The 1996 World Food Summit established a goal to reduce hunger by half by 2015.  Sadly the goal appears out of reach now, no thanks to irresponsible and self serving environmentalists such as the inappropriately named Greenpeace and the Friends of the Earth (FOE).

In fact, the number of people suffering from hunger has increased by 40 million this year, the Rome-based United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said recently. Some 963 million people are now affected, according to FAO's latest report on the state of food insecurity in the world.

"It will require an enormous and resolute global effort and concrete actions to reduce the number of hungry by 500 million by 2015," said FAO Assistant Director-General Hafez Ghanem.

He added that reaching the target would need an investment of 30 billion dollars annually for agriculture and social protection in poor countries.

The FAO report said higher food prices were the primary cause of the increase in people suffering from hunger, despite the fact that these have now dropped since the beginning of the year.

"The structural problems of hunger, like the lack of access to land, credit and employment, combined with high food prices remain a dire reality," he added.  Nearly two thirds of the world's hungry live in Asia (583 million), although sub-Saharan Africa has the highest proportion of undernourished people in the total population (236 million, or one in three people), according to the report. (i)

At the risk of sounding facetious, and in the view of Deforestation Watch, having enough food is perhaps one of the most basic and important issues for many people in the world.  Yet we have the likes of Greenpeace and FOE engaging in socially irresponsible and self serving programs, vigorously opposing expansion of palm oil cultivation, a source of edible oil which is a basic food need.  They argue that palm oil expansion is at the expense of tropical rainforests and impending extinction of exotic animals such as the orang utan.

However there is one fundamental problem with Greenpeace and the FOE’s diatribes against palm oil as it is indisputable and well established that palm oilo is the most productive of all the oilseed crops.  With a yield of more than 4.5 metric tons per hectare, palm oil outstrips the other oilseed crops in terms of productivity, by up to ten times.  This simple fact exposes the lie behind Greenpeace and FOE’s wild allegations for any casual observer can easily deduce that such productivity means that palm oil requires ten times LESS land to produce the same unit of oil as its competitors.  

That explains why Malaysia had been the world’s largest producer of palm oil for more than a hundred years and yet could preserve forest cover of 65%.  That also explains why palm oil is the most popular and favored of edible oils amongst the food manufacturers and food processors.  Not only is palm oil cheap and reasonably priced, it is also healthful and packed with heart friendly nutrients such as Co Enzyme Q10, Beta-carotene and toco-trienols, a superior form of Vitamin E!

In the view of Deforestation Watch, palm oil is contributing to eradication of world hunger and should have been the poster boy for any socially responsible organization campaigning for the elimination of world hunger.  However, it may be a bridge too far as social responsibility is not something any reasonably intelligent member of the world community would associate with Greenpeace and the FOE.  THE END.

Reference
(i) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/world/10briefs-WORLDHUNGERI_BRF.html?ref=world