Saturday, July 10, 2010

USDA Food Security Update July 2010


The USDA came out with this report yesterday.
Food security in 70 developing countries is estimated to have improved between 2009 and 2010, in part due to economic recovery (and a continuation of the recent upward trend in food production) in many of these countries. The number of food-insecure people in the developing countries analyzed by ERS researchers is estimated to decrease about 5 percent from 2009 to 882 million in 2010. The number of food-insecure people at the aggregate level will not improve much over the next decade, declining by only 1 percent. While there will be notable improvements in Asia and Latin America, the situation in Sub-Saharan Africa is projected to deteriorate after 2010. Food-insecure people are defined as those consuming less than the nutritional target of 2,100 calories per day per person.
Interesting notes about Asian food security:
As the global economy slowly recovers from the worldwide recession, Asia will continue to make impressive gains in improving food security as the projected number of food-insecure people is projected to decline from 433 million in 2010 to 320 million in 2020. In absolute terms, the number of food insecure in Asia is large; however, in relative terms Asia is doing better than SSA. In 2010, Asia will account for nearly 64 percent of the population of the 70 developing countries included in this report, but will account for barely half of the estimated 882 million total food-insecure people.
Of course, the economic recovery is tenuous, so the report's projections depend upon it continuing on the current course.