Seasonal cycles driving global hunger
Majority of world's acute hunger occurs not in areas of conflict or natural disasters but in annual "hunger season"
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Tuesday, 30, Jun 2009 12:05
The majority of the world's acute hunger occurs not in areas of conflict or natural disasters but in the annual "hunger season", new research claims.
Experts describe the season as the time of year when the previous year's harvest stock has dwindled, when food prices are high and jobs are scarce.
The report published in the journal PLoS Medicine claims that at present almost seven out of every ten hungry people in the world are small farm households or landless rural labourers.
And the majority of these six hundred million people live in areas where natural conditions only allow for one crop harvest a year.
The authors of the new study suggest poverty in these areas is being driven by seasonal cycles with conditions becoming especially worse during pre-harvest months.
"During this 'hunger season' period, household food stocks from the last harvest begin to run out; while low production levels, inadequate storage facilities, and accumulated debt all combine to force families to sell or consume their agricultural production well before the new harvest," they write.
Experts argue community-based interventions to treat acute under-nutrition and promote growth of pre-school children are examples of successful interventions that should be scaled up to help alleviate the problem.
"Global scale-up of a basic 'minimum essential' intervention package against seasonal hunger would cost around 0.1 per cent of global GDP and save millions of lives, while protecting millions more from severe illness," the authors add.
They conclude by stating a dedicated effort to address seasonal hunger now represents a necessary step in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.