All this is very good and true and I admire the author's commitment to the MDGs. But on the first point regarding 'social protection', may I suggest that it include access to reproductive health and family planning. It is nonsense to assume unending food security when farmers in Ethiopia, for instance, are trying to feed 14 children from one small plot that cannot be subdivided further. The number of people in the world has to be balanced with the amount of arable land available. It will be easier to feed the 925 million currently hungry were there not another 80 million people added to the world annually.

I quite agree there, popnperish. Good old family planning could
work wonders in the third world, as it has in the first world.
Many of the poor simply can't afford it and of course many of
our religious fanatics still fight tooth and nail against it.

Affordable and available family planning for all who want it and
you would soon help solve the hunger problem. Ignore it at your peril.

Agreed popnperish and Yabby. But I think you are being far too gentle with Shenggen Fan.

His solutions to halving hunger are terrible!

They are simply geared towards supplying ever-more food, in a world with rapidly increasing populations in already critically resource-stressed countries.

He has just completely missed the imperative to address the demand side of the equation and has concentrated entirely on the supply side. This is HOPELESSLY unbalanced!

We absolutely MUST address population growth and sustainability issues AT LEAST as fervently as food-production issues.

If we are really successful at doing the five things and only the five things that Shenggen Fan suggests, the issue of poverty and food scarcity will NOT be overcome, or even significantly reduced in an ongoing manner.

He is not looking at the issue holistically. It just completely boggles my mind as to how someone like the Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute can get it so drastically wrong or lop-sided!

There are many ways to tackle the issue of world hunger.

We should also look at the food we waste:

http://www.worldvision.ca/Education-and-Justice/advocacy-in-action/Pages/what-a-waste-the-food-we-throw-away.aspx

Food that we throw out has gone through all the steps to get to our homes but in the end gets thrown in the garbage. We might as well throw money into the garbage, though I guess comforting (for lack of a better word) is the thought that at least by buying the items we are keeping the economy moving.

http://currentglobalperceptions.blogspot.com/

You are all correct in my view.

Another couple of suggestions would be for people to sponsor a child [those who are able to spare $20 or $20 per week out of their wages] to sponsor a child in one of the African regions.

For 15 years my children and self have sponsored a girl and her siblings with a meagre amount taken out of my wages. Gifts are sent at Christmas time [some do make it to her]; the odd one returned over the years. The letters sent from this beautiful girl, written in her handwriting, demonstrates that all of her clothing and educational needs along with some basic foods have assisted.

Ludwig you are spot on though, common sense dictates that until the over-population issue is addressed effectively in certain areas of various countries, the problem will exist and continue to intensify.

A third of food purchased gets chucked out? For whom? It might be true for an active footy player if you count the vomit, but I cannot recall throwing out a third of the food I buy, like a third of all the meat, eggs, fish, dairy, grain and cereal, nuts, fruit and veges. I would throw out less than 10 percent.

A third looks like a totally bs figure made up to make people in developed countries feel guilty for their high living, when the truth is that far more food gets wasted in developing countries because they lack the infrastructure to protect it. Twenty percent of India's grain crop gets eaten by rodents each year, and a lack of transportation and processing facilities prevents large amounts of food going to waste. Of course, processed foods would be unaffordable to a large number of Indians even if they were available.

The reason for Australian's prosperity is the efficient use of resources by a skilled population, with a substantial amount of supporting infrastructure. It is a mistake to confuse efficiency with wastage. If you want examples of wastage, then look at developing countries. To reduce wastage, you need a higher amount of infrastructure per capita, and you will only accomplish that by stabilising populations.

Ok Fester, those figures do not represent your admirable managing skills. Taking into account my personal efforts I too find the figure rather high and I must admit that the link I provided didn't give any breakdown of the figures. Plus it mentions the UK and Canada. Australia would perhaps be similar or perhaps have less wastage, the point was to indicate that food wastage occurs in our developed economies.

For a more Australia-specific site: http://foodwise.com.au/did-you-know/fast-facts.aspx

Also, I think the article was trying to encourage the promotion of infrastructure improvement which as you correctly mention can reduce wastage in developing countries.

As for stable populations being conducive to less food wastage, take a look at Japan and how much food is thrown out on a daily basis (6,000 tons/day in Tokyo according to this March 2009 article): http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fd20090301pb.html

And this looks like a great implementation of technology to determine the use-by-date of each item of fresh produce (not all cuts of meats etc are made equal after all): http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/scientists-set-sights-on-cutting-food-wastage/story-e6frgakx-1225930192551

http://currentglobalperceptions.blogspot.com/