Backsliding Against Malnutrition

The Millennium Development Goals stated an ambition to cut severe poverty and hunger in half by the year 2015. The recent rise in staple food prices and global economic crisis make it clear that these goals will not be met and that recent gains in mitigating malnutrition are being erased. The number of malnourished people has increased to more than 1 billion, from ∼800 million a few years ago. National responses have included restrictions on food exports and a rise in the practice of foreign investment in agriculture to ensure food security on the part of countries with limited land and/or water to feed their own populations. There are critical needs to increase production yet again and to protect the interests of the poor. The world's population will stabilize by mid-century but the quality of that half-century depends on political will, technological capacity, and commitment.