BANGKOK – According to a report released on Tuesday by the Food and Agriculture Organization and other agencies of the United Nations, more and more people in Asia are starving for food as food insecurity rises with higher prices and rising poverty.
Nearly half a billion people, more than eight in 10 of them in South Asia, were malnourished in 2021, and more than a billion were moderately to severely food insecure, the report said. Globally, the prevalence of food insecurity rose from 21% in 2014 to over 29% in 2021.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a major setback, leading to massive job losses and disruption, as was the war in Ukraine raised food prices, energy and Fertilizer, putting adequate nutrition out of the reach of many millions, it said.
The report is the fifth annual assessment of food insecurity and hunger by UN agencies including the FAO, UNICEF, the World Health Organization and the World Food Programme.
During these years, progress in alleviating hunger and malnutrition has stalled and then fallen back as more and more people lost the wherewithal to eat enough. The prevalence of malnutrition measured by UN agencies was 9.1% in 2021, better than the 14.3% in 2000 but slightly higher than in 2020.
Such figures show that “the slowdown in the fight against hunger continues,” says the report, which also highlights growing food insecurity among people who have moved to cities where they have less easy access to affordable food.
“Reforming our agri-food systems to produce nutritious food and ensure equitable access to healthy diets is critical,” she said.
The FAO food price index has increased in recent years, March 2022 set a record. It fell back when commodity prices fell a little later in the year, but is still 28% above 2020 levels.
The Asia-Pacific region imports nearly $2 trillion worth of food annually. Rising prices for staples like rice, wheat and oil hit the poor hardest.
It is part of what the UN agencies are calling the “5F” crisis, in which there is not enough food, feed, fertilizer, fuel and finance. The conflict in Ukraine has dealt a severe blow to many countries that depended on the region for wheat, cooking oils and fertilizers.
Nearly 2 billion people – or almost 45% of the people living in Asia – cannot afford a healthy diet, contributing to problems with anemia and obesity, as well as hunger.
To underscore the impact of the pandemic, which has hit vulnerable workers in the tourism and manufacturing industries particularly hard, between 2019 and 2021, almost one in ten Thais was malnourished, according to the report’s data – a higher proportion than a few years earlier and also than in many others Southeast Asian countries where average incomes are much lower. According to World Bank data, poverty increased by 2.6% between 2015 and 2018.
“An increase in poverty and malnutrition would go together,” Sridhar Dharmapuri, the FAO’s author for the report released on Tuesday, explained the situation.
Unhealthy diets and inadequate nutrition also affect future health and productivity as they cause children to suffer from stunting or wasting and make them more susceptible to disease. According to the report, nearly a quarter of children in Asia Pacific are affected by stunting or being short for their age.
Some more details from the report:
— in Afghanistan, 70% of people face moderate or severe food insecurity as the economy collapsed after the Taliban took power in August 2021, pushing millions into poverty and hunger as foreign aid halted almost overnight.
— In Cambodia, half the population faces moderate or severe food insecurity.
— One-third of women in Asia aged 15 to 49 are affected by anemia, which causes fatigue and, in its most severe forms, can cause lung and heart damage.
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