World Food Day is celebrated every year on 16 October to commemorate the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 1945. The aim of World Food Day is to heighten public awareness of the plight of the world’s hungry and malnourished and to encourage people worldwide to take action against hunger.

In 2010 it was estimated that there are 1.02 billion hungry people (15 percent of the estimated world population of 6.8 billion). Food production will have to increase by 70 percent to feed the estimated world population of nine billion people by 2050.

The world represented as a village of 100 people:

• 24 have no electricity.
• 25 have no source of safe water in their homes or within a short walking distance.
• 32 do not breathe clean air.
• 40 have no access to sanitary facilities.
• 50 do not have a reliable source of food and are hungry some or all of the time, and 20 more are severely malnourished at all times.
• Only 30 always have enough to eat.

If all the money in the village were divided equally, each person would have $6,200 a year. But in the global village, money is not divided equally. At one end, 20 people out of 100 would have more than $9,000 a year. At the other, 20 would have less than a dollar a day.

To find out more about this day visit

www.fao.org/getinvolved/worldfoodday/en/

www.worldhunger.org