Contents

Foreword
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Millions more food-insecure – urgent action and substantial investments needed

Undernourishment around the world
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High food prices: another 75 million hungry
Driving forces of high food prices
Taking stock of world hunger: revised estimates
Hotspots and emergencies

High food prices and food security
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Poor households worst hit
Coping and nutritional outcomes

Towards the Summit commitments
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Policy responses: effective and sustainable?
Smallholder agriculture for poverty reduction
Ensuring access to food
Concluding remarks

Technical annex
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Updated parameters
Tables

Notes

Acknowledgements

The preparation of The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008 was carried out under the overall leadership of Hafez Ghanem, Assistant Director- General, and the guidance of the management team of the Economic and Social Development Department. The technical coordination of the publication was carried out by Kostas Stamoulis and Mark Smulders of the Agricultural Development Economics Division (ESA). The staff of the Statistics Division (ESS) generated the underlying data on undernourishment, including the estimates for 2007.

The chapter “Undernourishment around the world” was prepared by the Economic and Social Development Department with key technical contributions provided by Henri Josserand, Kisan Gunjal and Ali Gürkan, Markets and Trade Division (EST); Ricardo Sibrian (ESS); and Andrew Marx, Jeff Marzilli, Josef Schmidhuber and Jakob Skoet (ESA).

The analysis of the impact of high food prices at household level was carried out by the FAO Rural Income Generating Activities team led by Benjamin Davis with the participation of Alberto Zezza, Gustavo Anriquez, Panagiotis Karfakis and David Dawe, while the section “Coping and nutritional outcomes” received valuable contributions from Diego Rose of Tulane University, Brian Thompson and Marie Claude Dop of the Nutrition and Consumer Protection Division, and Maarten Immink and Cristina Lopriore (ESA).

The chapter “Towards the Summit commitments” benefited from technical inputs by James Tefft, Panagiotis Karfakis, David Dawe and Alberto Zezza (ESA), and Andrew Shepherd from the Rural Infrastructure and Agro-Industries Division.

Ricardo Sibrian, Cinzia Cerri, Rafik Mahjoubi, Seevalingum Ramasawmy and Nathalie Troubat (ESS) provided vital support to the data analysis. Valuable external comments and inputs were received from Hartwig de Haen, Peter Hazell, Yasmeen Khwaja and Andrew MacMillan. Bruce Isaacson provided excellent editorial support.

The Electronic Publishing Policy and Support Branch of the Knowledge and Communication Department (KC) provided editorial, language editing, graphic and production services. Translations were provided by the Meeting Programming and Documentation Service of KC. Overall funding was provided under the FAO interdepartmental programme on Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping Systems (FIVIMS).

Published in 2008 by the
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00153 Rome, Italy

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© FAO 2008
ISBN 978-92-5-106049-0

Printed in Italy
Photographs : From left to right on cover: FAO/22071/G. Bizzarri; FAO/24503/D. White; FAO/23283/A. Proto.