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Asian countries make food security gains
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Asia and the needs of the poorest
Protecting the very poorest in increasingly liberalized food markets by more cost-effective methods is crucial to national and household food security in Asia, says an FAO report of the Regional Conference on Asia and the Pacific.
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Innovative work schemes can provide food and money for the rural poor |
Public food distribution programmes play a huge role in many parts of this region in getting food to those living below the poverty line. Such operations account for about 25 percent of apparent consumption in China, 12 percent in India and 9 percent in Indonesia.
In many countries, the food distribution systems have been down-sized as part of economic restructuring that has also permitted inflation. Many governments were forced to take corrective measures as food prices escalated in many food-deficit areas, particularly in transition economies, which in turn increased the numbers of malnourished.
Despite rapid food production gains made under the green revolution of the late 1960s and 1970s, South and East Asia is still home to large numbers of chronically malnourished people -- about half a billion people, or 67 percent of the world's total. The 1992 International Conference on Nutrition noted that up to half a million new cases of Vitamin A deficiency-related eye damage occur each year.
Observers predict that by the year 2010 average food supplies for the projected 2 billion population of East Asia may exceed 3 000 Calories per day. Undernutrition may fall to about 4 percent of the total population, the lowest among the world's developing regions.
In South Asia, however, daily food supplies per person are still expected to be in the low-middle level of 2 450 Calories. So absolute numbers would remain high, though the halving of the percentage of the population chronically undernourished to 12 percent by the year 2010 would be significant progress.
Future progress will depend on tackling environmental problems, including worsening water scarcity and soil degradation -- 40 percent of the world's total degraded soil is in the Asia region -- while at the same time boosting yields and increasing crop intensity levels. Recent developments in ultra-high-yielding dwarf rice and other improved hybrids of sorghum and maize will be important.
