unless the world acts immediately, a UN report published this week says, it could spell a global food emergency of a “severity and scale unseen for more than half a century.” Although there is enough food to feed the world, not everybody can afford to buy it. In regions like East Africa — already fighting off locust swarms and weather extremes— widespread job losses could spiral into famine, said Maximo Torero, chief economist at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. “It’s a terrible problem of food access.”
The World Food Program estimated in April that world hunger will double this year, bringing the total to 265 million people — more than 3 in every 100 humans on the planet. Most of those suffering from acute food insecurity live in countries reeling from conflict, climate change and economic crises. In total, 821 million people are going hungry in some form. The global food system was fragile even before the pandemic. Just nine plant species account for more than two-thirds of global crop output and they are increasingly threatened by soil erosion, rising temperatures, extreme weather and disease. The ten countries with the worst food crises last year — Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria, Sudan, Nigeria and Haiti — all struggle with conflict and political unrest.
In most of Africa, people are more likely to die from starvation caused by the economic fallout from the pandemic than from the disease itself, according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development. More than half of Africans are smallholder farmers and agriculture is a central pillar of economies across the continent.
Source: Deutsche Welle
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