Food and Agriculture Organisation
Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific

The Asia-Pacific region contains 68 percent of the developing world’s population and 64 percent of its undernourished population. At 16 percent of the total world population, the prevalence of undernourishment is second only to Africa among the developing country regions. (Figure 1)

Between 1990-92 and 2001-03, the number of undernourished people in the Region declined from 570 million to 524 million and the prevalence of undernourishment dropped from 20 to 16 percent. The prevalence declined in every Asian country, with the exception of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea but not in all cases sufficiently to compensate for population growth.  Only 10 out of 18 countries reduced the number of undernourished people. To reach the World Food Summit (WFS) target by 2015, progress must be accelerated.

The decline in the number of undernourished in Asia and the Pacific was driven mainly by China, which saw a reduction from 194 to 150 million from 1990-92 to 2001-03 and the prevalence of undernourishment from 16 percent to 12 percent. India has the largest number of undernourished people in the world, 212 million -- only marginally below the 215 million estimated for 1990-92 (Figure 1).

No country in the region has yet achieved the WFS target. Two countries, Myanmar and Vietnam, have reduced the number of undernourished people by more than 25 percent. In addition to these, the most significant progress in relative terms has been achieved by China, Thailand and Indonesia. The most serious deterioration in food security has been experienced by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea[1], where data show more than a doubling of the number of undernourished people - from 3.6 million to 7.9 million.

In this report, the focus is on two countries that have achieved dramatic reduction in hunger along with strong economic growth and two that have not succeeded in reducing hunger despite strong economic growth.  This helps illustrate that in order to achieve dramatic reductions in hunger, something is needed in addition to strong economic growth: a focus on rural development which combines agricultural growth, with the development of rural non-farm industries.

Although the number of malnourished people in China has decreased by nearly 50 million in the last decade, during this same period, the malnourished population in India has decreased by only 3 million. Furthermore, there has been a marked increase of undernourished people in both South and East Asia (Figure 1).