NEW YORK. Forty-nine million Americans don’t have dependable access to food, according to a report from the USDA released yesterday. It’s the largest number since the government started keeping totals in 1995.
Nearly 17 million children live in households where food runs short, according to the report, which is another marker of the dire economy.
The White House is developing policies to get food to children in the summer.
The United Nations said yesterday that agreeing to a climate change deal is crucial to fighting global hunger, which Brazil’s president described as “the most devastating weapon of mass destruction.”
Government leaders and officials met in Rome for a three-day U.N. summit on how to help developing countries feed themselves, but anti-poverty campaigners and even some participants were already writing off the event as a missed opportunity.
“There can be no food security without climate security,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the summit. “Next month in Copenhagen, we need a comprehensive agreement that will provide a firm foundation for a legally binding treaty on climate change,” he said.
Africa, Asia and Latin America could see a decline of between 20 and 40 percent in agricultural productivity if temperatures rise more than 2 degrees Celsius, the U.N. says.
Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to be the hardest hit from global warming as its agriculture is almost entirely rain-fed.