The latest figures from the Red Cross show that, while 15 per cent of the world’s population is starving, 20 per cent are obese. The figures for 2010 reveal that 1.5 billion people are dangerously overweight, while 925 million are underfed.

The Red Corss said the figures, taken from its annual World Disasters Report, go to show that, despite political and industry rhetoric to the contrary, the world produces enough food, but what is produced is unevenly distributed. The Red Cross drew attention to the fact that in 2010 fewer people died of starvation than were killed by the results of overeating. image expired

Eminent environmental scientist Vaclav Smil called for more to be done to counter serious ‘inefficiencies’ in the global food supply chain in the year 2000. He said inefficiencies result in massive food wastage and uneven distribution. In his book Feeding the World: A challenge for the Twenty-First Century Smil considered the complete food cycle, including agricultural loss and consumer waste, and concluded that an increased emphasis on efficiency and distribution, rather than scaling-up an inefficient system, would best address challenges in global agriculture.

Bekele Geleta, a Red Cross spokesperson said, "If the free interplay of market forces has produced an outcome where 15 per cent of humanity are hungry while 20 per cent are overweight, something has gone wrong somewhere."

The organisation blamed poor global distribution, wastage and rising prices for reducing people’s access to food. Though there was a barely perceptible fall between July and August, global food prices remain troublingly high. Meredith Alexander, who heads the HungerFree campaign at ActionAid, commented on the findings, "We have always known that hunger is a man-made tragedy, not a result of natural scarcity."

Commodity trading blamed for worsening the effects

Many blame speculative commodity trading for exacerbating the problem, claiming it drives up food prices, thereby decreasing access to food for the world’s poorest and increasing inequality. As part of its presidency of the G20 France has pledged to reign in the speculators, although several other powers have objected.

The Soil Association has challenged the oft-cited need to 'double food production by 2050,' stating that the figures comes from incorrect assumptions drawn from a UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) paper and that, under current circumstances, even if global production doubled inequality would still persist, which in all probability would still deny the world’s poorest access to sufficient food. image expired

Last year the organisation released its report Telling porkies: The big fat lie about doubling food production, which challenged what it claims is a widely held assumption that has dominated policy and media discussions on food and farming. Upon its release, Peter Melchett, Soil Association policy director, said, "Many of those misusing the statistics in the FAO paper to argue for massive increases in food production in both UK and globally, appear to be unaware that they are in effect condemning many in developing countries to ill-health and early deaths, because they assume the spread of our unhealthy, Western diet to developing countries. In addition, these projections assume an increase of over a billion cattle, which would lead to massive increases in emissions of global warming gases."

Experts in the UN, particularly the FAO and Environment Programme (UNEP), are currently championing agroecological research and techniques as a means of farming sustainably and tackling inequality. They say these methods hold the key to facing up to food security challenges and to the threats of climate change. The bodies say that agroecology creates resilient systems, particularly when applied in developing countries, which have yielded results by combining the latest in scientific knowledge with more environmentally sound farming.