World Food Day 2006
Today is World Food Day. Every year, this day becomes an opportunity for all to increase awareness and understanding and to commit to informed, year-around action to alleviate hunger. This year's theme is "Investing in Agriculture for Food Security."
"Recently there has been a significant revival in lending for agriculture. Debt forgiveness programmes, strengthened by the G8 decision in 2005, have begun to release national resources for investment in agriculture. But much still remains to be done," said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf today.
According to World Food Day USA, the first World Food Day was in 1981. In the United States, the endeavor is sponsored by 450 national, private voluntary organizations.
Agriculture may have become a minor player in many industrialized economies, but it must play a starring role on the world stage if we are to bring down the curtain on hunger, noted the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on its World Food Day website. Yet foreign aid for agriculture and rural development has continued to decline. From a total of over US$9 billion per year in the early 1980s, it fell to less than US$5 billion in the late 1990s. Meanwhile, an estimated 854 million people around the world remain undernourished.
"Despite the progress achieved in agriculture and rural development, more than 850 million people still remain hungry with few opportunities for work and increased income. Our greatest challenge today is to reach the objectives of the World Food Summit and first UN Millennium Development Goal, to halve by 2015 hunger and alleviate poverty worldwide," said Dr. Diouf.
WHY's Food Security Learning Center educates the public about the food security movement — a movement that shows how the food system is connected, how food grows, how it’s processed, who grows it, what is eaten, where it comes from, who goes hungry and why.
