Hunger and malnutrition are caused not just by a lack of economic activity, but also by poverty, income disparities, and lack of access to health care, education, clean water, and sanitary living conditions.

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* More than a billion people still live on less than US $1 a day. (Source: United Nations Development Program.)

Supply and Distribution

* There is more than enough food in the world to adequately feed all people. The problem is not one of shortage, but of distribution.

* In virtually all the famines in the last half century, there has been a surplus of food within the countries experiencing famine.

* Up to one-fifth of America’s food goes to waste each year, with an estimated 130 pounds of food per person ending up in landfills. The annual value of this lost food is estimated at around $31 billion. Roughly 49 million people could be fed by those lost resources, more than twice the number of people in the world who die of starvation each year. (Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, “A Citizen’s Guide to Food Recovery,” 1999.)

* American and European annual expenditure on pet food: $17 billion per year Estimated annual cost of providing universal healthcare and nutrition for everyone in the world: $13 billion per year. (Source: United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report, 1998.)

Children

* WHO lists that “lack of sufficient food” as the biggest cause of poor health and death in the world today. (Source: 2002 State of World Health Report)

Every year over 10 million children die from preventable causes. Of these, the percentage of children’s deaths caused by malnutrition ) is drastically increasing. UNICEF and WHO report the following:

Percent of preventable child death due to malnutrition: 1993 37% (UNICEF, State of World’s Children Report, 1993) 1998 55% (UNICEF, State of World’s Children Report, 1998) 2002 60% (WHO, World Health Report, 2002

Percentage of malnourished children (UNICEF, 1998): USA: 1 in 5 Parts of East Asia: 1 in 3 Sub-Saharan Africa 1 in 2 Worldwide: 1 in 4 (6 million child deaths)

* UNDER-NUTRITION – that is, not getting enough to eat (insufficient calories) – is the world’s biggest killer of children. About 50% of deaths among children under 5 are associated with malnutrition. Source: World Health Organization, World Health Report, 1998.

1. Annually, some 30 million infants – around 82,000 every day - are born with intra-uterine growth retardation (IUGR), due mainly to poor nutritional status.

2. 1 in 3 children under five in the developing world are stunted (nearly 182 million).

3. More than 250 million children under five are affected by sub-clinical vitamin A deficiency.

4. More than a billion people are at risk of iodine deficiency disorders.

5. An estimated 3.5 billion people are affected by iron deficiency and anemia. (Source: The World Bank Group)

* In most regions, nutrition rates are slowly improving, but in Eastern Africa, malnutrition rates and absolute numbers are increasing –from 22 million malnourished children under five in 2000, to a projected 24 million in 2005. (Malnutrition and the global burden of disease) Source: The World Bank Group

* In 1998, the global starvation rate among children reached its 600 year peak. (Source: UNICEF, State of the World’s Children, 1998.)

* Half of all children under five years of age in South Asia, and one third of those in sub-Saharan Africa, are malnourished. Source: United Nations Department of Public Information, 1994.

* Even in the USA – the world’s wealthiest country with one of the highest rates of obesity – over 20 million children regularly go hungry. A disproportionate percentage of these children are Black and Latino.

* Worldwide, a reduction in formula feeding and an increase in breastfeeding could save 1.5 million lives every year. Source: UNICEF, “Putting Babies Before Business,” 1999.

* The World Health Organization recommends that babies be fed only breastmilk for the first six months of life, yet only 44% of infants in the developing world are exclusively breastfed. Source: UNICEF, “Putting Babies Before Business,” 1999.

Women

* Half of the world’s 1 billion reproductive-age women are anemic and malnourished. (Source: World Health Organization, 1998)

* Anemia causes 7% of all maternal deaths in Asia, 6% in Africa and 3% of all maternal deaths in Latin America. Over 50% of the nearly 12 million child deaths in 1995 were associated with low weight for age. (Source: The World Bank Group)

Water

* Lack of clean water and sanitation is the second most important risk factor in terms of the global burden of disease, after malnutrition (Source: World Bank Group, Water, Sanitation, and Hygeine)

* Approximately one sixth of the world’s population is without water and two fifths have no access to sanitation. Most of the unserved population lives in Asia and Africa, although even in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, poor water, sanitation and hygiene are among the ten most important risk factors for disease (Murray and Lopez, 1997). Source: World Bank Group, Water, Sanitation, and Hygeine

* Globally: 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water. 2.9 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation. Resulting in more than 28 million disease-related deaths per year worldwide. Sources: World Health Organization, Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council and United Nations, Children’s Fund, Water Supply and Sanitation Sector Monitoring Report, 1996. United Nations Economic and Social Information Department, 1996.

World Economics

* Many developing countries spend more on debt service than on social services. New aid commitments made in the first half of 2002 could mean an additional $12 billion per year by 2006. Source: United Nations Development Program Prospects

* At the 1996 World Food Summit, 186 countries pledged to half the number of hungry people in the world by the year 2015. This would require a reduction in their number by 20 million people each year. Since then the total of people suffering from hunger has been reduced by only 8 million.(Source: www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=343)

Free Trade and Hunger

In preparation for NAFTA, the US pressured the Mexican government to eliminate the progressive land reform statutes from Mexico’s Constitution, primarily the size limit for private land-holdings and the ejido system that safeguard small farmers from losing their land through sale or debt. (Source: “Questioning the Solution” by David Werner and David Sanders)

* A Public Citizen report in 2001 projected that up to 15 million small farmers will be displaced in the next 10 years because of NAFTA’s agriculture provisions. Every day 600 peasant farmers in Mexico are forced off their land. Source: “Farmers Take TO The Streets Over New NAFTA Rules”, article for Inter Press Service, Jan 2003

* Chronic hunger kills as many as 30-50 million people a year, more than 3 or 4 times the number who died annually during WWII. Source: “Politics of World Hunger” Statement delivered by Anuradha Mittal, Co-director of Food First/Institute For Food and Development Policy.

* One Mexican tariff that ended under NAFTA added 50 percent to the price of imported U.S. chicken. The U.S. fast food industry only wants white meat, so wings and drumsticks are often thrown out as waste or turned into animal feed. Source: “Farmers Take TO The Streets Over New NAFTA Rules”, article for Inter Press Service, Jan 2003

* In Mexico since NAFTA 8 million people dropped out of the middle class into poverty. After eight years of NAFTA, Mexican wages are down almost 30% while the cost of living increased 247%. Source: “Myths of the Free Trade Area of the America’s Agreement”, www.foodfirst.org, June 2001

* While 75% of rural Mexicans live in poverty, large agribusinesses have had record profits, reports Public Citizen. Under the NAFTA time frame, Archer Daniels Midland’s profits nearly tripled - from $ 110 million to $ 301 million - and ConAgra’s profits grew from $ 143 million to $ 413 million dollars. Source: “Farmers Take TO The Streets Over New NAFTA Rules”, article for Inter Press Service, Jan 2003

* More the 2,700 maquiladores (assembly sweatshops producing for export) have been established in Mexico since 1994. Over 1.3 million Mexican workers, mostly young women, toil in these maquiladores for wages that average 50 cents an hour. Source: Sector Analysis of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, Produced by the Alliance for Responsible Trade.