Economic Interdependence and the World Food Summit

摘要

World Food Summit in November 1996 will be an important occasion for reexamining the task of eradicating chronic hunger and intermittent famines in the contemporary world. It is, of course, extremely difficult to calculate, even approximately, the number of people who are chron-ically undernourished. FAO's official announcement of a particular number (viz. that 'an estimated 800 million people are still chronically undernourished') is, inevitably, based on somewhat arbitrary assumptions. (FAO, 1996)' But the undeniable presence of large-scale hunger — affecting hundreds of millions of people — in a world of unprecedented overall prosperity is rightly regarded as an intolerable state of affairs. We have to change this situation radically. Few other tasks can compare in importance and urgency with this need.