FAO HUNGER DATA ATTRACTS CRITICISM

In 2012 the UN
Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) attracted
criticism for its methods of
calculating the number of hungry
people in the world in its annual
report, the State of Food
Insecurity in the World (SOFI).
The debate continues in 2013,
with a calculated total of 842
million, or 12 percent of the
world's population, experiencing
chronic hunger over the past
two years.
The FAO announced in 2012 that
it was exploring new ways to
measure "hunger", "food
insecurity" and
"undernourishment" - terms that
are often used interchangeably.
The 2013 SOFI is an
improvement over the 2012
report, say experts, but there are
still problems with the quality of
data.
At issue is the prevalence of
undernourishment (PoU) - the
main indicator FAO uses to
calculate the global numbers.
Questions have been raised
about not only how the indicator
is constructed, but how it is used
and who uses it to measure
hunger at a single point in time
and to track trends over time.
Perhaps the fiercest critics of
FAO's methodology in 2012 were
a group of scholars in the US and
Canada, who raised their
concerns in Framing Hunger: A
Response to SOFI 2012.
"A measure of chronic
undernourishment, [the PoU] is
defined as inadequate calorie
intake lasting more than one
year. The estimate is based on
minimal calorie requirements to
engage in a 'sedentary lifestyle'.
This threshold, and the
requirement that the
undernourishment last at least a
year, makes the measure quite
restrictive, as it leaves out those
suffering serious hunger for a
shorter period, such as from a
spike in food prices," said
Timothy Wise, Director of
Research and Policy Program at
the Global Development and
Environment Institute at Tufts
University, one of the authors of
the report.
Piero Conforti, FAO's Senior
Statistician defended the use of
the PoU again in 2013 as the
basis for calculation, saying that,
ideally, the level of
undernourishment should be
assessed individually, but FAO is
unable to do this with the
standard data collection
methods.
Day to day "individual food
consumption" could be
influenced by various factors,
Conforti says, such as the way
food is allocated in different
households, the amount of
energy required, and the
workload or cultural and
religious habits that influence the
choice and quantity of food, so
collecting individual data is just
not practical.