‘1,020m people go hungry in world’-VJAS Draws PM’s Attention to Impending Food Crisis-Times Report

‘1,020m people go hungry in world’

VJAS Draws PM’s Attention to Impending Food Crisis

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Nagpur: Drawing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s attention to the recent United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organization report on impending food crisis in the world’ farmers activist group Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) has demanded that special measures like National Food Security Mission betaken in suicide prone areas of Vidarbha.“Ever since a majority of farmers in west Vidarbha shifted to mono crop cultivation of cotton or soyabean, there has been a severe food shortage leading to high number of suicide in the six districts of the region,” Kishor Tiwari of VJAS said. According to him the area of land under cash crop cultivation has increased to almost 95% in recent years and that is one of the main reasons of increasing distress and debt due to high cost of cultivation of these4 cash crop.

VJAS has been demanding introduction of food security mission in west Vidarbha t ensure provision of essential food grains to farmers to save them from taking own lives at times of such distress. Quoting the FAO report, Tiwari said that world hunger is projected to reach a historic high in 2009 with 1,020 million people going hungry every day. The increase in hunger is not the consequence of poor global harvests but is caused by the world economic crisis that has resulted in lower incomes and increased unemployment.

This has reduced access to food by the poor according to the UN agency. The FAO reported has also touched on the root causes of agrarian crisis among small and marginal dry land farmers involved in non food crop cultivation. FAO director general Jacques Diouf has said in the reported “A dangerous mix of the global economic slowdown combined with stubbornly high food proce in many countries has pushed some 100 million more people than last year into chronic hunger crisis – affecting one sixth of all of humanity– poses a serious rusk to world peace and security.Almost all of the world’s undernourished live in developing countries. In Asia and the Pacific, an estimated 642 million people are suffering from chronic

hunger, in Sub-Saharan Africa 265 million; in Latin America and the Caribbean 53 million in the Near East and North Africa 42 million; and in developed countries 15 million in total.

Tiwari has also slammed the Maharashtra government for its failure to implement the Narendra Jadhav committee report. “The report was accepted by the state legislature in December last year, but till date the government has not prepared any action plan to implement it,” lamented Tiwari. Jadhav has recommended special measures for 4.34 lakh severely distressed families in the six affected districts and urgent healthcare facilities for 92,000 families whose members are suffering from serious ailments and draining the farm incomes. “Instead of giving a serious thought to his findings, the UPA government has rewarded Jadhav by giving him the post of Planning’s Commission member,” Tiwari alleged.

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