"Hunger is not due to the scarcity of food, but to an unfair distribution of food and the lack of access to and control over natural resources". With these words, Francisco Sarmento, director of the Food Rights Team of ActionAid International, an independent international organisation dealing with poverty and social exclusion, comments the 2006 FAO report on the state of food insecurity that was presented in Rome yesterday. According to the report, 854 million human beings are at risk, an absolute figure that is increasing, far from the Objectives of the Millennium that aimed at cutting world famine by half by 2015. According to the FAO Report, there can be no substantial reduction in hunger without investments in farming and rural development. But an ActionAid report reveals, instead, "that the global levels of public aids to development allocated to farming have collapsed from 6.7 billion dollars in 1984 to 2.7 billion dollars in 2002". "The governments and the international financial organisations have proven to be scarcely interested in carrying out effective political actions to defeat hunger and poverty in the world states Sarmento -. It is essential that they work harder, especially in helping women, who till the land every day in the south of the world".
