Action needed to feed the hungry

Economic advance in Asia and the Pacific has been impressive in the last decades, and a recent World Bank report has highlighted the dramatic progress made in poverty reduction across the region. In 1981, 77 percent of Asians lived in poverty, but just 20 years later the proportion had dropped to 14 percent.

Nevertheless, the Asia-Pacific region remains home to two out of every three of the world's hungry. Sixty-two percent of the undernourished population of the world lives in this region. That means around half a billion people hungry; that is half a billion too many.

The region's challenge over the next decades will therefore be threefold: to eradicate hunger and assure everyone's right to food; to increase agricultural production in the face of climate change and rapid urbanization; and to do so in an environmentally, socially and economically sustainable manner.

Those are of course global challenges, facing populations not just in Asia but elsewhere too. But they are of particular relevance to the world's most populous region, which is home to the vast majority of the world's small farms and where almost all of the potential arable land is already in use.

It follows that much of the food needed to feed the predicted two billion extra mouths between now and 2050 will need to come from intensifying smallholder agriculture on existing land rather than by opening up new areas for cultivation. Doing this without further jeopardizing delicate ecosystems and limited natural resources calls for new and sustainable approaches.

In rice production, for example, new Sustainable Rice Intensification techniques that include non-flooded, aerobic rice fields are starting to replace traditional paddies. Smallholders can achieve yield increases of a ton per hectare or more, while sharply reducing water and fertilizer use and greenhouse emissions.

But while producing more food is vital, it will not be enough on its own. The world already has enough food, and yet 925 million people are still undernourished. The main cause of hunger is lack of adequate access to food. The main issue is assuring that, starting at the local level, people have the money to buy food or can grow enough for themselves and their families. Hunger may be a global challenge. But people eat in their homes, in their cities and villages.