RELENTLESS TIDE OF GLOBAL HUNGER ENGULFS 1BN

A tsunami was the image of choice to describe the blow of last year's food crisis. Today's situation resembles more the slow but relentless surge of a tide, gradually dragging more and more people into the ranks of the undernourished.

Almost unnoticed behind the economic crisis, a combination of lower growth, rising unemployment and falling remittances together with persistently high food prices has pushed the number of chronically hungry above 1bn for the first time.

The surge has reversed a decline over the past quarter century in the proportion of chronically hungry people in the world. “We are not out of the woods of the food crisis,” says Josette Sheeran, head of the UN's World Food Programme in Rome, which needs about $6bn (€4.5bn, £4bn) this year to feed the poorest, up 20 per cent from last year's record of $5bn.

“The impact of last year's high prices continues. In addition, countries now suffer a loss of income because of the global financial crisis,” she adds, echoing a view widely held by other senior officials and experts interviewed by the Financial Times.

Kanayo Nwanze, the new president of the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development, warns that migrants are returning to the countryside from the cities in large numbers, creating extra pressure.

“There will be more mouths to feed with little or no food,” he says.

The crisis is expanding outside Africa as the economic recession compounds the impact of high prices. Countries which have had little problem with food for almost 20 years, such as Kyrgyzstan, are now asking for help.

The worst is yet to come as the impact of the recession on purchasing power becomes more evident and food costs remain high, officials, industry executives and experts say.

Robert Paarlberg, professor of political science at Wellesley College in the US and a respected agriculture expert, says he is “more worried about hunger in the current economic crisis” than he was about it “at the peak of the surge in food commodities prices last summer”.

Peter Brabeck, chairman of food giant Nestlé, also thinks the crisis is getting worse.

“Don't forget that the food prices are today about 60 per cent higher than they were only 18 months ago. And this means that those people who spend 60, 70 per cent of their disposable income on food have been hurt very, very strongly,” he says.

The warnings come even as global agricultural commodities prices have fallen steeply from last year's record highs. Among the staples, the price of corn, wheat and rice has almost halved. Nevertheless, Allan Buckwell, emeritus professor of agricultural economics at Imperial College in London, says agricultural commodities are back just to their mid-2007 level.

“Food prices have not come down in the sense of other commodities such as oil,” he says.

In addition, prices are well above their 10-year average, with some trading at double their 1998-2008 level in spite of the drop.

For example, the current cost of Thai rice, the world's benchmark, at $614 a tonne more than doubles its 10-year average of $290 a tonne. Moreover, domestic food prices in many developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, have not fallen at all and in some cases are rising again because of the impact of poor harvest and lack of credit for imports.

Ms Sheeran points precisely to that problem: “Local prices are rising. For example, the price of maize in Malawi has risen 100 per cent in the last year while wheat prices in Afghanistan are 67 per cent higher than a year ago.”

Aggravating the outlook, farmers worldwide are seeding less cropland, hence lowering output for this year's harvest, potentially helping to keep food prices up even if demand is weak as a consequence of the economic crisis.