The Food and Agriculture Organization says the number of people in the world suffering from hunger rose to 852 million in the period 2000-2002, up by 18 million from the mid-1990s.

The FAO's annual hunger report, the "State of Food Insecurity in the World 2004", says the human and economic costs of hunger will only increase if the trend is not reversed.

It reports that 815 million people in the developing countries, 28 million in the countries in transition and 9 million in the industrialized countries don't have enough to eat.

Although efforts to reduce chronic hunger in developing countries are not currently on track to meet the World Food Summit and Millennium Development Goals of cutting by half the number of hungry people in the world by 2015, the report says the goal can still be attained.

(CRI December 9, 2004)