The global food crisis has affected nearly one billion people worldwide, with inability to purchase adding to the woes of people already reeling under food shortage, an independent UN expert has said.
The people are hungry not because of the lack of food but because of inadequate purchasing power and that is the area that needs to be addressed, he told reporters.
Prices have dropped around the world, but “the crisis is still with us,” cautioned Olivier De Schutter, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food.
Numerous international responses including Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s convening of a high-level task force have centred around the need to boost food output to meet rising demand and lower prices, he said, lamenting the human rights dimension has been often absent from these reactions.
The “real problem of hunger” is not linked to inadequate food supplies, but rather that many people lack the purchasing power to buy available food, he pointed out. “If you double the number of supermarkets in New York, those who are hungry today will still be hungry if they don’t see their incomes rise, if their purchasing power remains too low for them to afford the food which is in the market.”
