1. Is the world population too large to be adequately fed?

Every year, the world population increases by 100 million.
After having increased very slowly for thousands of years, the world population doubled between 1960 and 1990. However, although population growth continues, it has slowed down all over the world (except in Africa) and according to United Nations predictions, it should stabilize at around 11 billion people in the year 2100.

For the time being, agricultural production is keeping up with population growth: it has tripled since the beginning of the 1960s.
Theoretically, there is now 40% more grain available per person than thirty years ago. This amounts to 2,700 calories per individual, which is higher than the normal requirements (an average of 2,200 calories). Huge production reserves still exist almost everywhere, except in Asia. However, even on this continent, the widespread famines that ravaged India for thousands of years, disappeared 25 years ago. In 1965/1966 in India, a serious drought resulted in the implementation of the green revolution – a technical innovation combining high-yield crops, fertilizers, irrigation and pesticides – which doubled India's cereal production.
The creation of a meteorological watch system and the constitution of reserve stocks now allow the world to cope with natural disasters without there being too many human casualties. Malnutrition persists because of social reasons – poverty, inequalities, ethnic and religious conflict, etc.

Consequently, the world situation in terms of food is not disturbing, even with a population of 11 billion people or more.

2. Why is it that with so many agricultural surpluses, 800 million people go hungry?

Only 20 million tons of cereal are needed to eradicate malnutrition. A mere 10% of world stocks. However, although famine is becoming less frequent – on out of every five people in the Third World compared to one out of every three in 1960 – malnutrition persists today for reasons that are not related to the existing potential.

Famine is not a problem of resource availability, but rather of distribution. Even when there is surplus food production in a country, some groups within the population do not have access to an adequate food supply. This is the case in Brazil, one of the world's main exporters of cereal. In addition, a large part of the massive agricultural surplus comes from the North where agriculture is protected and subsidized, while in the South, people are suffering from starvation.

 3. If they had less children, would they be less hungry?

There is no link between population density and nutritional level. It is not necessarily in the most densely populated countries that people suffer the most from malnutrition. Java in Indonesia, and Burundi in Africa are very densely populated but their populations are well fed because there is a dynamic agricultural sector and high yields. Inversely, people die of starvation in vast, sparsely cultivated countries like DR Congo. It all depends on the way in which agriculture is encouraged, if at all, and whether the economy is diversified (thus providing surpluses) or dynamic.

It is not the number of people that counts but the way in which they use the environment in which they live.
Paradoxically, a high population density has often stimulated agricultural innovations and the people are therefore better fed. On the other had, what is dangerous is the sharp increase in population growth while the agricultural systems remain traditional and with no emphasis on modernization. This is what has happened in Africa.

4. How can we combat malnutrition effectively?

Development is the best weapon against starvation.
In fact, this leads to an overall improvement in the standard of living and helps to reduce the number of poor undernourished people. In thirty years, the number of persons suffering from malnutrition has decreased steadily everywhere, except in Africa. However, development is a long-term weapon.

Today there must be programs geared towards the first victims.
It is possible in two years, to reduce by half, or even two-thirds, the malnutrition rate in a poor region provided that those suffering from malnutrition are clearly identified, educational programs on food and nutrition specially designed for them, agriculture developed, and jobs created.

Work with women and mothers in particular.
The status of women, especially their level of education, directly influences the way in which they feed their children. There is a mathematical relationship between the number of years of formal education mothers receive and the number of children that they have, as well as the infant mortality rate. Nevertheless, women with no formal education can feed their children correctly if they are specially trained. This is why in all the countries where we work, Action Against Hunger attached particular importance to mother and child health care programs and the creation of programs designed for women.

5. Is the same type of action required for both malnutrition and famine?

Although they both primarily affect what is called "high risk groups for starvation" ‚ children under five, pregnant women and nursing mothers, the elderly and the infirm ‚ famine and malnutrition shouldn't be placed on the same level. They do not have the same causes, consequences or same degree of gravity.

Malnutrition is "silent starvation."
Many people in Third World countries are undernourished and never starve, but their meals are unbalanced both in terms of quantity and quality. This prevents them from fully utilizing their energy capacity. Although malnutrition is a widespread phenomenon in the Third World, it does not have consequences as dramatic as those of famine. Malnutrition can be fought through development programs that aim to increase agricultural production and to improve health and eating habits. This is what AAH does in countries where it is long established, like Cambodia, Laos, Haiti, Chad, and Ethiopia in order to fight problems of recurrent poverty.

Famine is a situation of extreme hunger where there is absolutely no food available for the entire population and which results in quick and many deaths if no relief assistance is provided.
Famine crises that are desperate and dramatic are today sporadic and disappearing. There is no longer any place on earth where death from starvation is a permanent problem. But famines exist as a consequence of wars. In the face of famine, emergency food supplies, distribution of drinking water, and the fight against illness become necessary to prevent a human disaster.

