Undernourished People Likely to Be Increased Up To 132mn This year: FAO

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that this year the number of undernourished citizens would rise by as much as 132 million.

In addition, as a result of the pandemic, the number of chronically malnourished children worldwide will increase by 6.7 billion, UNB reports.

For many farmers, the coronavirus pandemic has brought hard times and has jeopardized food supply for many millions in both the cities and the countryside.

The experts at the United Nations are hosting an international conference starting Tuesday to discuss solutions to help reduce malnutrition and keep crises from escalating in the Asia-Pacific area — a mission rendered doubly challenging by the disappearance of several millions of jobs due to the crisis.

“We are facing two pandemics. Covid-19, which beyond its health toll is crushing livelihoods, and hunger, a scourge the international community pledged to eradicate by the end of this decade," Qu Dongyu, the FAO's director-general said in a commentary ahead of the virtual meeting.

Disruptions due to outbreaks of the illness and restrictions on businesses and travel to control them run the gamut, from crops going unharvested by migrant workers unable to reach their jobs to transport problems to farm families selling livestock and equipment to survive.

The FAO said ahead of the conference, in a report prepared.

The combined impacts of Covid-19, natural disasters such as typhoons and drought, diseases and pests such as locusts have highlighted the need to build stronger capacity to “manage multiple risks to food systems," the report said.

The FAO urges the faster implementation of high-tech resources such as drones and mobile apps to track crops, pests and other farming conditions as part of a food system transition to make them more resilient and reduce risks, particularly for the most vulnerable smallholder farmers in poor nations.

This includes food-deprived areas such as Yemen, where the UN estimates more than a quarter of a million children suffer from extreme malnutrition and may die without treatment, and parts of Africa where about 5 million people are faced with hunger due to locust outbreaks.

But even in affluent nations like the US long queues at food banks testify to the struggle to keep families alive and tens of millions of newly unemployed people.

Restricted borders and canceled commercial flights in countries such as Thailand, where tourism tends to keep the economy afloat, have a ripple effect across many sectors.

The FAO report released for the conference, sponsored by Bhutan, recommended providing loans to farmers to help them avoid selling their livestock and other assets to get by.

It noted that in the northeast of the country, enterprising fishing villages in southern Thailand's Phuket have established barter dealings with rice farmers. In Indonesia, some fishermen unable to ship their catches turned to net more cheap fish they can sell to local villagers.

Farmers in many countries are gradually using e-commerce and digital data to fine-tune the planting and other agricultural aspects. Chinese e-commerce sites help balance supply and demand for agricultural produce and other products.

FAO experts noted there were many potential home-grown solutions on a smaller scale, literally like farming using sacks or hydroponics, growing crickets for food, and processing the milk of camels for cheese making.