FAO Food Price Index declines in December
The benchmark measure of world food commodity prices ended 2023 approximately 10% lower than its year-earlier level.
"And we continue to progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goal hunger target of reducing by half the proportion of the undernourished population between 1990 and 2015."
The Committee on World Food Security, the world's most important intergovernmental and multi-stakeholder platform for food security and nutrition, opened its 40th session at FAO.
The session opened one week after a UN hunger report showed overall declines in undernourishment but with mixed performance among regions and countries, in the fight against the most extreme and lasting forms of food deprivation.
The report, the State of Food Insecurity in the World, estimates that 842 million people globally suffered from chronic hunger in 2011-13. This figure is down from 868 million during 2010-12, and represents a decline of 17% since 1990-92.
Regionally, as many as one in four persons experiencing undernourishment in sub-Saharan Africa, despite impressive improvements in some countries, while East Asia, South-eastern Asia, and in Latin America saw more substantial improvements.
About 75% of the world's poorest people live in rural areas and mainly depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.
Those attending forum included agriculture ministers and deputy ministers from around the world who were in Rome to attend a separate event, the Second Ministerial Meeting on International Food Prices.
More than 30 side events dealing with a wide array of issues regarding food security and nutrition are scheduled to take place at the margins of the plenary session.
