Global hunger and resilience – one part of the puzzle

The International Food Policy ResearchInstitute (IFPRI) has recently released the 2013 Global Hunger Index (GHI). The GHI uses an amalgamated score across three measures to rank countries and regions on a 100 point scale. The higher the index score the more dire the levels of hunger or to put it another way, the greater the prevalence of food insecurity within a country. 

The three measures – each equally weighted – are:

• Proportion of people who are undernourished
• Proportion of children younger than 5 years who are underweight
• Child mortality rates for children under 5 years

Afghani farming systems program meets up in New Delhi

The inaugural program oversight meeting for Improving the Productivity of Afghan Farming Systems in Water Scarce Environments was recently held in New Delhi, India. ACIAR staff member Joy Hardman gives this report...

This AusAID-funded program for Afghanistan includes three ACIAR projects researching sustainable wheat and maize production, integrated catchment management, and livestock forage options, all with the aim of improving the livelihoods of Afghani smallholder farmers.

Afghani farmer with maize harvest

International Women's Day 2013

Today is International Women's Day.

Here at the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) we're continually striving to take steps forward towards an integrated approach to gender in our projects. Addressing the gender disparities between women and men farmers in the developing world represents a significant development potential in itself.

An ACIAR project in Papua New Guinea is helping to increase women's business skills.
(Photo by Paul Jones)

7 billion today, this week, or this month or...?

This week the world’s population will hit 7 billion people. Actually it may have already occurred, or may occur in the next few months, but more on that later.

Put simply 7 billion mouths are a lot to feed, and given some 13 million of us are currently facing starvation in the famine devastating the Horn of Africa it is a daunting prospect. Another 1 billion of we people live in hunger and poverty every day.

(above: US Census Bureau chart illustrating world population change in history)

And to make matters more complicated our population is projected to grow by another 2 billion people in the next forty years.

To put some perspective to that, in 1900 the world’s population was an estimated 1.6 billion. In 2000 it was 6 billion. It has taken just over a decade to add the next billion souls.

Which raises a couple of questions:

• Are the estimates of an extra 2 billion people over the next forty years right (after all that is adding to our population at half the rate of the past decade)?
• And how exactly will we feed these people, given most of the new additions will be in developing countries?