Chronic hunger and malnutrition represent the most compelling dilemma of our times. There a no simple solutions but there are signs of hope, perhaps the most important of these being the growing number of people that recognize the reality and nature of the interdependence among nations. This recognition of the vital links between the problems of food, trade and international finance was the impetus for establishing World Food Day.
The observance of World Food Day has encouraged people around the globe who share a commitment to eliminating hunger and malnutrition to focus on the needs of the poor. According to the statistics the estimated number of people afflicted by unger and malnutrition is about 500 million. But statics alone do not begin to tell the real story of humiliation, sickness and suffering which that total presents.
Conditions facing the rural poor and the unemployed urban dweller are steadily worsening and little has been done to reduce their vulnerability to the impact of poor harvests and natural calamities. Even more depressing is the prospect of over one and a half billion more people to be fed by the year 2000.
Nevertheless, a declaration put forward by experts at the end of the World Food Day Colloquium held in Rome in October 1982 struck a cautiously optimistic note. It read ‘More than ever before, humanity has the resources, capital, technology and knowledge to promote development and to feed all people , both now and in the foreseeable future. By the year 2000 the entire world population can be fed and nourished’. We shall have to wait and see.