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Credit crunch deepens the hunger crisis

16 Mar 2009

The UK is contributing almost an extra £1m to tackling global hunger as fears rise that the economic downturn will leave many millions more of the world’s poorest people without enough to eat, International Development Minister Ivan Lewis announced today.

The Department for International Development (DFID) has committed £850,000 to Ban Ki-moon's food security task force to respond to the challenge of increasing hunger in the world.

This UK commitment will help the Task Force set up a Global Partnership for Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition. The partnership will work with developing countries to support poor farmers using ‘food and agriculture strategies’ including welfare schemes that safeguard citizens, including supplying food or cash to buy their own produce. The partnership will also help facilitate new research and analysis into potential barriers to food production and transport such as biofuels, trade restrictions and climate change.

New estimates suggest that the economic downturn means the fight against extreme poverty could be put back by up to three years, with the number of men, women and children being forced to live on less than 90p a day growing by millions every week.

Speaking after DFID’s annual conference on eliminating world poverty, Ivan Lewis spoke of his concerns that while the number of hungry people in the world increased from 830 to over 963 million people last year as a result of high food prices, the number is set to pass one billion in the current economic downturn.

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Source:DFID