<div style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-size: 1rem;">The U.N. delivered grim news on global food security Wednesday: 2.4 billion people didn’t have constant access to food last year, as many as 783 million faced hunger, and 148 million children suffered from stunted growth.</b><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Five U.N. agencies said in the 2023 State of Food Security and Nutrition report that while global hunger numbers stalled between 2021 and 2022 many places are facing deepening food crises. They pointed to Western Asia, the Caribbean and Africa, where 20% of the continent’s population is experiencing hunger, more than twice the global average.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">UN warns its development goals for 2030 are in trouble and 575 million people will remain very poor</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“Recovery from the global pandemic has been uneven, and the war in Ukraine has affected the nutritious food and healthy diets,” Qu Dongyu, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement. “This is the `new normal’ where climate change, conflict, and economic instability are pushing those on the margins even further from safety.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">FAO chief economist Maximo Torero said the FAO food price index has been declining for about 15 months, but “food inflation has continued.” But he said not knowing if the deal that has enabled Ukraine to ship 32 metric tons of grain to world markets and is trying to overcome obstacles to Russian grain and fertilizer shipments will be renewed when it expires on July 17 “is not good for the markets.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If it isn’t renewed immediately “you will have a new spike for sure” in food prices, but how much and for how long will depend on how markets respond, he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">According to the report, people’s access to healthy diets has deteriorated across the world.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Eliminate legal barriers to women owning land: UN chief</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">More than 3.1 billion people – 42% of the global population – were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2021, an increase of 134 million people compared to 2019, it said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Torero told a news conference launching the report that reducing the number of people eating unhealthy diets “is a big challenge, because it’s basically telling us that we have substantially to change the way we use our resources in the agricultural sector, in the agri-food system.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">According to the latest research, he said, between 691 million and 783 million people were chronically undernourished in 2022, an average of 735 million which is 122 million more people than in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic began.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Torero said U.N. projections for 2030 indicate that 600 million people will still be suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2030, far from the U.N. development goal of achieving “Zero Hunger” by that date.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Stop targeting truth, truth-tellers: UN Chief on World Press Freedom Day</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the report’s foreword, the heads of FAO, the World Food Program, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF and the World Health Organization wrote that achieving Zero Hunger “poses a daunting challenge.” They called for redoubled efforts “to transform agri-food systems and leverage them” to reach the target.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As for children, the report says they are continuing to suffer from malnutrition, with not only 148 million younger than 5 stunted but 45 million too thin for their height or “wasted,” while 37 million youngsters were overweight.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Torero said the five agencies also looked at increased urbanization and found that people in rural and semi-urban areas are also consuming mass market products.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“Normally, we used to believe that rural people will consume what they produce, but that’s not the case,” he said, explaining that in rural areas about 30% of the family’s food basket is purchased from the market, and in semi-urban and urban areas it is higher, which has implications for nutrition because of the consumption of more processed foods.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">WFP chief economist Arif Husain told reporters in a virtual briefing that in 2022 when the war in Ukraine was ongoing the food situation didn’t get worse because the donor community stepped up with about $14.2 billion, and the agency was able to provide aid to 160 million people, up from 97 million in 2019.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“My concern is that moving forward we are looking at huge funding cuts,” he said, citing WFP donations of just $4.2 billion by last week, 29% lower than at the same time last year. AP/UNB</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>