Malnutrition in Children Will Ease, Study Says

WASHINGTON — Worldwide child malnutrition will decline over the next 20 years, but millions of children, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, will still lack sufficient food to become healthy adults, a new report on world hunger concluded Tuesday.

Painting a picture of contrasts and inconsistencies, the study forecast that Latin America and China will make great strides in reducing malnutrition among children, while food supplies for youngsters in sub-Saharan Africa will become even scarcer. The number of malnourished children in that region will grow 18% to a total of 39 million, the report said.

Worldwide, child malnutrition has decreased since the mid-1960s, from an estimated 166 million underfed children to the current 132 million, according to the report by the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington. The institute is funded by the World Bank and the United Nations in addition to individual governments, including the United States.

This reduction, which has occurred even as the world’s population has increased, is due to freer trade and improved technology in farming methods, especially in the production of cereal grains, the study said.

The group said nearly all child malnutrition in Latin America is expected to be eliminated by the year 2020 due to agricultural investments totaling $140 billion.

China is expected to reduce the number of its undernourished children by half. India will also see improvements but will still be home to one-third of the world’s poorly fed children, according to the report. Increased imports of grain and meat will bring about the gains, even as the world’s population grows from 6 billion to 7.5 billion, it predicted.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the worst trouble spot, an alarming one-third of all children “continue to go to bed hungry and have their mental and physical development compromised by the ravages of hunger,” the report said.

It cited “poor land quality, large landlocked areas, endemic livestock disease and human diseases” as the principal reasons for inadequate food production in sub-Saharan Africa.

Significant droughts in 1983, 1984 and 1992 further complicated efforts to feed sub-Saharan Africa’s population, officials said. They added that many national leaders also have failed to recognize the importance of agriculture to overall economic growth.

“Progress in reducing child malnutrition is unconscionably slow,” said Per Pinstrup-Andersen of Denmark, director general of the institute. “Yet we have the power to change that.”

If conditions in sub-Saharan Africa are to improve, governments will have to promote modern farming methods to increase crop yields, such as the use of fertilizers and irrigation, and will have to provide roads, clean water and education, he said.

“Without progress here, the world will only make a small dent in the global burden of malnutrition,” the report concluded.

The institute called for liberalization of food trade policies to promote investment in food production in the developing world.

It said its projections were based on global agricultural reports and statistics, as well as on computer modeling of production, consumption and demand for 16 food sources ranging from rice to poultry over the next two decades.

“With modest alterations to policies and priorities, the rate of progress against child malnutrition could be more than doubled over the next 20 years,” Pinstrup Andersen said.