The UN Food and Agricultural Organization has predicted that the number of undernourished people will increase by up to 132 million in this year, while the number of acutely malnourished children will rise by 6.7 billion worldwide due to the pandemic.
From Tuesday, United Nations experts are holding an online conference to brainstorm ways to help alleviate hunger and prevent the problems from worsening in the Asia-Pacific region a challenge made doubly difficult by the loss of many millions of jobs due to the crisis.
Qu Dongyu, the FAO’s director-general said in a commentary ahead of the virtual meeting, “We are facing two pandemics. Covid-19, which beyond its health toll is crushing livelihoods, and hunger, a scourge the international community pledged to eradicate by the end of this decade.”
In a report prepared ahead of the meeting, the FAO said disruptions due to outbreaks of the illness and restrictions on businesses and travel to control them run the gamut, from crops going unharvested by migrant workers unable to reach their jobs to transport problems to farm families selling livestock and equipment to survive.
The report further said that the combined impacts of COVID-19, natural disasters such as typhoons and drought, diseases and pests such as locusts have highlighted the need to build stronger capacity to manage multiple risks to food systems.
The FAO is urging faster deployment of high-tech tools such as drones and smartphone apps to monitor crops, pests and other farming conditions as part of a transformation of food systems to make them more resilient and reduce risks, especially for the most vulnerable small farmers in poor countries. Farmers provide us food. So, it is our collective responsibility to ensure that they don’t suffer.