In 1974, the World Food and Agriculture Organization once put forward an exciting plan: in the next 10 years, no child will die of hunger, no family will fear that there will be no bread the next day, and at the same time, there will be no serious serious diseases caused by malnutrition. s consequence. Twenty-five years have passed, and mankind has made brilliant achievements in conquering nature.American astronauts can leave human footprints on the desolate land of the moon, British scientists can copy a sheep like a photocopier, the Internet has reduced the earth into a connected village, and astronomers have turned our The horizon extends to the immensity of the Milky Way...yet we have fallen short of our goal of eradicating hunger around the globe.Even, with the massive increase of the world population, the shadow of hunger is getting bigger and bigger, covering nearly 1/4 of the countries in the world.At present, at least 88 countries in the world are in a state of low income and food shortage, including 44 African countries, 17 Asia-Pacific countries, 9 Latin American and Caribbean countries, 6 Near East and North African countries, and 12 European and former Soviet countries. .In the third world alone, 800 million people are still suffering from hunger, and millions of people even lose their lives due to hunger every year. From 1984 to 1985, a severe famine occurred in Africa, which shocked the world.Mr. Sauma, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, has repeatedly appealed to the world, imploring member countries to provide emergency assistance to the hungry people in Africa.Although 21 countries actively responded to his appeal and provided up to 7 million tons of food aid to the hungry in Africa, more than 1 million victims still died of hunger.

In 1987, the world's grain output was 4% lower than that in 1986. In 1988, severe natural disasters reduced the world's grain output significantly, and the grain reserves fell to the lowest level since the world food crisis in the early 1970s. The output is only 1.73 billion tons, and the food of 510,000 people in the world is seriously threatened.The United States and Canada, which are known as the world's granaries, have experienced a sharp reduction in grain production, and even the Mekong Delta, the richest grain-producing region in southern Vietnam, is also alarmed about food shortages.

The time has just entered 1989, and Director-General Sauma warned people again: Food crises may occur in many countries this year.Unfortunately, as it was said, global food production has declined again. The world food reserves have dropped from 402 million tons in 1987, which was only enough to feed the world's population for 89 days, to 280 million tons, which is only enough to feed the world's population for 54 days, falling from 70 The lowest level since the world food crisis in the early 1990s. In 1991, a rare severe drought ravaged more than 20 countries in Africa, and a large area of ​​food crops withered. There was another severe famine in Africa, and 60 million people were tortured by hunger.In Zimbabwe, known as the breadbasket of southern Africa, 60% of the population lacks food; in Namibia, almost no food crops are harvested.In Malawi, 5.7 million people, or 70 percent of the population, are food insecure.According to the Mozambican government, some 3.1 million people are on the verge of starvation.In South Africa, 2.5 million black people live on cornmeal porridge as a staple food.

In 1992, there were still hundreds of millions of hungry people dying on the verge of death... In 1993 and 1994, although the world's rice production hit a record high, Australia's wheat and Russia's grain production both fell, and the total grain production fell again to the lowest level since 1988.Turning on the TV, we can still see that many hungry people in South Asia and Africa are so hungry that they don't even have the strength to pick up a bowl of gruel provided by charity organizations. On the morning of September 12, 1995, journalists and scholars from many countries in the world opened the Internet and saw a World Agriculture Report just completed by the World Agriculture Watch Group.From those boring and complicated statistics of world stocks of rice, corn, wheat and other grains, many people have discovered a shocking figure: the world's grain stocks have fallen to the lowest point in the past 20 years, which is only enough for global consumption 53 day level.

World food stocks are an important indicator of whether the global population has enough food to eat. In 1973, when the grain reserves were reduced to only enough for 55 days of global consumption, grain prices doubled, and the prices of various foods also generally rose, triggering a worldwide panic.Afterwards, experts pointed out based on research that once the world's grain turnover reserves fall below 60 days, the world's grain market will be in a highly unstable state.Statistics from the World Food and Agriculture Organization show that the world's grain stocks are declining year by year. In 1973, the global grain inventory was 315 million tons, which could be consumed by the world population for 76 days. By 1994, the global grain inventory had dropped to 294 million tons, which was only enough for the whole world to eat for 62 days. In 1995, it was even worse. The reserve is only 262 million tons, which is only enough to feed the whole world for 53 days.

Just this month, the tense world heads of state immediately organized and participated in the 44th World Food Production Conference to study the countermeasures to resolve the food crisis.Developments since then have shown that the situation has not been effectively turned around. On April 13, 1996, the British "Guardian" published an article by Tim Radford, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper's science and technology, pointing out that at the beginning of the new year, the world's grain reserves were lower than ever before, only enough for 48 days. Hunger is threatening our world day by day.

According to the estimates of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, at present, there are about 1 billion people in the world, that is, nearly one-fifth of people are living in a state of continuous and severe hunger, and 100 million of them are on the verge of death.Every year, more than 500,000 people die of hunger around the world, an average of 1,700 people die of starvation every day. In fact, this is still the most conservative value, calculated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization based on the "minimum critical limit" of food intake.Each person must consume 1600 calories per day in order to maintain people's minimum physical exertion, which is equivalent to about 150 kilograms of food per year.To achieve a good food intake, the per capita daily calorie requirement is 2,400 calories, and about 225 kilograms of grain is needed per year. However, most developing countries cannot meet this target.Even if calculated on the basis of life support alone, the average daily calorie requirement per person is more than 1,300 calories, which translates to at least 125 kilograms of food per year.However, many countries are still below this "lifeline".In the 45 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the average annual grain per capita is only 100 kg, and the least is only 50 kg.In addition, Mali is only 129 kg, Nigeria is 96 kg, and Chad is only 91 kg.

At the World Food Summit in 1996, Pope Paul called hunger "a contempt for all mankind", and he called on the heads of state of the 194 countries participating in the meeting to make every effort to "eliminate the specter of hunger from the face of the earth".That meeting adopted the Rome Declaration on World Food Security and the World Food Summit Plan of Action. However, it is obviously not an easy task to achieve this goal.Although in recent years, food production has been paid attention to by countries all over the world, the food situation is still quite severe due to frequent natural disasters and population growth that has not been completely curbed.Although we have no signs of a global food shortage at present, the problem of food shortage in some areas is becoming more and more serious.According to the estimates of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the world's total grain output in 1998 will reach 1.895 billion tons, which is lower than the level of 19.08 tons in 1997.The number of countries in need of emergency assistance has increased from 31 last year to 37, and food demand has increased by more than 5.5 million tons.Russia is a country with a relatively high food self-sufficiency rate, and is now facing a food shortage crisis.The Russian Ministry of Agriculture and Food announced that the grain output in 1998 was about 45 million tons, which fell to the lowest point in the past 45 years. The national grain reserves dropped from 105 million tons in the previous year to the current 78 million tons, a drop of 25%. At present, there is at least 8.3 million tons of grain shortage.The most serious is still dozens of countries in South Africa and South Asia, almost every two minutes, 3 people starve to death.There are more than 23 million people in sub-Saharan Africa (that is, black Africa) suffering from hunger. Among them, due to the drought, Zimbabwe's agricultural output has been greatly reduced. At present, 3 million people are struggling to die across the country. Angola, Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique 4 countries currently have at least 1.4 million tons of food shortages.Thousands of hungry people are struggling on the verge of death, casting a heavy shadow on our age of advanced civilization.