Good news from the FAO on world food insecurity

The State of Food Insecurity 2014, produced by the FAO, was released on 16 September 2014 and is available for download on FAO website. It demonstrates that the hunger target of the Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of undernourished people in developing countries by 2015 – is within reach. Information on the report is also available in French and Spanish.

The latest FAO estimates indicate that global hunger reduction continues: about 805 million people are estimated to be chronically undernourished in 2012–14, down more than 100 million over the last decade, and 209 million lower than in 1990–92. In the same period, the prevalence of undernourishment has fallen from 18.7 to 11.3% globally and from 23.4 to 13.5% for developing countries. 

Since 1990-92, 63 countries have reached the hunger target of MDG-1 and 25 countries have achieved the more stringent WFS target. Of the 63 developing countries, 11 already had undernourishment levels below 5% (the methodological limit that can assure significance of the results different from zero) in 1990-1992 and have been able to keep it in that interval, and are therefore not the prime focus of the 2014 report.