TOKYO -- According to the United Nations, more than 1 billion people -- one of every six persons on this planet -- go hungry each day. In a world of unprecedented prosperity, that statistic is shameful.
More appalling still, the number of undernourished individuals is growing despite rising levels of affluence and wealth. It is a moral imperative that we halt this alarming trend and work to eliminate the growing problem of hunger worldwide.
Fears of shortages and instability have prompted governments to stockpile key staples, creating bottlenecks and exacerbating the situation in other states: In a globalized food chain, local decisions quickly ripple beyond national borders.
This sad situation has not gone unnoticed. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization recently convened a World Food Summit to focus on the problem. Representatives from more than 200 countries attended, but, as is too often the case, top-level attention was lacking. Only one head of state from a Group of Eight country -- Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi -- attended, as the meeting was held in Italy's capital.
Aid is important. It is a moral imperative in a world in which the number of overweight people equals the number of the malnourished; the fact that in some countries as much as one-third of the food purchased is thrown out uneaten is an abomination. But all too often, aid merely compounds problems. Rather than building domestic capacity and the infrastructure that will yield sustainable agricultural production, food aid is designed more to support developed world producers -- reducing food surpluses -- and merely increases the culture of dependence by reducing the priority recipient governments give to agricultural development. Instead, self-reliance must be the goal.
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The best insurance against chronic malnourishment is to help the hungry feed themselves. The summit did yield a pledge to help farmers in developing countries and to break the dependence of poor countries on food aid. But if this is more empty rhetoric, it is worse than nothing because it may obscure a problem.
The most important step forward is creating new markets for the goods of poor and struggling nations. In other words, it is vital to return to the original purpose of the Doha Development Round -- to help developing countries -- and conclude a world trade agreement.
Developed nations must recognize that opening domestic agricultural markets is in their own best interest -- even if that entails a short-term political cost in the process.