6. In what circumstances do famines occur nowadays?

"Climatic" famines no longer exist. Areas experiencing extensive famines coincide today with areas of war.
Any climatic crisis today, a drought for example, should not result in a famine because humanitarian and international organizations are constantly on the lookout for any deterioration in the food situation in order to be able to set up aid programs in time. When a drought degenerates into a famine, it is either because the government of the country refuses to raise alarm in time, as was the case in Ethiopia in 1984 or it prevents the victim populations from migrating in search of food. It can also be that the government does not allow humanitarian aid to reach them, by diverting it instead for its own benefit.

The present famines are always the result of wars or ethnic and religious confrontations.
These famines therefore do not necessarily affect the poorest people. This is the case in southern Sudan, where agriculture could be flourishing were it not for the war between north and south. All the famines that have occurred in Somalia, Ethiopia, Liberia, Angola and Mozambique within the last ten years, have been the result of murderous conflicts that generate thousands of refugees or displaced persons, the first victims of famine.

 7. Why are the poor hungry?

The poor suffer from hunger because they do not produce sufficient food to meet their requirements and because they are too poor to buy food. Their training is also insufficient to prevent them from making serious errors concerning nutrition, especially for their children - unsuitable food, abrupt weaning, diarrhea which is either left untreated or not properly treated.

8. How are famines used in today's conflicts?

Deliberately created famines
The dynamics behind these famines: Civilian populations are forced into towns where it is impossible to gather food from the fields and bring in their harvest, so they starve to death.
The "usefulness" of artificially created famines:
- they call in humanitarian aid that can then be hijacked by armed forces.
- they acquire a political legitimacy by prioritizing international recognition over access to victims.
Affected countries:
- Angola, where insecurity and landmines are preventing civilians from returning to the fields for the harvest.
- Liberia and Sierra Leone, where the different armed factions have mastered the art of using hunger to sustain the war effort.

Famines exposed
The dynamics of these famines: The government of a country deliberately leaves the population of one region to die of starvation so as to arouse international compassion. This occurs regardless of the fact that it has at its disposal all the material and financial resources necessary to save those who do not have enough food.
The "usefulness" of these famines:
- they succeed in 'freeing' a country from a prejudicial situation, for example by lifting an embargo.
Affected country: Iraq.
- they attract humanitarian aid which is useful as a compensation for economic miscalculations.
Affected country: North Korea.

Famines denied
Although the original reason for the outbreak of famine in a region may be natural, such as a lack of rainfall, the government of the affected country then refuses to declare a state of emergency and to accept aid, thus preventing assistance from reaching victims and creating a disaster which could easily have been avoided.
The "usefulness" of denied famines:
- to get rid of ethnic, political or religious minorities
Country affected:
- Sudan; they divert international attention away from an obvious disregard for human rights or a disastrous economic management.
Countries affected:
- China, where according to official propaganda, everything is running perfectly smoothly except that nobody knows precisely what is happening in the peripheral mountainous provinces;
- Kenya in 1992, which refused to admit that famine was affecting populations originating from North Eastern Somalia, until the situation became impossible to deny;
- Chad, which refused to admit, at the beginning of 1996, that there was a famine in Kanem because reserve stocks had been squandered a few months before the presidential elections.

 9. How many people suffer from hunger?

If food were evenly distributed, each human being would have plenty to eat. However, between 750 and 800 million people throughout the world do not have enough to eat.
The number of victims of malnutrition has been decreasing over the last thirty years:
In 1970, there were almost one billion victims. In the developing countries, one inhabitant in three did not get enough to eat.
In 1996, the 750 million victims of malnutrition represented one in six of the same population.

 10. Where do people suffer from hunger?

Three quarters of those suffering from malnutrition are from rural areas, and one quarter are city dwellers living in the shanty towns of big cities in poor countries.

550 million victims of malnutrition live in Asia and 170 million in sub-Saharan Africa, the principal areas of malnutrition.
The number of victims of malnutrition has fallen worldwide, except for Africa where policies, which are hostile to agriculture and particularly the frequency of conflicts striking the civilian populations, explain the continuing extent of hunger:

• Although the African population represents less than 15% of the world's population, it has almost one quarter of the world's victims of malnutrition.
• Out of the 25 million refugees throughout the world, most of whom depend on food aid to survive, half are in Africa.
• Out of the 30 million displaced people throughout the world (i.e. those who have had to leave their homes and their land and have often lost everything and could not reach a border, thus being unable to benefit from international protection), two thirds are in Africa.
  

  While the development of a country is almost always accompanied by a decrease in the number of victims of malnutrition, hunger has nonetheless reappeared in the West, as a result of poverty and exclusion. The same is true in Eastern Europe and in the former USSR, where the end of socialist regimes resulted in the collapse of collective agriculture which had formerly been protected by subsidies. Added to this, the acute vulnerability of elderly people, whose income has collapsed with the liberalization of the economy, is clearly evident.